Radical Islam for Dummies

A guest post by AKUS

It would have been hard to find an American outside the 30-person congregation of Rev. Terry Jones who even knew that he burned a Koran last week. But thanks to the Internet, this nutcase was able to post a video on the Internet, with Arabic sub-titles, showing him burning a copy of the Koran.

The result, as we know, was riots in Afghanistan. The rioters in Mazar-e Shari, Afghanistan’s second largest city, left their mosque after the usual anti-Western diatribe delivered weekly from the pulpit there, and, with the assistance of Taliban exploiting the situation, attacked a UN compound killing seven of their employees. (As of this post, 20 have been killed and 80 injured as a result of the riots, a number which includes some of the rioters themselves). As far as I can tell, not one of those injured or killed was an American.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsWSFSieuAQ]

(Video of rioting.  Listen at 0:57, you can hear the chant, “Mar al Yahud” – “Death to the Jews”)

In all the fuss over this, it seems to me that the press has forgotten to tell us who was killed as a result of this utterly marginal American Christian, if he deserves the appellation, burning a book. I finally found a partial list in the print edition of Sunday’s Washington Post (April 3, 2011), which I summarize below:

There were six Nepalese guards at the UN compound “who had orders not to shoot”, four of whom were killed by the violent mob. Nepalese are not generally Christians, and obviously not Americans. Their names were not given.

Others murdered, possibly Christians but definitely not Americans, once the mob broke in, were:

Joakim Dungel, a Swedish human rights worker

Lt. Col. Siri Skare, a Norwegian who was advising the police

Filaret Motco, a Romanian Political officer

Pavel Ershov, a Russian, was beaten but not killed after he persuaded the rioters by speaking Dari, their dialect, that he is a Muslim.

President Karzai has called on the US to condemn the Koran burning but has issued no statement indicating that he intends to find and punish the murderers. Western leaders have tried to balance the two acts by denouncing Jones’ act and claiming Western respect for the Koran – not likely to fool many people – while condemning the rioters.

This is all political window dressing. We see yet again that radical Islam (Islamism) is a cause for the ignorant, the duped, the easily led, and the fanatics. But more than anything, the events in Afghanistan show that adherents to this movement are extremists who are willing to kill even Nepalese because of their anger towards America – all due to the actions of one obscure American preacher.

The cringing attempts in the West to pretend that all is well, and that Islamism is simply another, albeit misunderstood, political religious movement, have to stop. The nearest example I can think of is the Spanish Inquisition and no-one would tolerate Jesuits burning unbelievers to death in this day and age.

When Islamism’s adherents believe it is right to murder people because of a cartoon, or a book burning, or anything else they deem an insult, the democratic West needs to stand up and call it out for what it is: reactionary, supremely intolerant and extremely dangerous.

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