Selective Outgrage
For more than a week now our newspapers and television sets have been filled with images of a hostile and rioting Muslim World, reacting to a Newsweek article that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet by interegators at Guantanimo Bay's detention facility. Newsweek has now retracted the story stating that it was an "unfortunate" error, (Unfortunate error, are you kidding me?) but the Muslim street is not buying it and now feels that Newsweek is succumbing to White House pressure and covering for them.
There are enough angles in this story to launch a thousand blog sites. We have already seen and heard, and I am sure that we will be seeing alot more stories on the Newsweek angle. But I want to deal with this from another angle. That is the angle of the selective outrage. Why is it big news that Muslims are outraged at the flushing of a Koran? What would the story be if a Bible or Torah, were flushed, burned or desecrated by Muslims I wonder? Would it even be a story or would we even hear about it? I doubt it !
The fact is that not only are Bibles burned and destroyed on a daily basis in the Muslim world, and we never hear of it, but Christians are persecuted and abused on a regular basis as well and the media world remains silent. In fact just after writing this post I was sent a link to a Worldnet Daily article called:
The article states that: "While Muslims have responded with deadly outrage to the now-retracted report by Newsweek of alleged Quran desecration by U.S. interrogators, there was little outcry three years ago when Islamic terrorists holed up in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity reportedly used the Bible as toilet paper."
On a more personal note, in 1981 I was in Morocco on a missions outreach. We had been there for several weeks when we stopped for gas one evening. A young station attendant came to our van and after finding that we were Americans told us of how he loved America and that we were his American friends. Feeling that this was a warm and friendly young man, one of the ladies with us handed him a Christian tract, in Arabic, telling of the Father love of God. After reading just a bit of it he became very agitated and threw it back into her face and began cursing and ranting. So much for our being "his American friends." We were told by another attendant to leave before the police came, and we did so. We did not stop until we were across the border in Ceuta, Spain.
A year later several of our friends went there again but were not as fortunate as us, they were arrested and imprisoned for a few months for having Christian literature, in Arabic, in their possession. They were only released after there was a threat of a major media push to expose the arrests in the wake of a UN meeting, in Rabat, the capital city.
Since then things have not only not gotten better, they have gotten worse, and the general reaction to this is only that Christians should respect those cultures. There are countless stories of Christian persecution in the Muslim, and Hindu world as well, but the media remains silent.
Why are we supposed to respect those cultures and they not respect ours? We not only allow but invite Arab Muslims and other nationalities and faiths to come and freely worship and express their faith here, and would be castigated for anything less. Yet, Christians are attacked for any attempt to express a faith that has liberated billions and given a message of hope for all mankind.
I do not expect things to change, but I do expect recognition of the selective outrage.
posted by Eddie Huff @ 12:25 PM
3 Comments:
I agree. I dont know why this is news. I cant believe these people are rioting because the Koran was flushed. So what. People mock Jesus oncollege campuses, teh bible is ripped apart and burned. I think the mmuslims have to have some kind of reformation. if they dont i think the world has to wake up and realizse what these people are. what kind of people would do this over a book. God doesnt exist in my bible, he is real and living and I would never do this if someone did this toa bible. Its true that Christinas are persecuted daily and i wonder why its not news.
I thing the bigger point of hypocracy is the fact that over the past few months we have seen MUSLIMS in Iraq "destorying Qu'ans" as they blow up mosques and shrines - killing fellow Muslims and destorying the Qu'ans that they were carrying in their arms.
It is hard for me to accept the winding path of this debate. The Anti-War folks are just waging battle after battle to undercut the war effort.
You would think that they would be more disturbed not at a physical BOOK but by the fact that certain people who claim they are bound by this book see fit to kill other MUSLIMS and justify their actions as being in accord with Allah.
Renaldo,
A great name as my family are huge soccer fans and your name's sake is one of the greatest in the world.
I understand your point and agree, however, my point was more that the MSM selectively goes after their idea of offenses, and Christianity is not one of their sympathetic victims. There is a definate religious bias, but not even so much the faith part as it is, IMO, the identification of Christianity with all the left hates about America.
With reagrd to Muslim's mistreatment of the Qur'an, etc., that is just a smal tip of the iceberg. How about the treatment of women under fundamentalist Islam? Catholics do not allow female priests and they are attacked, but radical Muslims will not allow women to live and it gets scant attention.
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