Monday, March 18, AD 2024 9:09pm

On the Muslim response to Terry Jones’ Qu’ran Burning (a reply to Rick Sanchez @ Huffington Post)

[A reply to “Burning the Quran Is No Childish Game”, by Rick Sanchez (Huffington Post April 1, 2011; republished at Defend The Prophet) ~ Christopher]

With respect to Terry Jones’ burning of the Qu’ran, my position (as a Catholic) is to echo the statement of the Vatican: it is “an outrageous and grave gesture against a book considered sacred by a religious community,” and an unnecessary provocation (if even to make a point). A peaceful dialogue between communities is not advanced by such a direct attack on the other. Likewise, with respect to caricatures of Mohammed by the Western press:

In addition, coexistence calls for a climate of mutual respect to favor peace among men and nations. Moreover, these forms of exasperated criticism or derision of others manifest a lack of human sensitivity and may constitute in some cases an inadmissible provocation. A reading of history shows that wounds that exist in the life of peoples are not cured this way.

I said as much last year (“Lars Vilks, Gay Muhammad and Freedom of Expression” (American Catholic May 16, 2010) — Lars Vilks may endorse his right to depict a gay Mohammed or a paedophile Jesus. We might countenance his First Amendment “right” to sacrilege as Americans, but I believe as Catholics we should protest such offenses, not only to ourselves but to our fellow Muslims.

However, what I think also merits comment is exactly that which is noted by Rich Sanchez in his column: when a Qur’an happens to be vandalized, such an action is “not only offensive, but also dangerous — especially to our troops.” In fact, Terry Jones’ sacrilege “can have dire consequences for all of us.”

But why would it — why should it — be considered dangerous, even lethal, to our troops?

Surely this fact is a travesty as well?

In the past several days, a Muslim mob protesting the actions of Terry Jones in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, culminated in an attack on the United Nations headquarters, the murder of six Nepalese guards and 3 foreign staff members, “hunted down and shot, some in the back, as they ran from a bunker where they had tried to hide. One person’s throat was also slit.” [“Koran Burning Prompts Third Day of Rage” Globe and Mail April 3, 2011.] Two US soldiers were shot dead by an Afghan border policeman in Maymana, northern Afghanistan (The Telegraph April 5, 2011).

By no means am I equating all Muslims with the mob in Afghanistan. We do not see this level of violent protest here in the United States by American Muslims. But surely those Muslims protesting the actions of Terry Jones, and Mr. Rick Sanchez as well, can agree that there is something seriously amiss when the vandalization of a religious icon — or cartoons published in a newspaper — result in a violent mob and the slaughter of innocents.

Christians, much to our dismay, suffer similar incidents of abuse and vandalization of that which we hold sacred here in America: the Holy Mother smeared with feces, the Crucifix dipped in urine, funded with taxpayer dollars and labled “art” to boot.

And yet, has the media ever reported mobs of Christians hunting down and killing the perpetrators of such sacrilege? — Speaking from personal experience, by and large when such incidents occur, the result is the congregation of Christians in prayer and silent, nonviolent protest.

What is it about Muslims in other nations that we see them react in this manner? Is this a religious thing? — Can it be so readily dismissed as a ethnic or cultural thing?

When critics of Islam depict it as a “violent religion”, why do so Muslim reactions have a tendency to lend credence to the very characterization they are protesting against?

I ask this with all respect, as a reader, as a Christian, and as a friend to the Muslim community.

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Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 5:57am

I have pondered this issue too Christopher. Here are my thoughts:

Terry Jones is a truly contemptible human being. In 2010 he got his more than 15 minutes of alloted fame by threatening to burn a Koran and touched off a world wide furor among the more bloodthirsty adherents of the Religion of Peace. Jones did not care in the slightest that his actions would doubtless put innocent people at risk. Having received enough publicity for the moment, he backed down. Publicity addicts always come back for more, however, and on March 20, he carried out his threat to burn the Koran, once again caring not at all that his meaningless stunt would put innocent lives at risk. Western media outlets, regarding Jones as old news, largely decided to ignore his “Watch Me! Watch Me!” pyrotechnics.

Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, is a truly contemptible human being. Always eager to gain “street cred” with the Muslim faithful in his country, he condemned in a public statement on March 24 the burning of the Koran and said that the US and the UN “should bring to justice the perpetrators of this crime.” Until Karzai made a big deal out of it, the whole business was being ignored in Afghanistan. Karzai of course would not be the President of Afghanistan today except for an enormous cost in US blood and treasure.

The mullahs who fanned the flames of bigotry are truly contemptible people. Three of them in the city of Mazar-I-Sharif, a hitherto oasis of peace in Afghanistan, stirred up a mob which overran the UN compound in that city and slew 8 UN workers. Rioting continues throughout Afghanistan, and more people have died because someone burned a Koran half a world away.

Karzai, in the wake of his countrymen acting like murderous lunatics, is demanding an apology from the US for the burning of the Koran.

The Koran burning has been denounced by various US officials, and some politicians, Senator Lindsay Graham and Senator Harry Reid to name two, have expressed a desire to restrict people from burning the Koran, the First Amendment be hanged.

As politicians tend to do, they miss the point. Grandstanding jerks like Mr. Jones are not the problem. The problem is that we share a world, that is growing smaller every day with technological advances, with a religion, second largest in the world, some of whose adherents believe that the proper response to a publicity stunt by a kook is to engage in riot and murder. Of course not all Muslims feel that way, but enough do to ensure that mobs howling for blood are easy to assemble in most Islamic countries over incidents which appear extremely trivial to non-Muslims.

The blunt truth is that too many Muslims seem to feel that their religion gives them a license to engage in acts of incredible violence whenever their sensibilities are hurt. This is a bad problem in an ever shrinking world. An even worse problem for us is that too many of our leaders want to engage in make believe where Islam is a religion of peace, and that if we all walk on egg shells forever and ever whenever the subject of Islam comes up, everything will be peachy. This of course is a lie, and every sentient observer of current events realizes it is a lie. Best always to face reality, no matter how unpleasant, than to persist in a pleasant dream world at variance to the facts.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 6:02am

Yea. I too marvel at the fact that Ivory Coast rebels supporting the man who lost an election massacred 1,000 men in the Ivory Coast. They are muslims.

Can you verify whether or not these people believe that on the last day, Jesus will appear and tell all us kafirs He was lying all along?

” . . . why do so Muslim reactions have a tendency to lend credence to the very characterization they are protesting against?”

BECAUSE the murder cult IS a violent cult. The brutish, savage adherents have a collective lump of excrement for brains. The Q’ran is the manual for the massacre of nonbelievers and the enslavement of the planet.

Ban the Q’ran. Deport all the massacre artists.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 6:59am

Roger Kimball has a good post on this issue over at Pajamas Media:

“Bottom-line question: What are we willing to give up in order to appease a bunch of murderous thugs who approach the world with a pocket full of Semtex and say, “Do — and don’t do — what I want or I will blow myself and you to smithereens”? There’s the Lindsey Graham-Joe Klein-Yale UP-and (I very mush regret to say) David Petraeus answer: “OK. You tell us no cartoons of Mohammed: we won’t draw or publish any. You say, no burning of the Koran, we will prohibit that, too.” The problem is, as I noted about another incident of Muslim insanity some years ago,

the list of the things Muslims are offended by would take over a culture. They don’t like ice-cream that (used to be) distributed by Burger King because a decoration on the lid looked like (sort of) the Arabic script for “Allah.” They are offended by “pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet” appearing in the workplace. They take umbrage at describing Islamic terrorism as, well, Islamic terrorism and have managed to persuade Gordon Brown to rename it “anti-Islamic activity.” But here’s the thing: one of the features of living in a modern, secular democracy is that there is always plenty of offense to go around. No Muslim is more offended by cartoons of their Prophet than I am by their barbaric reaction to the cartoons. But their reaction when offended is to torch an embassy, shoot a nun , or knife a filmmaker. I write a column deploring such behavior. You see the difference.

As I said above, Terry Jones is a pathetic buffoon. But what we should be alarmed about is not his stunt but the alacrity with which our leaders and commentators rush to curtail free speech because they fear the reprisals of barbarous people addicted to violence and intoxicated by a repulsive, freedom-hating ideology. The spoiled child says, “If you don’t do what I want, I’ll hold my breath till I faint.” The overgrown spoiled children of Islam require the same sort of medicine, though age adjusted, that little Johnny does.”

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2011/04/04/terry-jones-and-preemptive-capitulation/

Jay Anderson
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 8:14am

Don,

Let me add to your list of contemptible human beings the Senator from South Carolina. Even before this incident, Lindsey Graham had demonstrated his unfitness to hold the office he now occupies. But lamenting the existence of the 1st Amendment and then trying to hide behind Gen. Petraeus to justify his disdain for the 1st Amendment takes Graham’s unfitness for office to a whole new level.

I’m not sure there’s a sitting U.S. Senator for whom I have more contempt than Lindsey Graham, and that’s saying A LOT when one considers the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, et al.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 8:37am

Dick Durbin will always have pride of place in my Hall of Senatorial Contempt Jay, as a fellow Illinoisan that lifts him above the common herd of Senate miscreants for me. Graham is rising fast however. He is a fellow attorney, so one would have thought that he had a passing familiarity with the Bill of Rights. Amazing that South Carolina, South Carolina!, has a RINO like him as one of its senators.

Stephen E Dalton
Stephen E Dalton
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 8:46am

Terry Jones maybe a contemptiable hman being, but I can’t understand why so many Catholics are getting their knickers in a twist about him burning a Koran. Hey, we’ve burned Talmuds because of the blasphemies they contained against Christ and BVM, and Waldensians, Wychif, Tyndale, and Geneva Bibles for the faulty translations and footnotes that taught heresy. We Catholics have always burned heretical books, so why condemn him for doing what we have always done. IMO, burn, baby, burn!

Jay Anderson
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 9:08am

“We Catholics have always burned heretical books …”

As well as heretics.

😉

Jay Anderson
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 9:16am

I shouldn’t have added the emoticon to my previous comment, as it makes it appear that the comment itself was not a serious one. The point I’m trying to make is that just because Catholics have burned books in the past doesn’t make it right, and certainly shouldn’t be used to condone what Terry Jones has done. Just as the burning of heretics shouldn’t be condoned, and those historical are often used by the enemies of the Church to provide moral equivalence to the actions of the Islamists who go around killing people for “blasphemy”.

Jay Anderson
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 9:19am

Comment above should have said “… those historical events are often used …”

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 9:24am

A list of Muslim activities this year. Admittedly needs sources. But even if only part true, gives an indication of what some Muslims will do:

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attacks

William Langley
William Langley
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 11:34am

Burning heretical books was the right thing to do in the past as it helps in some way prevent the spread of heresy keeping Catholics from falling away. The Koran happens to fall under the category of heretical books and should be burned. Terry Jones is admirable; how many of you have the courage to stand up for Christianity especially when you know you will receive a lot of flak from liberals and Muslims? Terry Jones is in the right; the Muslims were very sinful and wrong in their reaction to the burning. It is not Jones’ fault that the people were murdered; it is the Muslims’ fault, they did it. The actions of another do not absolve them of guilt.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 11:58am

“Terry Jones is admirable;”

Terry Jones is somewhat lower than what I just scraped off my shoe. The man is a publicity hound who cares not one whit that his quest for headlines has proved fatal to innocent people. He and the mullahs who incited the mobs to murder have a symbiotic relationship, and I would subscribe to a fund so that Mr. Jones could meet them up close and very personal in Afghanistan.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 12:39pm
T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, April 5, AD 2011 4:38pm

I was about to type something offensive . . .

Islamic intransigence and pretensions to supremacy lead to conflict. Many muslims refuse to recognize the equality of other religious faiths. Many refuse to assimilate. Many reject the principle of separation of church and state.

As long as a huge number of islamists aspire to replace American culture and politics with their tyranny; as long as islam refuses to criticize itself, reform, or accommodate itself to modern pluralist societies; as long as islam is both a religion and a political adversary of the West; islam is not entitled to claim the immunities and privileges associated with being a religion.

I bet no mussey-puke has the stones to go for Terry Jones.

Donna
Donna
Monday, April 11, AD 2011 10:16am

IMHO, burning the Koran is, in itself, commendable. The problem is that by burning the Koran in the U.S. and then publicizing it all over the world, one is putting other people in danger while remaining safe oneself. It’s the Christians in the Middle East who suffer when Jones and his ilk burn a Koran .

Dean Esmay
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 10:31am

I am increasingly astounded that people continue to equate Muslims in Afghanistan and primitive, poor countries with all Muslims. I do not understand why this difference is not instantly and immediately obvious.

American Muslims have responded to Terry Jones by holding prayer meetings where they prayed for Terry Jones and preyed for peace, welcoming their Christian brethren. American Muslims have done things like started Facebook groups with hundreds of members saying “let’s shower Terry Jones with love.”

Primitive poor people in a country like Afghanistan–where the average literacy rate is well under 50%, where the average lifespan is 45, where the average age is 18, act like violent petulent children, and you blame their religion?

That is a thoroughly unChristian thing to do. Read again the parable of the Good Samaritan, and ponder the fact that in using a Samaritan, Jesus was using as his example someone of a heretical religious group (look up the actual Samaritans and you’ll see they were viewed as religious heretics by the Jews of the time–and they still are, by the way. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan for a start.)

Afghanistan is mired in desperate poverty, functional illiteracy, and torn from decades of war. Our enemies there are busy telling these frighteningly young people (again: average age is eighteen years old) that the Americans are crusaders, imperialists, murderers who want to destroy their way of life and destroy everything they hold sacred. Terry Jones comes up and demonstrates that yes indeed, that’s what we’re doing, and you’re surprised at a violent response?

I am at turns flabbergasted and infuriated by this conflating of a backward bronze-age culture with the religion that’s part of it. Do we blame the Catholic Church for barbarism and poverty and illiteracy in countries where Catholics are the majority?

Once again: AMERICAN Muslims do not respond to Terry Jones with violence. They respond with prayers and attempts at reaching out in friendship. Meanwhile, desperately poor, illiterate, short-lived population of Afghanistan responds savagely. Please understand that difference first and foremost before drawing sweeping conclusions about the faith. As Catholics we certainly don’t appreciate it when people do that crap to us.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 1:45pm

Primitive poor people in a country like Afghanistan–where the average literacy rate is well under 50%, where the average lifespan is 45, where the average age is 18, act like violent petulent children, and you blame their religion?

I think you mean the median age and life expectancy-at-birth, not the ‘average’ age or ‘average’ lifespan. About a quarter of the population of Afghanistan are adolescents or adults under 25, which is to say of the impetuous demographic cohorts. The comparable figure for the United States is 13%. Implicit in your statement is that technological progress and consequent affluence is readily and manifestly translated into moral progress and self-control. Also implicit is the notion that people’s cogitations about the ultimate reality and the moral life do not influence their behavior. I do not think either observation is sustainable.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 2:20pm

Osama bin Laden and many of the leaders of Islamist terrorist groups did not come from dire poverty or functional illiteracy. Wanna try again Dean?

Dean Esmay
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 7:29pm

Art Deco:

Median age in the United States: 39.6 years.
Median age in Afghanistan: 18.2 years
Life expectancy at birth in the United states: 78.37 years
Life expectancy at birth in Afghanistan: 45.02 years

Source: CIA World Factbook, 2010 edition.

Spend some time there comparing the average literacy rate and the average PPP income comparisons, and other things, and you will find it is as I stated: Afghanistan remains essentially in the bronze age.

And if you believe that short, hardscrabble lives of desperation and poverty, illiteracy and ignorance, do not tend to translate into primitive behavior, then I don’t even know what to say to you: literally, I can’t imagine how your mind works if you think such things are irrelevant.

I note once again that the typical Muslim response in America to Terry Jones has been prayer vigil, outreach with Christian groups, and promises to shower Pastor Jones with love. Yet this is not noted, while instead we talk about people in one of the most primitive countries on the planet.

I very much hope you don’t consider yourself a Christian with such sentiments. Especially not a Catholic one.

Paul Zummo: Nice job completely changing the subject. When you want to come back to the subject at hand–how everyday Muslims in the civilized world behave compared to everyday Muslims in nations of absolute desperate primitive poverty and dark illiteracy behave–get back to me.

Dean Esmay
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 7:31pm
Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 8:39pm

I am familiar with the statistics you cite and looked at them myself. I merely noted you had used incorrect descriptive terms for them (in addition to offering two bad arguments).

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 8:52pm

Nice job completely changing the subject. When you want to come back to the subject at hand–how everyday Muslims in the civilized world behave compared to everyday Muslims in nations of absolute desperate primitive poverty and dark illiteracy behave–get back to me.

How is that changing the subject? You equated radicalism with dire poverty, and I noted that many of the leading Jihadis are quite well off. You obviously had no retort to my reply, and so you threw the equivalent of a hissy fit. Unsurprising.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 8:56pm

I very much hope you don’t consider yourself a Christian with such sentiments. Especially not a Catholic one.

Art mildly questioned your use of statistics and this is your response? Chill out, Dean.

Dean Esmay
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 10:07pm

No, Mr. Deco. You gave some unsourced statistics on Afghanistan that were grossly inaccurate.

More than one-half of the Afghan population is 18 years of age or under. The average Afghan cannot read. The average Afghan lives on an income less than 1/13th of what we call “the poverty line” in the United States. Your callous indifference to these horrifying facts notwithstanding, this will tend to have an impact on how people there tend to behave: most people (you apparently not among them) would expect this to tend to be a state of fear and primitivism and ignorance. Because that is what it would do.

And by the way, a median -is- an average, in case no one has told you.

The average Afghan is quite young, desperately poor, and illiterate. That I’m afraid is a fact. That you would dismiss any notion that this would lead toward a state of primitivism in that country is morally vacuous and really quite bloodcurdling, but it’s your business I guess.

Paul Zummo: Nobody mentioned bin Laden until you did. We were talking about a comparison between Muslims in the United States vs. Muslims in Afghanistan. That makes it a change of subject.

And now you’re doing it again. It wouldn’t be embarrassing if Mr. Deco was a Christian who just obviously got his statistics wrong (which he very badly did). It would be embarrassing if he were purporting to be a Christian and then being so calloiusly dismissive of the notion that poverty+youth+ignorance=primitive culture, and for his utter indfference to the fact that these are lives of suffering in conditions that are nasty brutish and short.

The Church has always known that these things cause woe in the world, which is why the Church has long fought them.

When you have a mother who had 8 kids before she hit the age of 22, with only half of them reaching adulthood alive, and you can’t read, and are yourself 16 years old and have known nothing but wretched poverty and ignorance your entire life (a type of poverty that makes the average “poor” person in the United States look wealthy as a King), THEN you can look down your nose on these people when they act poorly. In the meantime, equating all of them with everyone who shares their religion? Shameful. I’m ashamed for you if you’re too thick to be ashamed for yourself.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 10:22pm

I’m ashamed for you if you’re too thick to be ashamed for yourself.

I’m not the one resorting to emotionalism in order to excuse terrorism. And since you are unwilling and unable to discuss this without theatrics, I’ll just call it a night.

Dean Esmay
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 10:33pm

You’re best calling it a night, if all you’re going to do is change the subject for yet a third time.

In the meantime, it remains that American Muslims have reacted peacefully to Terry Jones. If we are going to make rational comparisons between Muslims, then we need to look at how American Muslims react to the likes of Terry Jones–and their reaction has been peaceful.

And when we discuss Afghanistan, any rational, decent, moral person would immediately acknowledge the simple facts of that country: short lifespans, a very young population, no education to speak of, and desperate poverty would inevitably lead any population to have a large number of people who tend to react like thugs when they get offended. This isn’t hard for any reasonably person to understand, and perhaps when you wake up with a fresh mind you’ll come to your senses.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, April 23, AD 2011 7:13am

The statistics I gave you, Dean Esmay, were derived from population pyramids which are readily available online. They were not inaccurate at all. Those for the United States came ultimately from the U.S. Census Bureau. I offered those data because they were more salient for the point you were attempting to stress than are median age figures or life expectency figures.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, April 23, AD 2011 7:22am

literally, I can’t imagine how your mind works if you think such things are irrelevant.

I very much hope you don’t consider yourself a Christian with such sentiments. Especially not a Catholic one.

Your callous indifference to these horrifying facts notwithstanding

That you would dismiss any notion that this would lead toward a state of primitivism in that country is morally vacuous and really quite bloodcurdling, but it’s your business I guess.

It wouldn’t be embarrassing if Mr. Deco was a Christian who just obviously got his statistics wrong (which he very badly did). It would be embarrassing if he were purporting to be a Christian and then being so calloiusly dismissive of the notion that poverty+youth+ignorance=primitive culture, and for his utter indfference to the fact that these are lives of suffering in conditions that are nasty brutish and short.

I offered you seven simple sentences and one compound sentence taking exception to what you understand to be motors of human behavior. Your response is rather florid.

Dean Esmay
Saturday, April 23, AD 2011 3:43pm

Mr. Deco: If the unreferenced statistics you have used on Afghanistan are so readily obtainable, kindly have the decency to provide them. In any case, it’s pretty clear you now concede that my statistics were completely factual and that you corrected nothing at all. Thank you for that.

In the meantime, let us have a few examples of “florid” assertions:

Implicit in your statement is that technological progress and consequent affluence is readily and manifestly translated into moral progress and self-control.

No such thing is implicit in anything I said; indeed, to me that’s a bizarre inference for you to draw.

What appears implicit in your reasoning, however, is a belief that young, short, hardscrabble lives of absolute poverty and wretched ignorance will not tend to produce barbarism. Have I got you wrong there?

Also implicit is the notion that people’s cogitations about the ultimate reality and the moral life do not influence their behavior. I do not think either observation is sustainable.

I’m afraid I am having trouble even understanding this assertion. But if I read it right, you’re suggesting that I said people’s thinking on reality and morality don’t influence their behavior. But I said nothing of the sort, nor do I believe it. How you drew such a that inference I have no idea; it is certainly not implicit in my logic

So let’s do the Christian thing and assume I misunderstood you and you misunderstood me, and cut to the chase:

1) People who lead hardscrabble, short lives that are from infancy mired in utter poverty and illiteracy will tend toward barbarity. Do you dispute this? A yes or no will suffice.

2) Conflating the behavior of people in lands where barbarism is the norm with that of people who grew up with the luxuries of civilization (literacy, long lives in which the old may effectively guide the young, physical security and stability, ready access to a wide variety of information) is foolish. Do you dispute this? A yes or no will suffice.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, April 23, AD 2011 5:58pm

You can noodle around with the Census Bureau’s International Data Base. The current population estimate for Afghanistan is 29 million. If you do some interpolating, you see the number between their 13th and 25th birthday is 7 million and change.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/chroot/home/ae6ff503/the-american-catholic.com/html/idb/informationGateway.php

You were the one who said it was absurd, in the light of the general standard of living in Afghanistan, for us to consider the religion of an angry mob as a motor of consequence. Ordinarily in discussions such as this, I am arguing against people who seem to think that a statement of intellectual genealogies gives one an understanding of historical events. It would never occur to me to say what people think and assent to had no influence on what they do. Given that the mob in question had been incited by instructors in religion consequent to an act of desecration, I tend to think that this is a circumstance where the religion of the mob is influential indeed.

I myself am not an adept of social psychology, so I do not have much to say about the sources of mob violence. I do not understand why you regard positing and unmediated and unqualified cause-and-effect relationship between the material circumstances of the population of Afghanistan and acts of mob violence to require no elaboration whatsoever. There may be some correlation there. In our own country, the practice of lynching declined as the country grew more affluent. (Of course, income levels are not the only social metric which changed during those years). In urban neighborhoods in affluent countries, levels of violence are also correlated with income levels. However, stating that relationship does not state what the social process truly is. (And I am not sure such a relationship has been established to exist in cross-national comparisons, much less that there are no confounding variables that might explain any such relationship observed).

One might also ask how common it is for Peace Corps volunteers or USAID employees to be butchered by peasants (much less butchered by peasants reacting to an event in a suburb or Orlando) in any locale similar to Afghanistan in its standard of living. Not very, I will wager.

This is a Catholic blog. It is not ordinarily frequented by people who think human nature has much of a history, or that you will be redeemed by being made more affluent. Affluence certainly regulates the mode of expression of people’s sinfulness. It does not extinguish that sinfulness.

As for comparisons between Afghan Muslims and their counterparts in the United States, I tend to think that distinctions in patterns of behavior between the two would be influenced by a number of factors. (One factor would be the balance of power between the Muslim population and the larger society. Muslims constitute about 1% of the population of the United States. That would tend to contain many an inclination to go on pogroms).

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Saturday, April 23, AD 2011 6:48pm

Heck! I made here my prior (not the last, for sure) inflammatory comment on 4 April.

Yesterday, a judge jailed Rev. Jones so he couldn’t exercise his First Amendment right to offend the Religion of Peace.

And, the Judge jailed him because . . . ?

I don’t know.

Maybe (unlikely) a journolist will ask the judge.

I opine: Either, to keep Rev. Jones from insulting muslims or to protect muslims from committing outrages.

Either, muslims are a special elite not to be insulted, unlike the families of New Yorkers massacred on 11 Sep 2001, or the familes of American combat KIA’s or the Roman Catholic Church.

Or, the Judge felt the need to protect Rev. Jones from being beheaded.

Either way it stinks.

Toby
Toby
Sunday, April 24, AD 2011 5:21pm

what horse dung all of this appeasement to fascism makes me puke this is the same as saying Rosa Parks should have went to the back of the bus cause her wanting freedom would have made the kkk mad. This is America not Nazi germany if truth being spoke to power offends people then so be it

Palestinian Christian good will: “Jews, Jews! Your holiday [Passover] is the Holiday of Apes”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/04/palestinian-good-will-jews-jews-your-holiday-passover-is-the-holiday-of-apes.html

Muslim Brotherhood leader: Our objective is to establish an Islamic state
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/04/muslim-brotherhood-leader-our-objective-is-to-establish-an-islamic-state.html

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