Friday, March 02, 2012

Psychotic Collective Fury

Shrieking hysterically, in another psychotic episode of collective fury, the demand continued, to execute those who dared destroy Korans. From the United Nations itself, a grim stated resolve to punish those who burned those sacred texts. Every few days another update, two more NATO soldiers murdered by their Afghan counterparts....

In a cleaning-up operation at the Bagram air base where Afghan prisoners were held, those Korans were handed out to them so they could worship their faith. Those pious Afghans defaced and desecrated their own sacred texts by writing profane messages over them.

It was these Korans which had been sacrilegiously scribbled with extremist messages that were taken to a landfill area on the base for disposal.

Any explanations with respect to what led to the event while satisfying the need to know for NATO, does nothing whatever to ameliorate the public rage that has been encouraged to build withint he public sphere, to demonstrate to non-believers just how serious their casual conflagration of the Koran is, meriting extreme punishment.

The attacks by Afghan military personnel on their NATO counterparts, while seen in the context of the Koran-burning, are simply an extension of what had already been a fact of commission, which the Pentagon casually reports as "blue-on-green" attacks involving Afghan soldiers killing 70 ISAF coalition troops, and wounding 110 since 2007.

Devout, fanatical Islamists in Afghanistan - the population - consider death to be an appropriate response to the unspeakable act of destroying their holy book. They are far less concerned over the taking of a life, though the Koran is said to exhort its followers to the understanding that human life is sacred, and to save one is as though a multitude were saved.

The multitudes in Afghanistan prefer to confer death upon infidels rather than forgive a perceived and wholly unforgivable slight.

The telling thing about this clash of cultures is that Westerners still cannot perceive how it is possible for human beings to become so brutishly prepared to visit death on others to remedy a perceived insult, thereby restore honour and due reverence to the written word of God.

The sanctity of a human life is held to have great meaning in the cultures of the West; in the East it is the Divine that must be held in an ecstasy of devotion.

Because it was American soldiers - and five have been identified, with the military authorities explaining that they will likely be demoted as punishment for their presumed lack of empathy and understanding of precisely what offence they were committing - they will not be identified. They will be punished indeed, but not in reflection of what is being demanded by Afghan clerics.

President Obama, along with his top military, has apologized profusely for the incident. The apologies, famously, have been shunted aside; those who found mortal offence and they are legion, refuse to be appeased.
"The council emphasized that the apology for this evil act can never be accepted. Those who committed this crime must be publicly tried and punished", demanded a council of clerics in a statement released by Hamid Karzai's office.

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Afghan demonstrators shouted anti U.S.-slogans during a protest last week in response to the burning of Qurans

Photo by Gulrahim/AFP/Getty Images.

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