Outrage!
In Darfur in Sudan, some 200,000 African Muslims have died as victims of Arab Muslim militias, with the active connivance of the Sudanese government. Western countries have been outraged at the attitude of the Sudanese government, at its acquiescence and helpfulness in providing arms and tacit consent to the Janjaweed as they have murdered, maimed, raped and displaced a million Sudanese farming families.In an ineffectual and truly mind-bogglingly stupid war with Israel, Palestinians have lost some four thousand of their population, while succeeding in killing a thousand Israelis. This, rather than offering sincere bargaining attempts so that each country can be reconciled to living in peace with the other. Muslim religious leaders and heads of state have traditionally fanned the flames of irreconciliation on the part of the Palestinians, to deflect attention from their own citizens for the parlous state of their own countries' affairs.
During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war one million lives were lost in intra-Muslim conflict. A great number of those killed were represented by Iranian children fed a steady diet of religious clap-trap to enthuse them for a newer, closer-to-Allah life in paradise. Iranian religious and state authorities didn't blink an eyelid as countless children were sent out to clear minefields, sent out to certain death in the name of the greater glory of Allah. In this case Shi'ia fighting Sunni, as so often has happened.
Always, the one unifying force utilized by Muslim leaders and clergy has been the vilification of Israel in their midst, as a dreadful affront to Muslims in general and Allah in particular. The Koran, it is righteously claimed, directly prohibits any state other than a Muslim one claiming precious geography in the Middle East.
Another unifying factor within these great Muslim populations is any perceived insult on the part of the Western world toward Islam, its revered Prophet and Allah. Witness the dozen cartoons that tiny Denmark had the misfortune to publish to unprecedented backlash. People died, economies waned, all for a trifling commentary on an obvious lack of introspection and religious honesty.
What else brings down the wrath of Muslim religious leaders? Well look at Iran whose declared intent it is to bring friction to the world of a nuclear nature, and in the process exterminate that abomination within their midst: Israel. To declare a state's murderous intention upon another with the assistance of nuclear warheads which religious leaders have stated their interpretation of the Koran finds permissible, is seen as nationally responsible. Now they turn their attention to soccer, threatening to ban Iranian athletes whose appearance could be construed as "effeminate", and they've rescinded a barely-cool permission from their otherwise-lunatic president to permit women to attend soccer matches in stands set aside for this purpose. This too, is what elicits their outrage, not the killing of Black Muslims in Sudan.
Are these pacific, far-seeing minds? Thank heavens for the few, and growing, number of Muslims who are beginning to assert themselves, as true followers of Islam, who reject these mad mullahs' decrees, who insist that Muslims have an obligation to face reality, admit their failings and pull themselves into a world of acceptance and tolerance.
They share the outrage of the world outside Islam at the insults regularly done to their religion by fanatic Islamists, fundamentalist infidel-haters, and they are beginning to raise their voices to reflect reason, not the passion of indelible hate.
It can only be hoped that this is a fever of reason that will grow within Muslim communities, and that voices will be raised en masse to demand that those who represent them in government, politics and in the Mosques around the world revise their impressions of their place in the world with a view to true acceptance and reconciliation. In the name of Allah.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, May 11, 2006
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