Desecration of Quran; Pix of the Prophet Mohammed

"Afghans rally on rumors of desecration of Quran."

Chicago Tribune, 10/26/09

I am incensed. Outraged. Not about the stupid Quran. About the Afghans. A photo shows a crowd of shouting men, hands in the air, with a few rabble-rousers on a raised platform at the center. There's a banner in Arabic. On the same day, 14 American died for these people.

Bogus and creepy

This whole desecration thing is so bogus, creepy, and frightening that I hardly know where to begin.

First of all, Americans in the the military are probably EXQUISITELY careful about how they treat this primitive piece of trash. The article notes that "the protest shows how easily religious sensitivities can be stirred up..."

A merry old time

Indeed. The religious leaders have these poor sheep on a hair-trigger. Let's have a protest, one of them says. Sure, the others agree, great idea, need to keep 'em stoked up, take their minds off how crappy their lives are. OK, Habib, you're in charge of putting together the effigy of Obama. Omar, you and your gang get the rumors started. Let's target the 26th of this month. OK, go!

Yes, they had a merry old time that day, burning Obama in effigy, neglecting their families, their livelihoods (if they had one), and every other really important part of their lives to come out and protest a rumored desecration of their magic book. It would be nice if they had proof of desecration, but religious people -- and this is religion's greatest danger -- don't need proof. So they just took the guy's word for it and headed off to the protest.

What is desecration?

What actually is desecration of the Quran? Did Americans wipe their asses with it, clean latrines with it, blow their noses on it, or just make fun of it? None of the above, I'm sure. Islam is out of bounds in the war on Islamic fanaticism, which is too bad, because we'll never really defeat them until we go after the poisonous root of the craziness, which is their religion itself.

But almost anything could qualify as desecration in the eyes of the offendee. There are many ways to desecrate a symbol, provided the symbol has power. I could do obscene things with a Superman comic, but nobody would come after my head. The Quran has no more truth (and far less entertainment value) than a Superman comic, but it has power.

Religious magical power

That power has been embedded in the brains of human beings for centuries -- and not just Muslims, of course. Every religion relies heavily on magic things, books, pictures, places, and trinkets. You should see Jews kiss, raise aloft, and otherwise revere their holy scroll; they do everything but hump it.

But Islam is unique in its danger to the world. Of the other major Western religions, Christianity and Judaism have grown up somewhat and turned away from violence and martyrdom. Islam has not.

And please don't tell me what a peace-loving religion it is. You can find anything you want in their barbaric holy book. As Sam Harris points out, it is religious moderates who validate the fanatics, because they work from the same holy book. No matter how much they disavow them, the moderates are the fanatics' enablers.

Desecrating...what?

Finally, the Quran itself. What is it that we are so upset about desecrating? Not much, really. With so much wisdom all over the world, to declare that you can find ALL truth in one place -- one messed-up, incoherent, fantasy-based collection of mediaeval rambling -- is to deny all progress that humanity has made in the last 1,000 years. I find it deeply disturbing that so much of humanity is mired in the Middle Ages.

And even more disturbing that they can hold too-nice Westerners hostage with their violent temper tantrums. A Dutch filmmaker is murdered for offending Muslims. Cartoonists who dare to portray their precious Prophet (not such a great guy in real life, bit of a child-molester, I'm told) are rewarded with mass riots. Salman Rushdie spends years of his life fearing a death curse.

Pix of The Prophet

What is the big deal with pix of the Prophet? Christians get a lot of mileage out of religious art. They portray all their magic figures, in every medium, over and over, plus every saint from Anthony to Zinthonius (I made that up), even though nobody knows what they really looked like. Jesus, if he existed, looked more like Yassir Arafat than any of the countless WASP representations. The Muslims don't get it. Humble, stupid believers LIKE to see what they're being told to believe in. Isn't it more effective to burn an effigy of Obama than just to cuss him out?

I'd run a picture of the Prophet, if I had a reliable one. But nobody really knows, so if I showed a picture of Daffy Duck and labeled it "The Prophet Mohammed," would that count?

OK, enough humor. Fourteen Americans died on the same day as Afghans burned our President in effigy because of a rumor that something bad was done to their childish holy book, with its hatred of infidels.

As an American, I resent every cent and drop of blood wasted to help these people build a nation, which they have been unable to do for a thousand years. A new poll shows 46% of Afghans think their country is moving in the right direction, if by "right direction," we mean tribal 1500. Some are willing to engage the Taliban in negotiations.

Fine, let 'em. Without us. If any local country, if any Muslim country cared, they'd be sending soldiers to die (recommended by Mondale in Out of Iraq). But no, they don't give a shit, Americans can die. I'd love to see non-local Muslim peacekeeping forces -- would Egyptians and Iraqis really shoot each other?

Eight more Americans died the next day. Over 900 in Afghanistan alone, thousands more in Iraq. For every death, three or four "wounded" -- horrible, limb-destroying wounds; new kinds of head wounds and brain injuries.

Obama and every member of Congress should be required to view EACH WEEK's coffins, while they dither over policy.

As a humanist, I consider it darkly significant that over a billion people believe that a man rode up to heaven on a horse -- and quite a few are willing to defend those fantasies with violence and murder. They are unwilling to share the world with the rest of us. They are locked in the murky phantasmagoric imaginings of an earlier time -- and are unwilling and unlikely to emerge. Currently Muslims are involved in at least half a dozen armed conflicts worldwide. In Iraq, two SECTS can't even get along. Nowhere from Nigeria to Iran (possible exceptions: Turkey and Indonesia) have they been able to build anything resembling a liberal democratic society.

Terrorism

Historically, terrorism is a kind of asymmetric warfare in which people try to get invaders to leave their country (as Jews did to the British in Palestine). In Afghanistan, most of the new deaths and injuries are coming from roadside bombs. They've found they don't have to engage us militarily at all. For maybe $50 they can build a device that will blow up a Humvee and kill or permanently disable everyone inside. For the terrorists it's an exceedingly cheap form of warfare. For America, not so cheap. The best way to prevent terrorist attacks on America is to get the hell out of their countries and let them settle their own affairs, if they can.

Otherwise, it's only a matter of time till they get their hands on plutonium or smallpox and wreak havoc once again. Remember, they don't mind dying, as long as they take a lot of us with them. I know, a lot of Americans think that if the US withdraws from a war it started, then America "loses." Well, we've already lost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in a repeat of Vietnam, this time in two countries. The longer we stay on their land, the sooner the next 9/11 will be.

Clearly, American policymakers do not appreciate the adversary. "Desecration" of their worthless holy book is the least of our offenses. Merely being a non-Muslim is our death sentence.