Peacefulness, tolerance and Goodwill
Nice sounding words, those. Designed to take the sting out of "unfortunate impressions" one might garner as fall-out from the actions worldwide of high-profile Islamists. Dear me, no! cry the Muslim apologists, the community leaders, imams, and such. Westerners simply do not understand Islam. Despite those unfortunate interpretations of resurrecting world-dominion intentions and bringing "honour back to Islam", aided and abetted by deadly attacks on Western symbols and unarmed, unaware civilians, countries completely unprepared for the venomous attacks directed toward them and their populations, we've got it all wrong. Islam is a religion of peace. A tolerant religion.But be aware, Muslims take their religion seriously. There is no god but Allah, no prophet but Muhammed. Good Muslims live to do the will of Allah as prescribed by the Koran. There is nothing to be trifled with, here. To do so, to hold up a scintilla of Islamic belief and practise to ridicule, to public scorn, is to invite the wrath of Allah down upon the heads of infidels. Said wrath, needless to say, is handily delivered through the auspices of frenetically fundamentalist Islamists, determined to decimate the infidels in their lairs. To voice, to publish a slur in any manner of either Muhammed or Allah is to bring upon one's society a sentence of violent protest culminating in property destruction, reputation annihilation, and citizen deaths.
Ah, say the moderates, this is but the work of renegade Muslims. They do not represent our belief in Islam. We are peace-loving, content to live among people of other faiths in goodwill. And we trust them, and we believe them, because we must. Because to do otherwise is to reject the basic goodness in humanity. It then behooves these moderates to not only disclaim association with the psychopathic interpreters of Islam, but to shun and deny them access to their mosques, to their children, lest they be irredemiably corrupted as martyrs of Islam, as terrorists in civil society located in countries other than Muslim-dominated ones.
Because we have seen indelible proof that for too many followers of Islam this is not a society of peace and tolerance, we were aghast, not too many years back when ancient symbols of Buddhism in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban, through the irrevocable decision of "conservative" Muslim clerics. These world-recognized and prized heritage statues of Buddha were determined to be of insult to Islam and they were destroyed. So much for goodwill, then.
What has changed in the intervening few years? Not an awful lot; in fact the worldwide situation appears to be deteriorating. We move now to Malaysia, a Muslim-dominated country where the destruction of Hindu temples by Malaysian authorities, the government, no less, is ongoing. The minority Hindu community in Malaysia has become rather upset at the destruction of their temples, many of which have historical religious value, as well as world heritage status.
These sacred precincts for the Hindu population are being destroyed at the rate of one every few weeks. Ostensibly, goes the government line, to make way for new developments.
This is the face of Islam the world sees, and which has become imprinted on the world's consciousness. Islamic conscience there is none.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, June 22, 2006
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