General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Provocateurs Know Politics and Religion Don't Mix
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/13-0The US embassy ablaze after the attack by protesters. (Reuters)
So another internet clever-clogs sets the Middle East on fire: Prophet cartoons, then Koranic book-burning, now a video of robed "terrorists" and a fake desert. The Western-Christian perpetrators then go into hiding (an essential requisite for publicity) while the innocent are asphyxiated, beheaded and otherwise done to death outrageous Muslim revenge thus "proving" the racist claims of the trash peddlers that Islam is a violent religion.
The provocateurs, of course, know that politics and religion dont mix in the Middle East. They are the same. Christopher Stevens, his diplomat colleagues in Benghazi, priests in Turkey and Africa, UN personnel in Afghanistan; they have all paid the price for those Christian priests, cartoonists, film-makers and authors the inverted commas are necessary to mark a thin line between illusionists and the real thing who knowingly choose to provoke 1.6 billion Muslims.
When a Danish cartoon in a hitherto unknown newspaper drew a picture of the Prophet Mohamed with a bomb in his turban, the Danish embassy in Beirut went up in flames. When a Texas pastor decided to sentence the Koran to death, the knives came out in Afghanistan we are leaving aside the little matter of the accidental burning of Koranic pages by US personnel in Bagram. And now a deliberately abusive film provokes the murder of one of the State Departments fairest diplomats.
In many ways, its familiar territory. In fifteenth century Spain, Christian cartoonists drew illustrations of the Prophet committing unspeakable acts. And just so we dont think we have clean claws today when a Paris cinema showed a film in which Christ made love to a woman, the picture-house was burned-down, one cinema-goer was killed, and the killer turned out to be a Christian.
ananda
(28,862 posts).. Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19584734
I got to thinking. I wonder if the protesters realize
that they are being manipulated by rightwing interests
and that a really stupid hateful film by some idiot or other
does not represent the whole of America.
Everyone I know, bar none, has no animosity towards Muslims
or Islam, though we are alarmed and worried about religious
extremism of any kind anywhere.
longship
(40,416 posts)I am with you both.
R&K
Flashmann
(2,140 posts)Doubtful....Our nutjobs,(read teabaggers),don't,why should theirs?
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)...it will piss off people who take their religion too seriously? I guess we can't mock the Christo-Fascists anymore!
porphyrian
(18,530 posts)Of course, anti-American terrorist organizations are stirring things up and taking advantage of the situation. The citizens of these countries are probably experiencing more non-state information than they ever have, and they have to learn how to filter that information like we do, which is something we may take for granted. Western powers they trust have to teach them this or we will have to wait for them to figure it out on their own.