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Flushing the Koran
Yet another media scandal has erupted.
This one is stranger than most. Unfortunately it has cost some loss of life, though exactly how is yet unclear.
Otherwise, and it is a stretch to allow an otherwise here, it has many comic elements.
Some person or persons at Newsweek decided to write about “torture” at Guantanamo. They found a source who fed them some stories, which claimed that an official investigation had found some peculiar instance of torture: namely, that some person had flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet apparently to torture a prisoner.
They checked this report by asking two government officials, they say. One had nothing to say, and the other had nothing to say about this, but also denied something else.
The lack of an explicit denial by this official was deemed sufficient confirmation that this tale of torture was true, and a report was published,
A Mr. Khan, a Pakistani former cricket star, and recently appointed President of Bradford University in the UK was angered at this news, and made a rabble rousing speech about it which he circulated to lots of Afghani and Pakistani Imams, who duly excited riots all over their countries, which led to upwards of 15 deaths.
This story suggests several questions:
1. Can one really flush a koran down a toilet without clogging it?
2. Are thuggish terrorists really tortured by the sight of a urine soaked koran?
3. Does any American really believe this?
4. If so, did it occur to anyone at Newsweek that many similar thugs might be tortured by a report of this?
5. Is lack of an explicit denial sufficient confirmation to verify a story?
6. Is the rabble rousing Mr. Khan really a suitable President for a British University?
7. Is rioting and killing an acceptable reaction to an insult to one’s religion?
8. Is your failure to accept Islam as your religion not an insult to Islam, and in fact one that is far more material than your treatment of any koran?
The fundamental principle that distinguishes civilized folk from everyone else is the golden rule. And the way to assure that others adhere to the golden rule is to treat others the way they treat others.
I am told that Saudi Arabia confiscates and destroys bibles that they find foreigners bring into the country. Yet they seem to find destroying a koran to be a proper ground for hatred and riot.
One has to wonder, why we accept this? One reaction might be to commission some modern “piss mohammed” for our museums. Alternatively, one could confiscate and destroy all korans belonging to Saudi’s entering this country.
Neither of these activities is acceptable to most of us. But to ignore the gross intolerance of Moslems while making exaggerated efforts to avoid insulting Islamic symbols (and doing nothing whatever of a similar vein with respect to other religions) is in effect to establish Islam as the official religion of the United States. Is this our response to gross thuggishness by Moslems?
Another thought:
The word torture is usually used to refer to the infliction of physical pain.
Yet Newsweek saw fit to describe mistreating a Koran as an act of torture presumably approved by the government of the United States.
To me it is quite a stretch to consider this torture. But if it is, it is mental torture, and mental torture affects anyone it comes in contact with. If it is torture, it is like an acute poison, like anthrax.
If one thinks this is torture, then to disseminate it to the world is a crime, on the level of sending around anthrax. It will torture every susceptible individual who comes in contact with it.
Disseminating it is exactly equivalent to crying fire in crowded theater. This I recall is the standard example of a case in which freedom of speech goes beyond its limit to become crime.
That Newsweek saw fit to publish this suggests that it considered the alleged Koran flushing to be torture. That it based its report on an unsubstantiated rumor since retracted by one anonymous source, is low and ugly, but quite on a par with current journalistic standards as exhibited by Dan Rather. Eason Jordan, etc. But to send the fumes of this alleged torture out to upset millions, this is truly loathsome.
Hundreds of race riots, pogroms, and lynchings have been caused by the spreading of similar reports, in the Twentieth Century.
Of course Newsweek didn’t do this unaided. The BBC reports that the new president of Bradford University in the UK seized on the story and gave a rabble rousing speech about it, which he disseminated to radical imams throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Purposeful incitement to riot: Another elegant test of the limits of free speech, by a British academic official at a government run university!.) This was just what they wanted to make trouble, to flagellate their followers into riot and death.
This is true Dada journalism. Will Isakoff get a Pulitzer for it?
Perhaps it should be hailed as a new art form!
They say that once a wild animal attacks and kills a human being, it finds the act enjoyable, and tends to repeat it, and the animal has to be put away.
I hope that Isakoff, having killed his man (men really), does not develop a taste for it.
Flushing the Koran
Yet another media scandal has erupted.
This one is stranger than most. Unfortunately it has cost some loss of life, though exactly how is yet unclear.
Otherwise, and it is a stretch to allow an otherwise here, it has many comic elements.
Some person or persons at Newsweek decided to write about “torture” at Guantanamo. They found a source who fed them some stories, which claimed that an official investigation had found some peculiar instance of torture: namely, that some person had flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet apparently to torture a prisoner.
They checked this report by asking two government officials, they say. One had nothing to say, and the other had nothing to say about this, but also denied something else.
The lack of an explicit denial by this official was deemed sufficient confirmation that this tale of torture was true, and a report was published,
A Mr. Khan, a Pakistani former cricket star, and recently appointed President of Bradford University in the UK was angered at this news, and made a rabble rousing speech about it which he circulated to lots of Afghani and Pakistani Imams, who duly excited riots all over their countries, which led to upwards of 15 deaths.
This story suggests several questions:
1. Can one really flush a koran down a toilet without clogging it?
2. Are thuggish terrorists really tortured by the sight of a urine soaked koran?
3. Does any American really believe this?
4. If so, did it occur to anyone at Newsweek that many similar thugs might be tortured by a report of this?
5. Is lack of an explicit denial sufficient confirmation to verify a story?
6. Is the rabble rousing Mr. Khan really a suitable President for a British University?
7. Is rioting and killing an acceptable reaction to an insult to one’s religion?
8. Is your failure to accept Islam as your religion not an insult to Islam, and in fact one that is far more material than your treatment of any koran?
The fundamental principle that distinguishes civilized folk from everyone else is the golden rule. And the way to assure that others adhere to the golden rule is to treat others the way they treat others.
I am told that Saudi Arabia confiscates and destroys bibles that they find foreigners bring into the country. Yet they seem to find destroying a koran to be a proper ground for hatred and riot.
One has to wonder, why we accept this? One reaction might be to commission some modern “piss mohammed” for our museums. Alternatively, one could confiscate and destroy all korans belonging to Saudi’s entering this country.
Neither of these activities is acceptable to most of us. But to ignore the gross intolerance of Moslems while making exaggerated efforts to avoid insulting Islamic symbols (and doing nothing whatever of a similar vein with respect to other religions) is in effect to establish Islam as the official religion of the United States. Is this our response to gross thuggishness by Moslems?
Another thought:
The word torture is usually used to refer to the infliction of physical pain.
Yet Newsweek saw fit to describe mistreating a Koran as an act of torture presumably approved by the government of the United States.
To me it is quite a stretch to consider this torture. But if it is, it is mental torture, and mental torture affects anyone it comes in contact with. If it is torture, it is like an acute poison, like anthrax.
If one thinks this is torture, then to disseminate it to the world is a crime, on the level of sending around anthrax. It will torture every susceptible individual who comes in contact with it.
Disseminating it is exactly equivalent to crying fire in crowded theater. This I recall is the standard example of a case in which freedom of speech goes beyond its limit to become crime.
That Newsweek saw fit to publish this suggests that it considered the alleged Koran flushing to be torture. That it based its report on an unsubstantiated rumor since retracted by one anonymous source, is low and ugly, but quite on a par with current journalistic standards as exhibited by Dan Rather. Eason Jordan, etc. But to send the fumes of this alleged torture out to upset millions, this is truly loathsome.
Hundreds of race riots, pogroms, and lynchings have been caused by the spreading of similar reports, in the Twentieth Century.
Of course Newsweek didn’t do this unaided. The BBC reports that the new president of Bradford University in the UK seized on the story and gave a rabble rousing speech about it, which he disseminated to radical imams throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Purposeful incitement to riot: Another elegant test of the limits of free speech, by a British academic official at a government run university!.) This was just what they wanted to make trouble, to flagellate their followers into riot and death.
This is true Dada journalism. Will Isakoff get a Pulitzer for it?
Perhaps it should be hailed as a new art form!
They say that once a wild animal attacks and kills a human being, it finds the act enjoyable, and tends to repeat it, and the animal has to be put away.
I hope that Isakoff, having killed his man (men really), does not develop a taste for it.
posted by daniel at 8:24 AM
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