Minutes after Newsweek posted a picture of its upcoming cover story about “Muslim Rage,” Muslims and others began mocking it with the hashtag #MuslimRage. Curated by Alex Fitzpatrick.Newsweek’s cover story, titled “Muslim Rage: How I Survived It, How We Can End It,” in part examines the passionate and occasionally violent protests over a controversial anti-Islam YouTube video that have been spreading throughout Muslim communities.
Paul J. Balles
October 9, 2010
Westerners, especially Americans, often look at violence in the Middle East as a result of the teachings of Islam.
This week’s talk show by Christiane Amanpour’s spent the better part of two hours discussing Islam and how people are reacting to Islam as a source of fanaticism publicised in the press.
The Western public has been seduced into believing that reactions of “extremists” have something to do with Islam. Extremist reprisals have nothing to do with religion. They are expressions of revenge. Anti-American reactions have been what Reverend Jeremiah Wright called “bringing the chickens home to roost.”
How can the West expect a placid reaction to their own actions when they have massacred more than 1,300,000 Iraqis, let alone the Afghans and the support given to Israel for their vicious savagery in Lebanon and Gaza?
How can we expect anything but calls for retribution when the agonizing stories of innocent victims of military atrocities get told and retold?
Just this week, the New York Times published the unusual report of a grotesque story from a small village in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan.
A woman told how American military men took her husband, a local mullah in Maiwand, out of their house, forced him to the ground, put a grenade under his body and blew him up.
The mullah was the third victim of soldiers who killed Afghan civilians for no apparent reason. Is this the kind of activity that’s supposed to endear people around the world to America?
According to the New York Times, “Local elders estimate that in the past eight months at least 42 civilians have been killed in Maiwand during American operations.”
Expand that relatively small area to the much larger scope of American military action in the Middle East and the incentives for revenge multiply.
One Afghan elder reportedly said, “The Americans have killed many people who did not support the Taliban, which is painful for us and actually creates hatred toward Americans.”
In another incident reported by the New York Times this week, five soldiers are facing potential courts-martial on charges that they killed Afghan civilians for sport.
The report says they were “planting weapons near them (Afghans) to fake combat situations, collecting their body parts and taking photographs posing with their corpses.”
Also this week, a chicken that came home to roost was tried in New York. Pakistani born Faisal Shahzad, who planted a car bomb in Times Square, New York on May 1st, was sentenced to life in prison.
MSNBC reported that Shahzad came to court to tell Americans he felt no remorse about his May 1 bombing attempt. “Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun,” said Shahzad.
It’s a great anomaly that Americans expect the extremists to feel remorse for their acts of revenge when most Americans express no remorse over our mindless murder and maiming of innocents abroad.
Moderate and peace loving, as all but the very few extremists like Shahzad are, Muslims are innocent victims of hate and hate crimes.
Writing in the Princetonian, Adam Bradlow observed “Intolerance toward Muslims has become part of the new norm.”
Anti mosque rallies have broken out in at least four states, including the recent protests against the “ground zero” Community Centre in New York.
Speaking out against the Centre, past speaker of the US Congress Newt Gingrich called it “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.”
Elizabeth Madrid, editor of the Tennessee Journal, reminds her readers, and hopefully Gingrich, that “A handful of extremists cannot rightly represent the entire Muslim faith.”
* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com
Seven messages and counting on my voice mail from different Bay Area reporters, all wanting to know the Muslim community’s reaction about the recent heinous killings of Nidal Malik Hasan. All wanting to know what had driven a 39-year-old Muslim to go on a killing rampage, murdering 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas. “He had it all,” someone said, “he’s an educated man, he’s a doctor.” Why did he do it?
Apparently, I fit the profile of someone who has these answers: I am a Muslim Palestinian American: I must know what one out of the 1.5 billion Muslims around the globe is thinking at any given time.
“Hey, Jamal…sorry to disturb you so early. But you know the Hasan story is big, and I was wondering if you’re willing to come for an interview and talk about how it feels being a Maahzlem (Muslim) and all,” a television producer says to me on my cell, while I was driving to work.
“How did you feel being a Christian, with Timothy McVeigh and Adolf Hitler being Christians?” I fired back.
Silence… I probably should not have said that, but there it is.
I’m sick and tired of these kinds of questions from media outlets whenever some kooky Muslim decides to commit a random act of violence…or in this case when a GI psychiatrist goes psycho. At the same time, I’m also sick and tired of self-appointed Muslim experts and spokespersons who jump at every miserable opportunity like this one to try to explain Islam.
“Islam is a religion of peace,” they say.
No, it’s not. Not anymore than Christianity is a religion of love. They’re just religions, and what you do with them is all up to the believer. More people have died in the name of religion than in any other catastrophe or plague.
Here is what I know about Hasan:
He was a disgruntled GI who wanted to leave the military for whatever reason: his conscience, his religion, or for personal reasons. He could have left peacefully. He could have quit and paid the price without hurting others, just like Muhammad Ali, who refused the draft to serve in Vietnam but did not feel the need to go on a killing rampage. Instead, he was stripped of his heavyweight title and served time in jail.
Hasan is a coward…not only for committing this heinous act, but for counting on being killed or taking the gun on himself, leaving behind his family and the entire Muslim community to account for his despicable actions.
In the Jordanian capital of Amman, demonstrators took to the streets on Tuesday to celebrate Bush’s departure from the White House by tossing shoes at a banner with his picture on it. They did not, however, celebrate Obama’s inauguration as president of the United States of America. In Beirut, a Lebanese-American gleefully screamed at television cameras, “good riddance Mr. Bush, “ahlan wa sahlan” (welcome) Barack Hussein (with emphasis on Hussein) Obama.” In a West Beirut restaurant, US ex-pats hosted a party to watch the inauguration on television, but the celebrations were subdued with scenes of destruction and devastation left by the Israeli war on Gaza flashing on a flat screen behind the bar.
With Saudi-sponsored Al Arabiya channel and Al Jazeera English as exceptions, most Arab satellite stations ignored Barack Obama’s inauguration. State-controlled television stations preferred to lead their news reports on demonstrations of support for the Palestinian cause. The top news was related to Gaza and the Arab Summit in Kuwait. Obama’s inauguration ceremony came third.
When interviewed about Obama, most Arabs expressed a desire to see a real change of foreign policy towards the Middle East, not just a regime change. There is skepticism that Barack Obama will be able to bring about that shift. Many expressed disappointment over Obama’s failure to take a tough stance against Israel over its war on Gaza, even though he was not president at the time.
“As long as the US takes the same pro-Israeli position, there will be no change,” a student at the American University in Beirut asserted.
In Egypt though, members of the opposition, Muslim Brotherhood, saw hope in Obama’s inauguration speech. They referenced his message to the Muslim world:
“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
Essam el-Erian, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political committee, was thrilled when he heard Obama saying that “the relationship with the Muslim world should be based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”
However, a colleague of mine working for one of Egypt’s largest dailies spoke to me on the condition of anonymity and said, “What Muslims and Arabs should pay close attention to is the second paragraph of Obama’s address to the Muslim world…his reference to those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent.”
“When we have real democracy in the Middle East,” he added, ” we won’t need Obama to save the day for us.”
Jamal Dajani produces the Mosaic Intelligence Report on Link TV
I attended the projection of David&Leyla last night at the Arab film festival in Brussels
Among the shameful events of my life …
During the Q&A section of the evening
I did not speak up and yet…
I had felt like leaving well before the end and yet…
since I’ll never know the end of Waltz with Bashir (I could not care less about the lebanese nightmares of zionist assassins) I stayed
but then, why did I not open my mouth ?
I know, it was hard to hurt the feelings of the producer who was present; I am trying to make amends by putting this on line.
I felt the film as a vulgar, American vision of things
A love story between a randy and sex problems ridden jewish New Yorker and a beautiful Kurd
He is engaged to a nightmare of a woman who has the blessing of his family.
He falls in love with Leyla, the beautiful and virgin Kurdish and muslim girl about to be shipped out by Immigration.
Both families object and throw all their racist or national clichés at each other
Leyla can marry David only if he converts to islam
David converts to islam and they marry
During the wedding party David leaves the party discreetly and breaks a glass under his foot in the Jewish tradition.
A few years later, we see them with a son sharing Pessah with the Jewish side of the family.
The positive side of the film
The film maker remains firm on Palestine
Islam is not presented as a caricature
We share the nostalgia of the exiled Kurds
Eventually, the two families blend harmoniously with each side keeping its values
The wonderful Kurdish wedding party and the Kurdish music
And there is humour of course with poor David having to deal with the consequences of his betrayal and struggling to take his admission exam into Islam.
What was totally uncalled for :
the sex scenes. That was really the vulgar part, specially towards the end, the scence between the parents.
I cannot imagine this film being viewed in Damascus if only on this account. If you want to build a bridge between the two sides you have to take the sensitivities of the other side into account.
Two moroccan newspapers have accused the film of being zionist; I would not go that far.
Had I know, would I have gone to see it ? The answer is no. Does not mean you should not.
by Chris Rodda
Sun Sep 28, 2008 at 08:50:29 PM PDT
(From the diaries — kos)
On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West — the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail — were distributed by mail in Ohio, a “chemical irritant” was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service.
band annie's Weblog 