When word got out in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif
last weekend that a Florida pastor had burned a copy of the Koran,
a mob gathered in the streets and violence has
ensued over the past several days resulting thus far in the
deaths of 22 civilians including seven UN workers.
Let us not minimize the significance of burning a Koran.
It is holy to millions of people the world over. Setting a Koran
aflame is an exceedingly stupid thing to do whether or not it
results in a violent response because it casts aspersions on all
Muslims regardless of their behavior. After all, most observant
Muslims manage to go through life without killing another human
being.
So once again the Muslim world is
inflamed. But then again when isn’t the
Muslim world inflamed? Of course, most of us remember the late
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie
following the publication of The Satanic Verses. While
Rushdie is still walking this earth more than two decades after the
fatwa was issued, the same cannot be said of Hitoshi
Igarashi. If his name isn’t familiar it ought to be. Igarashi was
the man who translated The Satanic Verses into Japanese
and because of it he was
stabbed to death in July 1991. And in case you think the Muslim
world has forgotten about Rushdie, there were
renewed calls for his death in 2007 when it was announced he
would be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
Remember when authorities in Sudan accused an English
schoolteacher named
Gillian Gibbons of blaspheming Islam because the children in
her class named a teddy bear Mohammed? She was sent to jail and was
due to receive forty lashes until international pressure was
brought to bear against the Sudanese government, which released her
from jail and deported her back to Britain.
Remember the Danish cartoon controversy? In January 2010,
nearly four years after the cartoons of Mohammed were published in
Jyllands-Posten, a Somali man broke into the home of
Kurt Westergaard, the man who drew Mohammed, with the intent of
killing him. Fortunately, Danish police were able to thwart the
attack and Westergaard was unharmed.
Theo Van Gogh wasn’t so lucky. In November 2004, he was
murdered in broad daylight in the streets of Amsterdam because of
his documentary film Submission,which
documented violence against women in the Muslim world. Remember
what Van Gogh’s murderer,
Mohammed Bouyeri, said to his mother in a Dutch courtroom?
Bouyeri said to her face that he felt no sympathy for her because
he deemed her a non-believer. Van Gogh collaborated on this project
with former Dutch Member of Parliament
Ayaan Hirsi Ali who to this very day is under 24 hour
protection?
Speaking of violence against women in the Muslim world, it
was in January of this year that a14-year-old girl named Hena
Akhter was
executed in Bangladesh for having been raped. Yet in the eyes
of Sharia law and the Muslim village council who upheld it she was
nothing more than an adulterer who brought dishonor to both her
family and to her village.
Let’s suppose for a moment that the Koran hadn’t been
burned in that Florida church. Does anyone think it would have
abated the anger in the Muslim world one iota? If there are Muslims
who are prepared to kill someone for translating a book (let alone
writing one); for drawing a cartoon; for making a film; for naming
a stuffed animal or for being forced to have sex then something is
very horribly wrong with how Islam is presently being practiced. In
what other religion would such behavior be tolerated much less
sanctioned?
Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact a Koran was burned
inside a Christian house of worship on our soil. As such I would
think that it is reasonable to expect Muslims to be displeased with
such an act. But I also think it is reasonable to expect Muslims to
express their displeasure without committing acts of violence or
calling for grievous harm to be done unto others. I think it is
fairly safe to say that most American Christians think that burning
Korans is a bad thing. With that in mind I further think it to be
reasonable to expect Muslims to condemn their fellow Muslims when
they commit acts of religious desecration such as when the Iranian
regime recently burned 300
copies of the New Testament.
