Saturday, March 25, 2006

What’s an assault against Islam?

Law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh posts:

ASSAULT AGAINST ISLAM.The New York Times reports (Times reporing below in italics) on the Afghan reaction to Western objections to the Abdul Rahman prosecution. Rahman, you may recall, faces death for converting from Islam to Christianity:
The case had fueled feelings among many here of a sense of assault against Islam worldwide, coming after widely publicized cases involving the desecration of the Koran in Guantánamo Bay in 2004 by American soldiers interrogating prisoners and, more recently, cartoons published in Europe of the Prophet Muhammad.

Dr. Mohammad Ayaz Niyazi, an Egyptian educated in Islamic law, who attended one of the gatherings today, said, "There have been serial attacks on the Islamic world recently, starting with insulting the Holy Koran Quran, insulting the prophet of Islam, and now converting to Christianity by an Afghan."
Trying to prevent people from being killed for their religious beliefs is not an "assault against Islam." It's defense against Islam, or to be precise against a certain strand of Islam that regrettably cannot be dismissed as just some unimportant lunatic fringe.
I agree with Volokh's remarks.

Now a few other JinC reactions:

Why did the NY Times reference the "widely publicized" Newsweek story reporting "the desecration of the Koran in Guantánamo Bay in 2004 by American soldiers interrogating prisoners" without mentioning that Newsweek subsequently retracted and apologized for the story?

Regarding Islam ---

Surely it’s not an assault on Islam to oppose the imprisonments, floggings, and even the execution of gays for “the crime of homosexuality.”

Surely European countries are not assaulting Islam when they seek within their countries to prevent females, some in their early teens, from being forced into arranged marriages.

Is it really an assault on Islam to prosecute people who commit “honor killing” murders?

And to the question the Rahman prosecution raises, why is a person choosing his or her religion an assault on Islam?

Muslims need to answer those questions. And so do many in the West who tell us we need to be more accepting of Islam.

Accepting of just what?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

None of the issues raised either by you or Volokh or they NYT represents assault on Islam. That's a pity. I am in favor of assaults on Islam.

I favor assaulting Islam everywhere we find it. Every time we find it. I favor assaulting every muslim that doesn't speak out against murder, terror, rape, and war waged by muslims. I favor assaulting every muslim that thinks killing worshippers of other religions is proper.

I am a fairly peaceful guy, but I kill rabid animals. I don't make excuses for them, I don't tolerate them, I don't try to see it from their side. I kill them so they don't spread more death. I do pity them, because they didn't make a conscious effort to be rabid. I do not pity muslims that act exactly as rabid animals and have not the excuse of it not being their choice.

It is a damn lie that anybody is assaulting Islam. It is a damn shame that it is a damn lie.