Three weeks have passed since the burning of a Quran by a Christian preacher in Florida, Terry Jones, and at least 10 days since the outbreak of violence in Afghanistan, in which 22 people have died, including Americans and other United Nations personnel.
My views on these incidents embody my American origins, aside from my natural sense of repulsion at the burning of the book I follow as a Muslim. I am an American Muslim, but I was a plain American for 49 years before becoming Muslim. I have often spoken admiringly to Muslims of my mother's Christian heritage and the intensity of faith it expressed. Apparently unknown to Jones, the Quran praises Christians at several places in the text. I have also articulated my hope that Muslim scholars will examine and analyze Jewish religious thought in the rational and sympathetic manner so many great Jewish commentators have displayed toward Islam.
Terry Jones and the radical Islamists mirror one another and feed on each other; they are bound together by mutual need. Their resemblance is visible in Jones' apparent eagerness for martyrdom as well as his disregard for human life. Jones said in an interview broadcast by ABC News on April 4 that he considers the death of non-Muslims, including American soldiers, to be worthwhile if "perhaps in the long run, we may save hundreds or thousands." This is exactly the wording used by al Qaeda and other Muslim extremists to justify their atrocities: that they kill now, in violation of traditional Islamic guidance against suicide and terrorism, to save the Muslims who might be victimized in the future. In the same encounter with ABC reporter Matt Gutman, Jones luxuriated in death threats he claimed to have received.
In the years after Sept. 11, 2001, the argument that any limitation on American freedom represented a triumph for the terrorists was debased to the status of a cliché. But Terry Jones has handed a weapon, if not a victory, to the Islamist enemy. I have never supported that other cliché -- that "Islam is a religion of peace" -- because I believe Islam will be a religion of peace to the extent that Muslims make it one, and I wonder if the world wants Muslims to be peaceful in our repudiation of the terrorists. After all, Islam in arms against al Qaeda will not be peaceful.
But is Jones' version of Christianity, which involves burning books and flashing handguns before an ABC News reporter to illustrate how seriously he and his dwindling band of acolytes take their alleged ordeal, a religion of peace?
Some Westerners and dissident Muslims have criticized U.S. government officials, including Gen. David Petraeus, commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, for their condemnation of Jones' actions. Some have also echoed Jones in placing blame for the tragic outcome of Jones' latest lurch for publicity exclusively on Muslims, including Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who denounced Jones to his people. But blaming Karzai for the reaction to Jones is like accusing Stalin for the crimes of Hitler. Karzai may have been wrong, but he did not invent Jones.
Afghanistan is not the leading Muslim nation in the world and if, incited by the Pakistani jihadis as well as the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, some Muslims fail to exercise the restraint called forth repeatedly by the Quran itself, it is not the same as a planetary upsurge of Islamic outrage. The same may be said of Florida: The extremism of its Christian demagogues does not represent the whole Christian population of this country. But another question may be presented to Muslims: Are they so weak in their belief that the antics of a discredited American loudmouth threatens their religion?
In discussing the burning of the Quran in Florida, we should also note that under fundamentalist Wahhabi domination, prior to the rule of King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia destroyed thousands, if not millions of copies of the Quran that were printed outside the kingdom and confiscated from Muslim hajj pilgrims and other travelers.
Muslims, in regard to our feelings -- apart from ideologists who incite radicalism -- cannot be held to a higher standard than the believers of other faiths. Jews would be outraged at a burning of the Torah, and the burning of the Talmud under Papal authority during the 16th century is still recalled with pain by them. Christians do not always react calmly to the destruction of their sacred scriptures. Nor do Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians or other believers. Indeed, traditional Muslims consider the destruction of copies of the Torah and Gospels to be no less prohibited than that of the Quran. But the Afghan (and Pakistani) agitators who benefited from Jones' actions cannot bear exclusive blame for the blood spilled in South Asia over this incident.
Jones and others like him are provocateurs. When a society, including a global society, experiences a deep crisis, a provocateur seeks to divert attention from more profound issues. In this sense, Jones resembles the Ku Klux Klan or the Black Hundreds in tsarist Russia -- as do the Muslim radicals. The real mission of the KKK, with its agitation for racial purism, was to prevent poor whites and blacks in America after the civil war from uniting against their common oppressors. In a close parallel, al Qaeda and other extremists seek to prevent Muslims from challenging radical influence in the Islamic lands. Provocateurs are not exempt from responsibility, even when they do not themselves kill people.
Nobody should be surprised that Jones has accelerated his aggressive tactics at a moment when the world's attention is focused on the real, and much more significant, potential for democratization of the Muslim countries. The combat in Libya, and the future of Egypt, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia foretell a new revival of Muslim thought and action, in the interest of freedom, entrepreneurship, accountability and popular sovereignty, without the stimulus provided by Terry Jones and his "critique" of Islam.
But these arguments leave an important question as yet inadequately asked or answered: Do Americans wish Terry Jones to portray our country as a nation of book-burners?
Jones has the American constitutional freedom to be foolish, and Muslims should guard themselves against troublemakers in their ranks, no less than other people. But we may ask of Jones the same question we direct to angry Muslims: Are he and those like him, as Christians, so weak in their belief that they need to burn the Quran to protect Western society from contamination? That seems to be the attitude of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who advocates banning the Quran in a country -- the Netherlands -- where a great part of the national cultural identity resides in the historic encouragement of free writing and publication. Holland allowed Jews and English Protestants to print their religious texts when no other Christian country would do so. The Dutch are likely not about to ban the Quran on any argument, notwithstanding their adoption of hate-speech laws and prohibitions on other writings.
Still, the issue of Americans as book-burners transcends that of the desecration of the Quran. Of course Jones has the right to do what he did, but is it right for him to do so?
I come to this with a special interest because while living in the Balkans -- Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo -- after the wars there, I was, and remain, involved in rescuing and restoring books that were deliberately burned in the destruction of libraries by Serb forces. I have also rescued Jewish books printed in Muslim countries, including some from Baghdad. An important aspect of Muslim-Jewish relations in the past is unarguable: While the Talmud was burned in the Christian West, Jewish printing was carried on in Islamic lands, including the Moroccan and Ottoman empires, without interference of any kind.
My values are American, representing several generations of indigenous inhabitants, immigrants and their offspring, who fought for abolition of slavery and against fascism and communism, and I do not want book-burners speaking for me, my country or my flag, apart from refusing the so-called right of Terry Jones or any other non-Muslim to determine the nature of Islam. Islam is a religion and it is defined by believers in it, not by its enemies. It is not a corporation in which its problems can be resolved by an external audit or prosecution in the inquisitorial style Jones professes.
America is not a country where these issues have resulted in mob action. Muslim fears of Islamophobia are exaggerated. But America is also not a nation of book-burners. I am a journalist by profession, and therefore a devotee of the First Amendment. I agree with John Milton that the destruction of books is a useless task that will not suppress unwanted thoughts, and repeat his claim: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties." As Heinrich Heine, who admired America, put it, "where books are burned, people will be burned as well."
America should say no to Terry Jones, just as Afghanistan should say no to its radical preachers.
Malou Innocent: The Once Again Forgotten War in Afghanistan
More Die In Second Day Of Quran Burning Protests In Afghanistan
Afghanistan Protests Quran Burning - Video - The Daily Beast
Quran burning protest moves to Kandahar, kills 10 - Times Of India
Afghans Attack NATO Base in Quran Burning Protest - World Watch ...
When someone is killed by a drunk driver, is the alcohol responsible or the person who drove while drunk?
We don't need any nonsense. The books save or destroy themselves.
Tell me something that is worth my time. We can't afford to be wasting time because there is so much truth to learn.
Only our Maker Himself is able to be our Savior because no one else can be.
I was wondering what happened to my Salman Rushdie library after my move. Now I know. They probably threw themselves into my fireplace.
The entire point of objecting to the burning of books, which I think you have missed, is that it should not be up to any one political or social group to determine what is and is not true. Because social and political groups are really , really bad at it, and do much more harm than good when they try. That, by the way, is a concept our country was founded on. Maybe if you disagree you think we should go ahead and burn the constitution.
That is the reason I said to let the books burn themselves.
Gamaliel said, that if it is not of God, it will come to an end and if it is of God, there is nothing you can do to stop it.
The thing is talking heads, bloggers, and hysterical mullahs invented him.
Outside of those groups, I honestly dont think most people even know or care who Jones is.
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The Muslim equivalent of the Civil War's John Brown or the Reformation's Martin Luther has yet to appear.
If they do appear, the civil war within Islam--which until now has seen only Islamists killing non-Islamists--will see non-Islamist Muslims shooting back. At that point, Mr. Schwartz's statement will be seen as prophetic.
Stephen Schwartz
Freedom of speech
Freedom to choose a religion
Equality between the sexes
Equal rights for homosexuals
Separation of religion and state
Freedom to marry the person of your choice
Political equality for all citizens--
these issues appear in different lights.
Wahhabis are making a serious run at becoming the leading orthodoxy in Islam, and have no intention to resolve these conflicts in favor of liberal democracy. That’s why they created the Cairo Declaration. The Martin Luther figure I am hoping to see will present him/herself as the anti-Wahhabist.
The John Brown figure will have to find and organize that rarest of Muslim types--the militant moderate--to do battle with Islamism.
You know a great deal more than I about Islamic history, so I would defer to another, better analogy if you have one.
If the Martin Luther and John Brown figure do not arise in Islam, the Sharia Curtain will fall:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Jan_Allen_McDaniel/is-america-a-nation-of-bo_1_b_847983_84481240.html
Rubbish. That is true so long you operate within the law. The moment it is found Islam had waged violent jihad against almost all the communities in the world and the followers have committed 17,000 terror strikes sin ce 9/11; the moment it is found that the believers are incapable/unwilling to initiate reforms from within, the orld has every right to correct the sitation by acting from without. That is called effrots to self preservation. In that Jones is right.
""where books are burned, people will be burned as well."
That is true only for muslim countries, NOT for others.
"America should say no to Terry Jones, just as Afghanistan should say no to its radical preachers."
America has said that but muslim world, prevented by the Book, will never say that.
Books were burned in Nazi Germany and people were burned soon after. Nazi Germany was not a Muslim country. Certain Western intellectuals have made attempts to equate Islam and Nazism but they ignore that the Nazis dwelt on the "Asiatic" (i.e. Central Asian Turkic) threat to Europe ostensibly represented by Soviet Russia.
Numerous Muslim figures have condemned the radicals in South Asia. Anybody can confirm that by reading news media.
Stephen Schwartz
The relation between Japan and the West should be the model for global relations, Japan is an economic powerhouse(meaning trade) and while there are cultural exchanges - young people of Japan and Western societies adopting aspects of each other's culture, it's based on the flow of products and ideas,not people.
One of the problems with Islam is that it's carried via economic refugees, people with nothing, who demand their beleifs/culture be given equal billing on their host nation's dirt. Excuse me, but people with NOTHING are in no position to be making demands, they are the cultural equivalent of belligerent pan handlers, and I'm anything but kind and understanding when it comes to people like that.
But there were no instances of Jews and Protestants driving planes into high rise buildings and triggering bombs in crowded areas, fuelled by the verses from their religious texts.
"Islam is a religion and it is defined by believers in it, not by its enemies.
Is Islam a religion per se like Christianity or Hinduism. Read their own admission:
Dr. Muhammad al Alkhuli, a popular Islamic scholar, says: "Islam is a religion, but not in the western meaning of religion. The western connotation of the term "religion" is something between the believer and God. Islam as a religion organizes all aspects of life on both the individual and national levels. Islam organizes your relations with God, with yourself, with your children, with your relatives, with your neighbor, with your guest, and with other brethren. Islam clearly establishes your duties and rights in all those relationships. Islam establishes a clear system of worship, civil rights, laws of marriage and divorce, laws of inheritance, code of behavior, what not to drink, what to wear, and what not to wear, how to worship God, how to govern, the laws of war and peace, when to go to war, when to make peace, the law of economics, and the laws of buying and selling. Islam is a complete code of life."
The commentaries of a fundamentalist like Al-Alkhuli do not represent "their" admission of anything. His views are not shared by all Muslims, or even very many Muslims. There is only one Saudi Arabia and one Iran, where these totalistic ideas are considered normative. And by the way, his description of Islam could apply to Orthodox Judaism.
Stephen Schwartz
Religion is dying in Europe, it took us the better part of 1700 years to rid ourselves of middle eastern mysticism and we are NOT going there again. It's all about "fruit", non-religious societies are based on science and politics, we have really nice stuff and comfortable standards of living.
Religious dullards have ...um gawd, poverty, ignorance, piety and a really bad form of bi-polar disorder where they are simultaneously some imaginary gawd's favoured people and oppressed martyrs....we really don't want what they have to sell.
Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and program. — Syed Abul A’ala Maududi
"Egypt Daily News reported on Tuesday that “lawyers who specialize in working with Coptic Egyptians…say that in the past few weeks they have received hundreds of calls from Copts wanting to leave Egypt.”
“They are insisting on leaving Egypt because the risks of staying here are too great,” Naguib Gabriel, a Coptic human rights lawyer, told Egypt Daily News. “Many Christians are afraid of the future because of the fanatics in the mosques.”
At least 20 Christians have been killed in sectarian violence with Muslims since Mubarak’s ouster. And groups like the Muslim Brotherhood have been taking a n increasingly visible role in forming Egypt’s next government."
http://www.christiannewstoday.com/Christian_News_Report_5024.html
"What if the Qur'an Jones burned were a historic, rare copy?"
What if Jones burned a historic, rare copy of Dickens? The question in either case would be, "Is it his?" If it is, then it's his to burn.
Stephen Schwartz
But burning a book--any book--is not a reason for people to kill total strangers in retaliation.
A book is just words on paper. A flag is just a piece of material. Until we make them something to kill and die for.
And isn't' that a tragic thing to do?