Out of a small church in Gainesville, Florida, came Pastor Terry Jones. Consumed with ignorance about Islam, he judges it, not by its moderation and universalism. He sees it through the prism of Bin Laden, the huge tragedy of 9/11, and the cutters of hands and legs in Northern Mali. To Jones, the Quran, the holy book for 1.5 billion Muslims, is a book of evil. Burning it at his church of only 300 congregants, is both a religious and a patriotic duty.
In his ignorance, as he burnt his copy of the Quran, inflaming passions of both Muslims and Americans, he incinerated also a central part of his own faith. For the Quran, in its full recognition of both the Torah and the New Testament, glorifies the name of Jesus 25 times, and the name of the virgin Mary 34 times -the only mention of a woman in more than six thousand verses.
Nor did Pastor Jones presumably know that among the 6487 volumes which Thomas Jefferson sold to the Library of Congress, was his own two-volume English translation of the Quran which the Muslims revere as God's (in Arabic, Allah) words revealed to Muhammad. The cover of that historic text reads: "The Koran: Commonly Called 'The Alcoran of Mohammed,' Translated into English immediately from the Original Arabic." Jefferson had purchased his Quran in the 1780's in response to the conflict between the US and the "Barbary States" of North Africa -today Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.
From Jones, past forward to the American-made video entitled "The Innocence of Muslims." It ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad and caused the senseless killing of a distinguished U.S. diplomat, Ambassador Chris Stevens, at the US Consulate in Benghazi, together with 3 other fine US foreign service officers, and several Libyan security guards. But the catastrophe did not stop there. Between September 18 and September 21, a mere four-day period of Muslim rage at that video, the capitals and other cities in 22 States, from Morocco to Indonesia, have been rocked by attacks on American missions, and violent clashes between the police and enraged Muslim demonstrators.
This is a real anti-American tsunami engulfing two dozen countries, some of which have just emerged from the reign of brutal dictatorships and are now governed by Islamic-oriented regimes. Their sense of euphoria has outpaced their ability to grow in to governance. Nor have they mastered yet how to balance between internal pressures, and external needs for assistance from the outside world, especially the USA. Even without that video, the Arab street in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain is not yet safe. And the Syrian civil war with nearly 25000 dead, and a huge number of Syrians living in tents outside Syria as refugees, has transformed Syria into a huge patch of killing fields.
The video producers are an Egyptian Coptic rabble rouser with a police record, named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a gas station owner. His co-schemer is a man by the name of Steve Klein, an insurance salesman. Justifying the production of that incendiary film, Klein is reported to have said that the intent of the film was to get extremist Muslims to stop killing. The coptic church in the US has denounced that hallucinating video.
When it comes to Egypt, the tragedy assumes gargantuan proportions. Egypt's new partnership with the US is still in its infancy. President Morsi is US-educated and educator, and two of his sons are US citizens. Under his leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had put him forward as its presidential candidate, is kept at a healthy distance. His Government, headed by Hesham Qandeel, is made largely of technocrats.
But when the Egyptian mob (the Muslim Brotherhood did not take part), angered by that video, replaced the US flag over the Cairo Embassy by a black flag of the Salafis, Morsi was a bit late in condemning that attack. Balancing between the internal constituency and the need for US assistance and friendship is an art which apparently needs time for Morsi to master.
Two-hundred and twenty Egyptians including 20 security officers were injured at the Embassy's perimeter. Twenty-four person were arrested. Egyptian tanks surrounded the US Embassy for protection. As Morsi, prompted by President Obama, denounced the violence, his Prime Minister Qandeel declared on September 13 that Egypt's highest national interest was being harmed. Only then did the flame subside, and the "Million demonstrators" did not materialize in Tahrir.
The ignorance of values also extends to the Muslim World, now fully enraged by the attacks on the Prophet Muhammed. When lecturing one day at the Cairo University School of Law on the tragedy of 9/11, I discovered from the questions that many still felt that that criminal acts could not have been perpetrated by Muslims. In the new Arab World, with its rediscovered freedoms, I wonder how many people are familiar with the First Amendment of the US Constitution, especially with its reference to "the freedom of speech, or the press."
Their experience is that government can suppress both, and they demand that Washington D.C. should suppress that video. But how can it do so? The new authority over that video is Google. And Google is not beholden to the U.S. Government. With the video being disseminated by YouTube, its owner Google has blocked access to it in only Egypt and Libya. Here Google misses a main tenet: hate speech is defined by it as against individuals, not against groups. Since the video mocks Islam but not Muslims, Google believes that it falls within its guidelines. An aspect of ignorance: In Islam, Muslims, those who submit their will to God, are one with their faith. There cannot be any Muslims without Islam.
OK!! Turning to the Muslims, one could see in those combustible demonstrations an element of ignorance of the Quran, the primary source of Islamic law. Several verses in the Quran call for giving a cold shoulder to that video which is based on both malice and ignorance. By all means, hold the Prophet Muhammed close and dear. But also remember God's words revealed to him-May Peace Be Upon Him. To the likes of Terry Jones, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Steve Klein and their ilk, remember what Allah says in the Quran regarding dealing with those who are ignorant of or inimical to Islam and the Muslims.
In the Quran, Chapter No. 7, Verse No. 199 says: "Keep to forgiveness (O Muhammed) and enjoin kindness, and turn away from the ignorant"
And the Quran, Chapter No. 25, verse No. 63 says: "and when the foolish ones address them (the Muslims) they answer: Peace."
It is a pity that we in the 21st century, do not have a Geneva Convention making insulting any faith an international crime (Prime Minister Qandeel has called for that). It is even a greater pity that a bunch of hoodlums in Florida and California can ignite such havoc across the globe. It is even the greatest pity that when ignorance of values prevail, catastrophic tragedies occur. May the souls of these four diplomats who were killed (martyred) in Benghazi rest in heavenly peace. International law calls them "protected persons." Now in their heavenly abode, they, by the grace of God, are eternally "protected."
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