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Last updated on July 27th, 2017 at 06:34 am
This AP report, on the burning of Taliban corpses by US troops, sounds a little disappointed:
Though Afghan media have reported on the alleged desecration, the video has not been broadcast and by late yesterday there had been no protest rallies.
Get with the program, Afghans! You’re meant to be outraged! After all, as the article helpfully instructs: “Cremating bodies, even those of animals, is banned in Islam.” The Taliban themselves seem flexible on this, however, so long as the bodies are alive when they’re set afire:
Mahadad, 38, is one of the 12 survivors of last week’s bomb attack by Taliban on a bus that was carrying women election workers and a child near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Two of the women and the child were killed in the explosion …
Fawzia Mohamadi, 30, another victim of the bombing, said male passers-by shouted as the bus burned. “They were saying, ‘Let them die’,” she said from her hospital bed, where she is recovering from burns to her left leg. “They were shouting, ‘These are women begging for America’s dollars. Don’t help them’. They were holding up our burning sandals and clothes and shouting.”
Nobody warned Comical Ali, either, about the total body-burning ban. So far as any “desecration” goes, the Australian photographer who filmed the Taliburning says nothing sinister was involved:
“I actually believe that the guys who were involved in the burning did it with honorable, you know, reasons. They did it through their orders, or they did it for hygiene. I had no doubt in my mind that they were telling me the truth. If they were doing something that was problematic or controversial, there’s no way they would have shown me this. There’s no way they would have let me go up there and film this.”
Sounds reasonable.
- It was a plastic Taliban soldier, mark my words.Posted by Quentin George on 10/23 at 03:31 AM • permalink
- Damned if we do (clueless embedded reporters).
Damned if we don’t (“Censorship! Censorship!“)
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 10/23 at 04:37 AM • permalink
Cremating bodies, even those of animals, is banned in Islam
Hacking off the head of a live human being is banned in Christianity.
Posted by Deo Vindice on 10/23 at 05:02 AM • permalink
- Meanwhile, in Iraq :
Four US contractors for the US military were killed in Iraq last month, the military says, confirming an attack that a British newspaper said saw two of the men murdered in front of a jeering crowd.
[…] At least two of the men were dragged alive from their vehicle, which had been badly shot up, and forced to kneel in the road before being killed, it said.“Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight,” the newspaper report said.
Can you say “Double Standards”?
- “hygiene”
You know, when I read an AP report about that described a voice on the video “daring the Arabs to come retrieve their dead” or something like that, I instantly quit caring about this story, because I’m 95% confident that what actually happened was they had to burn the filthy, bloated corpses to deter the vultures and jackals and whatever else lives out there, and then released the video saying “come get your corpses, we hate fiddling with them”.
If they turned them toward Mecca or whatever, it was probably because they thought that was a nice thing to do. I sure as hell didn’t know you couldn’t cremate Muslims, but if they know how they want the funeral to go, they can drag their own arses out and put it on. Leave it to us, and we’ll try, but don’t expect a nice casket and a band, ya know?
Posted by Aaron – Freewill on 10/23 at 08:03 AM • permalink
- …and does anybody else ever kind of wonder if some of these “social norms” over there are just made up on the fly? I mean, I don’t believe that, but it’d make a lot of sense.
“Aziz! We have just seen an American walking sideways through the door of a Koran store while giving candy to a small child.”
“Azam! Add it to the Wikipedia entry for ‘Sunni’ that this is a horrible offense, the worst, and tell the imams to order riots! Also, heehee, send out a bulk email about the giant camel spiders again!”
Posted by Aaron – Freewill on 10/23 at 08:19 AM • permalink
- #14 burn the filthy, bloated corpses to deter the vultures and jackals and whatever else lives out there
You don’t want to run into a vulture! Here’s a band of them laying in wait for a bicyclist in Ohio just last Sundayhttp://home.att.net/~rhhardin1/turkeyvulturecrossing.jpg They grab you as you go by.
All that’s left is the twisted bicycle when they’re done.
- #13 Zoe
You missed this part:
“Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man’s body to stoke the flames.”
The crowd then “dragged their corpses through the street, chanting anti-U.S. slogans,” the report said.
Lovely future those children’s parents have made for them.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 10/23 at 12:29 PM • permalink
- Carve a cross in their foreheads first. Then light.Posted by richard mcenroe on 10/23 at 04:15 PM • permalink
- [pedantry]Um, Afghans are not Arabs.[/pedantry]
This was obviously the wrong thing to do. They should have wrapped the corpses in pigskins first.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 10/23 at 04:44 PM • permalink
- YES!
It was JOHN MARTINKUS, and the way SBS manipulated the whole event was thoroughly disgusting!!! It had to be seen to be believed. Tim was much too kind to the sleazy photographer involved. He made those comments after the footage was screened, simply, in order to qualify the spin and manipulation accompanying the images, a spin which had gotten way out of control. And on top of that, in promos for the Dateline progam this week, they’re actually suggesting that the “desecration” is a “scandal of Abu Ghraib proportions!”
The apology that SBS gave to Moslem viewers before broadcasting the material was incredibly nauseating, given that their spin was almost entirely responsible for any offensive element!
- The idea that Moslems should be offended by the burning of a rotting corpse to the point of going on a muderous rampage, as suggested by SBS, seems callously ingnorant or indifferent, to say the least, of the truly depraved acts carried out in the name of Islam in recent years. I remember BESLAN even if THEY apparently don’t!!! JESUS H.CHRIST!
- Not only did sbs for special audiences compare it to Abu Ghraib but they obligingly dug out the photos from Abu Ghraib to reignite more misery and chaos for all..They thrive on misery and chaos,without it how would they fill the empty hours between anti U.S. public t.v and BBC programmes,anti West and Australian programmes -and Pro any country of Muslim or Communist regime programmes.
“Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man’s body to stoke the flames.”
Gosh and to think that just 2.5 short years ago those fun-loving naifs were flying their kites beside the rivers of chocolate …
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 10/24 at 04:45 PM • permalink
At least then there will actually be something for the AP to write about.