Monday, March 13, 2006
ONE STEP FORWARD ...
Faisal Sanai in the Arab News:
The deaths from the cartoon riots have demonstrated to the Western world not our love for our Prophet (peace be upon him), but the flippancy with which we regard human life. What benefit has the loss of another fifty Muslim lives brought? What good has the burning and vandalism of embassies done? For what fault were the Nigerian Christians attacked and their churches destroyed? We speak of the non-Muslim world’s need to respect Islamic sentiments and yet we cannot reciprocate the same toward other religions. Sadly, it seems the scope of our tolerance extends only to those who tolerate us. And in doing so we appear just as bad as those whom we criticize.
Where is our vociferous condemnation of the killings of innocents, be they in Bali, Beslan or in Baghdad? Have we ever demonstrated our outrage at the mass killings perpetrated by Muslim terrorists with the same ounce of protest that we reserve for the death of our own? Where was our outrage when the bodies of American civilians were being dragged across the streets of Baghdad, or the ones of Israeli soldiers being desecrated in Gaza? Can we honestly compare our muted head-shaking over the beheadings of Westerners with our ongoing violent protests against the cartoons? Yes, we do express “concern” or “disapproval”, but this by no means matches the zeal with which we decry such injustices inflicted upon our own.
Excellent. And then there’s the gang over at the Multan Distict Bar Association:
"I announce a cash award of Rs 10 million on behalf of the (district) Bar Association to anyone who kills the cartoonist,” Syed Athar Shah Bukhari, president of the Multan District Bar Association, told protesters, during a rally here.
Some 2,000 people protested on Sunday against the controversial sketches, torching an effigy of US President George W Bush and the flags of the United States, Denmark, Norway, Italy and Israel.
The protesters carried banners calling for an economic boycott of the countries where the cartoons were published. “Death to US”, “Death to Denmark” and “Down with Israel” read some of the slogans ...
Activists of the Jamiat Ahle Hadith, led by Khalid Mehmood Nadeem and Mufti Hidayatullah Pasroori of the MMA, staged a demonstration and demanded handing over of the blasphemers to Muslim countries ...