Koran + Toilets =

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^ no, but they endorse a rethinking and loosening of the rules of traditional "interrogation" techniques, which lead to Abu Ghraib. you're right in a literal sense, but that's a legalistic Cover Your Ass technique.

officially, the president ordered - like a monarch - that, although prisoners did not deserve Geneva protection, they should have it. however, we have memos telling Bush that he has the right to order torture, regardless of any domestic law or international treaty; we have memos defining torture in the most minimal sense; under Rumsfeld's instructions we had torture restrictions loosened at Guantanamo Bay for a few weeks; and, to my mind most telling, an outbreak of torture across all the theaters of war.

the debate, i think, is not about Newsweek but about how this administration has willfully enabled widespread torture, abuse, rape and murder of inmates in American custody. it has done this, in my view deliberately, through intentional mixed messages, and what this has done is destroy America's reputation. can we not call Abu Ghraib evil? isn't Bush "Mr. Moral Clarity"? where's that politically convenient Manichean worldview now?

perhaps some simply trust the administration to be good guys. no fucking way. Bush has evaded and ignored any responsibility and has rewarded all those who presided over this catastrophe. this is shameful record, and will haunt us for years to come.
 
Horseshit...

It is not a legalistic cover your ass technique.

The Gonsalves memos do not come close to approval of the things that were being done.

Those that have broken the law are being prosecuted.


As a former MP, I am EMBARRASED beyond explination about what those soldiers did. I totally disagree with you that it came from the top. I know what I was trained to do and not do. I know what was drilled into our heads about the detainment of prisoners. I do not believe there is a smoking gun trail to the White House.

I have debated the memos in here. I have posted links to them, and read virtually every one more than one time. I am not sure this is the thread to do that again.

I still think that there are those that would gladly promote the bad, without care or concern for the facts, to paint the USA and its citizens in a shitty light. No matter what consequences or actions we take to show that what those people did is wrong.
 
Irvine511 said:
^ i don't understand the question.

the people who are hurt -- more like offended -- by the Koran in the toilet aren't US soldiers but detainees, and muslims "everywhere" (not all Muslims, but enough to riot in Afghanistan).

at the end of the day, i think the people who will be most hurt are those already dead in Afghanistan, and the American soldier (or troops from other nations, though they dont' seem to have the same issues with interrogation "techniques" as we do ... with the exception of a few UK soldiers, i think) who is now more at risk as a result of administration-approved interrogation tactics that are not limited to the flushing of the Koran (whether true or not) and include the torturing of over two dozen detainees to death, wrapping one in an Israeli flag, smearing naked detainees with fake menstrual blood, telling one detainee to "Fuck Allah," and ordering detainees to pray to Allah in order to kick them from behind in the head. all this was detailed in a NYT article and comes from eyewitness testimony.

we have a big problem here, and it isn't Newsweek's reporting.

The people who are hurt are the ones who engage in violence as an expression of "outrage" from the Newsweek report.
 
^ don't you mean the "people are hurt by" those who engage in violence?

this is, to me, one of those situations where we, as the aggressor in this region, have to bend over backwards not to offend. do i personally care if a Koran is flushed down a toilet? no. do i think such an action merits riots? no. do i think that people who killed others in the Afghan riots were justified? no.

however, as the aggressor, we need to do a better job understanding the particular sensitivities of those we liberate/conquor/occupy. it simply doesn't matter whether or not riots are understandable or justified (they're not). we need to understand that this irrational response is what is going to happen, so we'd best do a better job keeping our military in line and swiftly and severely punishing those who, you know, torture to death over 30 inmates in prisons across Iraq.

the WH doesn't seem to care much, though.

because, of course, what matters is Newsweek, not the tacit endorsement of torture by the Bush administration.
 
This situation reminds me of some of those pieces of "art" with the Virgin Mary covered in dung and the crucifix in urine. IIRC, many people on the left chastised Christians who were outraged by the exhibits. I wonder how many of these people are chastising the mobs in Pakistan and Afghanistan? Personally, I feel that flushing the Koran down the toilet is uncalled for, but people need to show balance in their stances.
 
and while i agree, on one level, and that art is art and religion should be up for abuse by art just like anything else in society and that the riots in Afghanistan are irrational, it simply doesn't make a piece of difference. we know that this is how this part of the world operates, if we wish to be liberators and not occupiers/conquorers, we'd do best not to do things like flush Korans down toilets or wipe fake menstrual blood on the faces of prisoners or tell them to "fuck Allah" or put dog collars around people's necks and march them naked through a hallway.

all of which, btw, are tantamount to torture, as opposed to the Virgin Mary exhibit which people paid to go see -- no one kept you in a room and pissed on a statue of the virgin mary in front of you while you were stripped naked and someone kept chanting "fuck jesus, fuck jesus, fuck jesus."

completely and totally different.
 
I agree Irvine, no one is forcing people to go to art exhibits they don't approve of. People were forced to watch their religious scriptures pitched in toilets! That's so insulting!
 
Newsweek has retracted the story. No Korans were flushed.

Even if Korans had been put in the toilet, muslims rioting and killing 16 people is completely inexcusable!

Here's an excerpt from an article by Dennis Prager....
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-5_17_05_DP.html

And now a word about the rioters. They have desecrated their religion and their holy text far more than the alleged flushers of Koranic pages.

Did any Buddhists riot and murder when the Taliban Muslims blew up the irreplaceable giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan?
Did any Christians riot and murder when an "artist" produced "Piss Christ" -- a crucifix immersed in a jar of the "artist's" urine?

When all Christian services and even the wearing of a cross were banned in Saudi Arabia? When Christians are murdered while at prayer in churches by Muslims in Pakistan?

Have any Jews rioted in all the years since it was revealed that Jordanian Muslims used Jewish tombstones in Old Jerusalem as latrines? Or after Palestinians destroyed Joseph's Tomb in 2000 and set fire to the rebuilt tomb in 2003?

It is quite remarkable that many Muslims believe that an American interrogator flushing pages of the Koran is worthy of rioting, but all the torture, slaughter, terror and mass murder done by Muslims in the name of the Koran are unworthy of even a peaceful protest.

Nevertheless, one will have to search extensively for any editorials condemning these primitives in the Western press, let alone in the Muslim press. This is because moral expectations of Muslims are lower than those of other religious groups. Behavior that would be held in contempt if engaged in by Christians or Jews is not only not condemned, it is frequently "understood" when done by Muslims.
 
Irvine511 said:
and while i agree, on one level, and that art is art and religion should be up for abuse by art just like anything else in society and that the riots in Afghanistan are irrational, it simply doesn't make a piece of difference. we know that this is how this part of the world operates, if we wish to be liberators and not occupiers/conquorers, we'd do best not to do things like flush Korans down toilets or wipe fake menstrual blood on the faces of prisoners or tell them to "fuck Allah" or put dog collars around people's necks and march them naked through a hallway.

all of which, btw, are tantamount to torture, as opposed to the Virgin Mary exhibit which people paid to go see -- no one kept you in a room and pissed on a statue of the virgin mary in front of you while you were stripped naked and someone kept chanting "fuck jesus, fuck jesus, fuck jesus."

completely and totally different.

No, not different. The rioting is done by people hearing of the alleged acts. Christians rioting when they "hear about" the work known as "Piss Christ" would be no different than Muslims rioting when they "hear about" the Koran in the toilet.

The riots were not about treatment of prisoners or, as you say, "tacit approval of torture". Rioting was based on a lack of respect for their religion.
 
I think it's important to realize that this is also a propoganda war. The Moslem fundatmentalists/fanatics don't actually need a specific factual incident to incite anti-American sentiment. The Newsweek article or Abu Gharib reports obviously don't help, but in the end, it's a small thing in a world where many radical Islamic leaders are hell bent to fight their own country's governments by linking them to the "evil Americans." Remember, this is more of a fight between radical Islam vs the moderate forces of Islam (or radical Islam vs entrenched authorotarian governments) than between Islam and the West. The West and Israel are just propoganda tool to use to incite the masses.

How easy was it for millions in the Arab/Islamic world to believe that 9/11 was a CIA plot? "There were no Jews in the WTC towers." blah blah blah. All this "fact" required was some radical Imams preaching it in Mosques.

I'm from Pakistan. I'm an ex-Moslem. I'm opposed to the Iraq war, but I'm also sick of Moslem countries and their religious leaders continuing to put forward one solution for their problems -- destroy America. There's no bigger desecration of the Koran than not following its teachings...it's teachings that say that you have to take care of your poor, your communities, and lead just lives. Where is the leadership, political or religious, that is calling for better education, better social policies, better lives for their people? No, it's mostly the same old "be good Muslims, hate the Jews and the Americans."

Sorry, I can't be mortified by the desecration of a holy book on behalf of a religion whose leaders willingly want their followers to wallow in self-pity, victimization and ignorance.
 
Judah said:
Sorry, I can't be mortified by the desecration of a holy book on behalf of a religion whose leaders willingly want their followers to wallow in self-pity, victimization and ignorance.

That could be said about any religion, though, couldn't it? There's fundamentalists in all religions that can get their followers to do insane stuff.

I definitely agree with you that the fundamentalists using the idea of destroying America as a solution to their problems is utterly dumb, but at the same time, stereotyping the religion doesn't exactly put out the fundamentalists' fire, now, does it?

Angela
 
Moonlit_Angel said:


That could be said about any religion, though, couldn't it? There's fundamentalists in all religions that can get their followers to do insane stuff.

I definitely agree with you that the fundamentalists using the idea of destroying America as a solution to their problems is utterly dumb, but at the same time, stereotyping the religion doesn't exactly put out the fundamentalists' fire, now, does it?

Angela

Good point, Angela.

I think, without trying to stereotype, I was trying to make the perhaps-too-simplified-point that most of the Arab or Moslem countries should show leadership in tackling their real problems. Most of these countries have some of worst quality of life indeces in the world. And things aren't getting any better. We just don't see the leadership from this world to make changes, whether cultural, political or social. One of the ways to take out the fundamentalists is for moderate religious leaders and political leaders to work together to find progressive solutions, while openly denouncing the radicals on the world stage. The people want solutions and lacking any real alternatives, they will go for the solutions offered by fanatics.
 
Judah said:
Good point, Angela.

I think, without trying to stereotype, I was trying to make the perhaps-too-simplified-point that most of the Arab or Moslem countries should show leadership in tackling their real problems. Most of these countries have some of worst quality of life indeces in the world. And things aren't getting any better. We just don't see the leadership from this world to make changes, whether cultural, political or social. One of the ways to take out the fundamentalists is for moderate religious leaders and political leaders to work together to find progressive solutions, while openly denouncing the radicals on the world stage. The people want solutions and lacking any real alternatives, they will go for the solutions offered by fanatics.

Thanks, and you're certainly right about that. Very true.

Angela
 
MaxFisher said:
Newsweek has retracted the story. No Korans were flushed.

Even if Korans had been put in the toilet, muslims rioting and killing 16 people is completely inexcusable!

Here's an excerpt from an article by Dennis Prager....
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-5_17_05_DP.html

And now a word about the rioters. They have desecrated their religion and their holy text far more than the alleged flushers of Koranic pages.

Did any Buddhists riot and murder when the Taliban Muslims blew up the irreplaceable giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan?
Did any Christians riot and murder when an "artist" produced "Piss Christ" -- a crucifix immersed in a jar of the "artist's" urine?

When all Christian services and even the wearing of a cross were banned in Saudi Arabia? When Christians are murdered while at prayer in churches by Muslims in Pakistan?

Have any Jews rioted in all the years since it was revealed that Jordanian Muslims used Jewish tombstones in Old Jerusalem as latrines? Or after Palestinians destroyed Joseph's Tomb in 2000 and set fire to the rebuilt tomb in 2003?

It is quite remarkable that many Muslims believe that an American interrogator flushing pages of the Koran is worthy of rioting, but all the torture, slaughter, terror and mass murder done by Muslims in the name of the Koran are unworthy of even a peaceful protest.

Nevertheless, one will have to search extensively for any editorials condemning these primitives in the Western press, let alone in the Muslim press. This is because moral expectations of Muslims are lower than those of other religious groups. Behavior that would be held in contempt if engaged in by Christians or Jews is not only not condemned, it is frequently "understood" when done by Muslims.



while i agree with everything you say (except for putting the Piss Christ on the same list as a series of atrocities), it simply doesn't matter. there's a war to win, we are told, and using such techniques in interrogation -- and the Koran down the toilet thing is incidental ... what i think we're all missing is that previous eyewitness reports of US "interrogation" techniques have substantiated the possibility of flushing the Koran. and we haven't seen riots up until just now ... it's a cumulative thing. i find it shocking that we find more problems with the riots than we do with the interrogation techniques -- even if we are curdely to compare death tolls, we have over 30 dead in US jails from "interrogation" and a few more than aa dozen dead from riots.

i simply don't care if the rioters were justified or not. it's incidental to the real problem -- the consequences of the Bush administration's new, half-baked policies on interrogation. this self-inflicted wound is only beginning to be felt. we need to be better than the enemy that is, not the enemy we wish they would be.

it also shocks me that those who are quickest to defend, equivocate, and excuse the abohorrant actions Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are those who are the strongest supporters of the GWOT. it seems to me that is a war of ideas as much as anything else, and this war will be won in the minds of moderate Muslims. let's stop the kind of insanity that prevailed at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and many other military facilities across the globe. whether fair or not, justified or not, many Muslims already believe the Koran-flushing story and are being accused (with reason, i do agree) of paranoia -- and let's not equivocate between the insanity of the riots in Afghanistan with, say, the intelligentsia of Cairo who are *deeply* suspicious (with reason) of American motives. as the scandal deepends, as we see what the Bush WH has wrought with their interrogation liberties, a whole new set of problems is just beginning to unfold.
 
nbcrusader said:


No, not different. The rioting is done by people hearing of the alleged acts. Christians rioting when they "hear about" the work known as "Piss Christ" would be no different than Muslims rioting when they "hear about" the Koran in the toilet.

The riots were not about treatment of prisoners or, as you say, "tacit approval of torture". Rioting was based on a lack of respect for their religion.



i disagree.

i think you're missing the forest for the trees.
 
Irvine511 said:


i simply don't care if the rioters were justified or not. it's incidental to the real problem -- the consequences of the Bush administration's new, half-baked policies on interrogation. this self-inflicted wound is only beginning to be felt. we need to be better than the enemy that is, not the enemy we wish they would be.

You nailed it. :up:

That said, if someone took the spiritual book that is sacred to me and crapped all over it I really wouldn't care. It's just a book. The true teachings of any religion should be held sacred within the temple of one's heart where no one can touch it.

edited to add...but in the context of war, of course these things carry different weight.
 
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Afghan prisoners 'shackled, hit, humiliated'
By Marc Kaufman, April Witt
Kabul

March 27 2003

Afghan men freed on Tuesday after spending months in legal limbo as United States prisoners in the war on terrorism said that they were generally well fed and given medical care, but they were housed in cramped cells and sometimes shackled, hit and humiliated.

After a chaotic day in which it was uncertain when, or if, all the prisoners would be released from Afghan custody, 18 men wearing new American sneakers and carrying colourful gym bags walked out of a run-down police compound in Kabul. Some hugged jubilantly; others left feeling bitter and vengeful.

The men, the largest single group of Afghans to be released after months at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, gave varying accounts of how US forces treated them during interrogation and detainment. Some flashed medical records showing extensive care by US military doctors, while others complained that US soldiers insulted Islam by sitting on the Koran or dumping their sacred text into a toilet to taunt them.

Only one prisoner was met by his family. Most of the men are from distant southern or eastern provinces and there were no relatives to meet them, as there had been no time to notify them. Neither the Afghan authorities nor the US officials had given them any money, they said.

"We have no relatives here and no money to get home," said Sher Ghulab, 30, a labourer from the eastern province of Jalalabad.

The men uniformly said that American forces treated them more roughly during initial interrogation and captivity in Afghanistan than during the detainment at Guantanamo.

All of those released said they were not terrorists. Some acknowledged that they had fought with the Taliban, but not by choice. Others said that US forces snatched them away from ordinary lives as farmers, students or taxi drivers.

Sarajudim, 24, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was one of several men who said they were forced to fight with the Taliban after the US declared war on terrorism. Prisoner Merza Khan said that Americans in Kandahar tied him up and alternately forced him to lie face down on the ground, then squat with his hands on his head for hours.

Sulaiman Shah said he was a businessman captured for no reason in northern Afghanistan. "I was in such a small (cell) and couldn't go outside for many days," he said. "My toilet was next to my bed, and it was a very bad way to live."

The US military is investigating the deaths of two Afghan prisoners interrogated at a US military centre at Bagram air base north of Kabul. A military doctor had listed the two deaths as homicides.

- Washington Post, New York Times
 
[Further to Deep's post] Was Newsweek right?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20050518/cm_thenation/132550/nc:742

The Bush Administration's aggressive response to a Newsweek story alleging that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed the Koran down the toilet in front of Islamic detainees displays the height of hypocrisy. After Newsweek clumsily issued an apology, followed by a retraction, White House spokesman Scott McClellan called on the magazine to "help repair the damage that has been done, particularly in the region," by explaining "what happened and why they got it wrong." Maybe the Bush Administration should do the same, by opening up its secret facilities for inspection to the Red Cross and other third-party observers. We are printing below a letter from reader Calgacus--a pseudonym for a researcher in the national security field for the past twenty years--that shows how the desecration of the Koran became standard US interrogation practice.

"Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo such as those described by Newsweek on 9 May 2005 are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram airbase prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it.

One such incident (during which the Koran was thrown into a pile and stepped on) prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in March 2002. Regarding this, the New York Times in a 1 May 2005, article interviewed a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. And the Times reports: "A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, May 1, 2005, p. 35.)

The hunger strike and apology story is also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The People the Law Forgot," The Guardian, December 3, 2003, p. 1.) It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-ray World Exclusive," Daily Mirror, March 12, 2004.)

The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan:

"Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. It was a very bad situation for us, said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. We cried so much and shouted, Please do not do that to the Holy Koran. (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment," Washington Post, March 26, 2003.)

Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released to British custody in March 2004 and subsequently freed without charge:

"The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitution Rights, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, August 4, 2004.)

The claim that US troops at Bagram airbase prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc. (Abdelhak Najib, "Les Americains pissaient sur le Coran et abusaient de nous sexuellement", April 11, 2005). An English translation is available on the Cage Prisoners web site.

Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cageprisoners.com.

Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-inmates Share Guantanamo Ordeal," May 2, 2005.)
 
Why Islam is disrespected

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | May 19, 2005

IT WAS front-page news this week when Newsweek retracted a report claiming that a US interrogator in Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. Everywhere it was noted that Newsweek's story had sparked widespread Muslim rioting, in which at least 17 people were killed. But there was no mention of deadly protests triggered in recent years by comparable acts of desecration against other religions.

No one recalled, for example, that American Catholics lashed out in violent rampages in 1989, after photographer Andres Serrano's ''Piss Christ" -- a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine -- was included in an exhibition subsidized by the National Endowment for the Arts. Or that they rioted in 1992 when singer Sinead O'Connor, appearing on ''Saturday Night Live," ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II.

There was no reminder that Jewish communities erupted in lethal violence in 2000, after Arabs demolished Joseph's Tomb, torching the ancient shrine and murdering a young rabbi who tried to save a Torah. And nobody noted that Buddhists went on a killing spree in 2001 in response to the destruction of two priceless, 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha by the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Of course, there was a good reason all these bloody protests went unremembered in the coverage of the Newsweek affair: They never occurred.

Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don't lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted. They don't call for holy war and riot in the streets. It would be unthinkable for a mainstream priest, rabbi, or lama to demand that a blasphemer be slain. But when Reuters reported what Mohammad Hanif, the imam of a Muslim seminary in Pakistan, said about the alleged Koran-flushers -- ''They should be hung. They should be killed in public so that no one can dare to insult Islam and its sacred symbols" -- was any reader surprised?

The Muslim riots should have been met by outrage and condemnation. From every part of the civilized world should have come denunciations of those who would react to the supposed destruction of a book with brutal threats and the slaughter of 17 innocent people. But the chorus of condemnation was directed not at the killers and the fanatics who incited them, but at Newsweek.

From the White House down, the magazine was slammed -- for running an item it should have known might prove incendiary, for relying on a shaky source, for its animus toward the military and the war. Over and over, Newsweek was blamed for the riots' death toll. Conservative pundits in particular piled on. ''Newsweek lied, people died" was the headline on Michelle Malkin's popular website. At NationalReview.com, Paul Marshall of Freedom House fumed: ''What planet do these [Newsweek] people live on? . . . Anybody with a little knowledge could have told them it was likely that people would die as a result of the article." All of Marshall's choler was reserved for Newsweek; he had no criticism at all for the marauders in the Muslim street.

Then there was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who announced at a Senate hearing that she had a message for ''Muslims in America and throughout the world." And what was that message? That decent people do not resort to murder just because someone has offended their religious sensibilities? That the primitive bloodlust raging in Afghanistan and Pakistan was evidence of the Muslim world's dysfunctional political culture?

No: Her message was that ''disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States."

Granted, Rice spoke while the rioting was still taking place and her goal was to reduce the anti-American fever. But what ''Muslims in America and throughout the world" most need to hear is not pandering sweet-talk. What they need is a blunt reminder that the real desecration of Islam is not what some interrogator in Guantanamo might have done to the Koran. It is what totalitarian Muslim zealots have been doing to innocent human beings in the name of Islam. It is 9/11 and Beslan and Bali and Daniel Pearl and the USS Cole. It is trains in Madrid and schoolbuses in Israel and an ''insurgency" in Iraq that slaughters Muslims as they pray and vote and line up for work. It is Hamas and Al Qaeda and sermons filled with infidel-hatred and exhortations to ''martyrdom."

But what disgraces Islam above all is the vast majority of the planet's Muslims saying nothing and doing nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away at their religion. It is Free Muslims Against Terrorism, a pro-democracy organization, calling on Muslims and Middle Easterners to ''converge on our nation's capital for a rally against terrorism" -- and having only 50 people show up.

Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can't get the time of day.

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.
link
 
I agree to a point with the above article. But we do have Christians on American soil who do claim this to be a "holy" war. We do have religious sanctions that are calling for a revolution against abortion and gay marriage. We do have highly vocal religious people that are praying for the death of judges.

I'm not trying to defend anyone here, but I'm trying to make the point(once again) that it's the vocal minority that make headlines. If this was truly the belief of all or even a majority of Muslims this world would be in a hell of a lot more trouble than we are.
 
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