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Please take a moment to visit and log in at the subscriber area, and submit your city & country location. We will use this information in future to invite you to any events that we organize in your area. Dear Reader: You may be interested in the audio of a "Discussion of Issues in a Jerusalem Forum" that I recently took part in along with journalist Ruthie Blum. A brief video clip of the event highlights can be seen at "Pipes: I Want to Defeat Radical Islam." Also, you'll find two blogs pertaining to the Koran-burning issue below the column that follows. Yours sincerely, Daniel Pipes "Rushdie Rules" Reach Floridaby Daniel Pipes http://www.danielpipes.org/8881/rushdie-rules-florida
Pastor Terry Jones' plan to burn copies of the Koran at his church in Gainesville, Florida, let it be emphasized, is a distasteful act that fits an ugly tradition. That said, two other points need be noted: Buying books and then burning them is an entirely legal act in the United States. Second, David Petraeus, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama pressured Jones to cancel only because they feared Muslim violence against Americans if he proceeded. Indeed, despite Mr. Jones calling off the Koran burning, 5 Afghans and 14 Kashmiris died in protests against his plans.
That violence stems from Islamic law, the Shariah, which insists that Islam, and the Koran in particular, enjoy a privileged status. Islam ferociously punishes anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, who trespasses against Islam's sanctity. Codes in Muslim-majority states generally reflect this privilege; for example, Pakistan's blasphemy law, 295-C, punishes derogatory remarks about Muhammad with execution. No less important, Shariah denigrates the sanctities of other religions, a tradition manifested in recent years by the destruction of the Buddhist Bamiyan statues and the desecration of the Jewish Tomb of Joseph and the Christian Church of the Nativity. A 2003 decree ruled the Bible suitable for use by Muslims when cleaning after defecation. Iranian authorities reportedly burned hundreds of Bibles in May. This imbalance, whereby Islam enjoys immunity and other religions are disparaged, has long prevailed in Muslim-majority countries. Then, in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini abruptly extended this double standard to the West when he decreed that British novelist Salman Rushdie be executed on account of the blasphemies in his book, The Satanic Verses. With this, Khomeini established the Rushdie Rules, which still remain in place. They hold that whoever opposes "Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran" may be put to death; that anyone connected to the blasphemer must also be executed; and that all Muslims should participate in an informal intelligence network to carry out this threat. Self-evidently, these rules contradict a fundamental premise of Western life, freedom of speech. As summed up by the dictum, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," that freedom assures protection for the right to make mistakes, to insult, to be disagreeable, and to blaspheme. If the Rushdie Rules initially shocked the West, they since have become the new norm. When Islam is the subject, freedom of speech is but a pre-1989 memory. Writers, artists, and editors readily acknowledge that criticizing Islam can endanger their lives.
Western leaders occasionally stand with those who insult Islam. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher resisted pressure from Tehran in 1989 and stated that "there are no grounds on which the government could consider banning" The Satanic Verses. Other governments reinforced this stalwart position; for example, the U.S. Senate unanimously resolved "to protect the right of any person to write, publish, sell, buy and read books without fear of violence." Likewise, Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen stood strong in 2006 when disrespectful cartoons of Muhammad in a Copenhagen newspaper led to storms of protest: "This is a matter of principle," he stated. "As prime minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press – nor do I want such a power." Both those incidents led to costly boycotts and violence, yet principle trumped expedience. Other Western leaders have faltered in defense of free expression. The governments of Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Israel, and the Netherlands have all attempted to or succeeded in jailing Rushdie-Rule offenders. The Obama administration has now joined this ignominious list. Its pressure on Mr. Jones further eroded freedom of speech about Islam and implicitly established Islam's privileged status in the United States, whereby Muslims may insult others but not be insulted. This moved the country toward dhimmitude, a condition whereby non-Muslims acknowledge the superiority of Islam. Finally, Mr. Obama in effect enforced Islamic law, a precedent that could lead to other forms of compulsory Shariah compliance. Mr. Obama should have followed Mr. Rasmussen's lead and asserted the principle of free speech. His failure to do so means Americans must recognize and resist further U.S. governmental application of the Rushdie Rules or other aspects of Shariah.
Related Topics: Freethinking & Muslim apostasy, Islamic law (Shari'a) Further Thoughts on Koran Burningby Daniel Pipes http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/09/koran-burning
Several additional points that did not fit into my column today, "'Rushdie Rules' Reach Florida": (1) In contrast to Terry Jones and his miniscule band, British Muslims twice burned copies of The Satanic Verses in pubic during 1988-89, attended by crowds of 1,000 and 7,000. One hardly needs point out that the government did not apply pressure on the ringleaders to desist out of fear of violence resulting. (2) In contrast to the permission to use the Bible as toilet paper, Muslims rioted, causing at least fifteen deaths, over an incorrect report in Newsweek that interrogators "flushed a Qur'an down a toilet" at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay. (3) The change in U.S. policy signaled in the Jones case fits a larger context of Obama administration willingness to shut down free discussion of Islam, as signaled by its endorsement of a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution proposed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. (4) By threatening Jones' life, Islamists also benefit by potentially bankrupting him. Pretty clever. Details from the Gainesville Sun:
(5) Several copycats did burn Korans on September 11, for example two pastors did so in Michigan, Tennessee, and Australia. The case of Derek Fenton got the most attention because a video of him burning pages turned up in YouTube and in consequence, his employer, the New Jersey Transit Authority, fired him. (6) In "Is Koran Burning Protected by Free Speech?" the Legal Project's Dan Huff looks at the legal implications of what he calls the "Petraeus defense":
(7) In "Terry Jones, Asymmetrical Warrior," David Goldman of First Things offers the most original take on this incident. "L'Affaire Jones demonstrated that a madman carrying a match and a copy of the Koran can do more damage to the Muslim world than a busload of suicide bombers.… What's the dollar value of the damage from a used paperback edition of the Koran, available online for a couple of dollars?" Goldman goes on to speculate that non-Muslim intelligence services might be drawing conclusions from the impact Jones had and might decide to use his methods to throw the Muslim world into chaos, then he offers some thoughts on what those initiatives could look like. (September 21, 2010) Related Topics: Freethinking & Muslim apostasy, Islamic law (Shari'a) Istinja' with the Torah and New Testamentby Daniel Pipes http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/09/defecation-torah-new-testament
My reference in a column today, "'Rushdie Rules' Reach Florida," included this sentence: "A 2003 decree ruled the Bible suitable for use by Muslims when cleaning after defecation." That allusion deserves further explanation. The link above goes to Fatwa #40378 of The Encyclopedia of Fatwas (Arabic: Mawsu'at al-Fatawi) on http://www.islamweb.net/. Issued on November 23, 2003, it contains the standard question-and-answer format of a fatwa and reads thus in English translation:
Interestingly, Fatwa #40378 is no longer posted at the Encyclopedia of Fatwas; an announcement on its old page drably states that "There is no fatwa with this number." The screen shot posted on my website, however, establishes that this fatwa was once posted. Fatwa #40378 appears to have been removed in late 2009, as a result of the Dena Milany controversy. Milany, a German woman, posted the fatwa in English translation and Arabic original, then posted a call on Facebook for a "koran toilet paper roll," complete with graphic of such an item. Muslims demanded the deletion of this page and the agitation reached to Egypt, where Sheikh Ali Abu'l-Hasan, a former president of Al-Azhar University's Fatwa Committee, published a fatwa (reported in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Yawm as-Sabi' on September 27, 2009) in which he ordered the "shedding of [her] blood." Milany responded by publicizing the above fatwa on her blog, http://denamilany.blogspot.com/. Despite its removal, the fatwa remains valid. Taking it down from the website does not cancel it; that would require that the institution that issued it formally declare it illegitimate. This has not happened because the Shari'a clearly permits istinja' with the Bible. Indeed, specialists on Shari'a have through the centuries discussed the legitimacy of istinja' using the Torah and New Testament. (September 21, 2010) Related Topics: Anti-Christianism, Antisemitism, Islamic law (Shari'a) This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL. | ||||||||||||||
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