Selective Outrage

It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way.
That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month – most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.
Yet these mass murders – this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims – have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia. [Outrage and Silence]

True, also when Hindu Gods are desecrated in Saudi Arabia, it is just a law and order problem. But selective outrage is a global problem.

4 thoughts on “Selective Outrage

  1. DESECRATING THE KORAN
    The US is accused of desecrating the Koran while interrogating prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And the reaction from the Muslim world, the ummah, has been fierce, if not predictable, including the standard denunciations by the usual crackpot mulla…

  2. Ah, Hindus are an intelligent species my friend. They know exactly when to be tolerant and when to scream and shout.
    When a beer manufacturer in America calls his beer “Indica” and has an idol of Ganesha with a beer mug on its label – they scream and shout. When bikinis and chappals in America have Hindu deities on them – they scream and shout. However Hindu’s know that screaming and shouting is not to be pursued in countries like Saudi Arabia if they value their balls.
    The moslems contrarily, will scream and shout and cry sabotage at every available opportunity. The middle east will call the west as “evil” and the “minorities” in India will thump their chest and demand privilages
    Looking to whole farce, I muse that “Christians in the west” as so much more tolerant. They release porn movies featuring nuns and priests themselves. They do not mind sporting a Jesus Tatoo or Jesus on their underwear. They have many other important things to cry about.

  3. Big Brother Buckles
    Again.
    If you need more evidence for how Islamism has matured as a world-threatening force, go no farther than this–the hottest news item doing rounds today, namely, the Koran’s alleged desecration in Guantanamo prison.
    In one stroke, we’re witness…

  4. Robi & Nitin’s Indian Ocean Horizons: 2005-06-10
    Winds of Change.NET Regional Briefings run on Tuesdays & Wednesdays, and sometimes Fridays too. This Regional Briefing focuses on South Asia, courtesy of Robi Sen and Nitin Pai of and Nitin Pai of Reply

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