Muslim Mirror of Insults . . .

Thomas L. Friedman

Photo by Josh Haner
New York Times

After posting yesterday's blog entry, I discovered Thomas Friedman's very similar NYT column, "Look in Your Mirror" (September 18, 2012):

On Monday, David D. Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief for The Times, quoted one of the Egyptian demonstrators outside the American Embassy, Khaled Ali, as justifying last week's violent protests by declaring: "We never insult any prophet -- not Moses, not Jesus -- so why can't we demand that Muhammad be respected?"

Friedman noted much the same hypocrisy as I had, and he called Mr. Ali and his ilk on it:

Mr. Ali and the young Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans and Sudanese who have been taking to the streets might want to look in the mirror -- or just turn on their own televisions. They might want to look at the chauvinistic bile that is pumped out by some of their own media -- on satellite television stations and Web sites or sold in sidewalk bookstores outside of mosques -- insulting Shiites, Jews, Christians, Sufis and anyone else who is not a Sunni, or fundamentalist, Muslim.

One correction to this. Shiites can be equally as radical and are just as prone to insulting non-Shiites as Sunnis are to insulting non-Sunnis. That quibble aside, I want to quote Friedman's examples:

Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi of the Iranian Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution: Christianity is "a reeking corpse, on which you have to constantly pour eau de cologne and perfume, and wash it in order to keep it clean." - July 20, 2007.

Sheik Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi: It is permissible to spill the blood of the Iraqi Christians -- and a duty to wage jihad against them. - April 14, 2011.

Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, a Saudi professor of Islamic law, calls for "positive hatred" of Christians. Al-Majd TV (Saudi Arabia). - Dec. 16, 2005.

The Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub: "Muslim Brotherhood Presidential Candidate Mohamed Morsi told me that the Shiites are more dangerous to Islam than the Jews." - June 13, 2012.

The Egyptian Cleric Mazen al-Sirsawi: "If Allah had not created the Shiites as human beings, they would have been donkeys." - Aug. 7, 2011.

The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan video series: "The Shiite is a Nasl [Race/Offspring] of Jews." - March 21, 2012.

Article on the Muslim Brotherhood's Web site praises jihad against America and the Jews: "The Descendants of Apes and Pigs." - Sept. 7, 2012.

The Pakistani cleric Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai: "When the Jews are wiped out, the world would be purified and the sun of peace would rise on the entire world." - Aug. 1, 2012.

Dr. Ismail Ali Muhammad, a senior Al-Azhar scholar: The Jews, "a source of evil and harm in all human societies." - Feb. 14, 2012.

A shrine venerating a Sufi Muslim saint in Libya has been partly destroyed, the latest in a series of attacks blamed on ultraconservative Salafi Islamists. - Aug. 26, 2012.

To quibble again . . . these aren't precisely directed against prophets. But they will suffice to demonstrate that insults from the Muslim world are hardly rare, thereby providing a context within which to set the insults that I noted yesterday. That Muslim world is a world replete with malicious insults and insulted honor.

In Friedman's curt words to Muslims, "[L]et's cut the nonsense that this is just our problem and the only issue is how we clean up our act."