The Urban Grind

Hat Tip: Tom Carter via The Smedley Log

As the latest events in the Middle East show, just a suspicion of Koran desecration is enough to set people off. Yet Ali Al Ahmed of the Saudi Institute in Washington makes some interesting points.

Besides Christian Bibles routinely being desecrated and burned by the Saudi government at immigration check points into the kingdom and on raids of people’s homes, Mr. Al Ahmed also notes that the Saudi police have desecrated the Koran themselves:

The Saudi government does not even spare the Quran from desecration. On Oct. 14, 2004, dozens of Saudi men and women carried copies of the Quran as they protested in support of reformers in the capital, Riyadh. Although they carried the Qurans in part to protect themselves from assault by police, they were charged by hundreds of riot police, who stepped on the books with their shoes, according to one of the protesters.)

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The Saudi Embassy and other Saudi organizations in Washington have distributed hundreds of thousands of Qurans and many more Muslim books, some that have libeled Christians, Jews and others as pigs and monkeys. In Saudi school curricula, Jews and Christians are considered deviants and eternal enemies. By contrast, Muslim communities in the West are the first to admit that Western countries–especially the U.S.–provide Muslims the strongest freedoms and protections that allow Islam to thrive in the West. Meanwhile Christianity and Judaism, both indigenous to the Middle East, are maligned through systematic hostility by Middle Eastern governments and their religious apparatuses.

The lesson here is simple: If Muslims wish other religions to respect their beliefs and their Holy book, they should lead by example.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that will happen any time soon. It’s not like they’re so tolerant of their fellow citizens either. Today, Saudi police arrested 92 men for being homosexuals during a raid of a club in Eastern Riyadh.

The Al-Wifaq news website, with close links to the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry, said the suspects were found inside a club in a state of drunkenness or high on drugs and dancing wildly, with many of them dressed in women’s clothes and wearing wigs and make-up.

Uh-oh.

Posted May 22nd, 2005 under Islamist Fanatics. RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.