On Friday 2004-04-02 16:07, Erik Reuter wrote: > On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 12:55:41PM -0700, Trent Shipley wrote: > > The mutilation of American bodies was a very *intentional* insult. > > The desecration needs to be understood from the perspective of > > an honor system rather than any pure form of Islam. If you felt > > humilated and shamed when Falujis desecrated American dead then you > > got the intended message loud and clear: "We hate Americans and hold > > them in utter contempt. By desecrating your dead we show that our > > hatered is so great that even the standards of civilization and God's > > religion cannot contain it." > > > > (So symbolically, you must first realize that the gesture of > > descrating the dead is *explicitly* un-Islamic to appreciate the > > enormity of what happened.) > > So, are you suggesting that they aren't very religious? Or that they are > very religious, but expressing their hate for Americans in the strongest > manner they can think of takes precedence over the disgrace of breaking > the rules of Allah?
I expect that most participants would think of themselves as believers in Islam. It is very likely that they would tell journalists they are believers. Surely they think of themselves as Muslims in the context of Arab-American conflict and (from their perspective) intolerable American imperialism. Whether the participants, as a population, are irrelligious or very religious cannot be answered without more detailed information. Also, framing the question an "either irreligious or very religious" is to put forth a false dichotomy. Nevertheless, the participanting population surely were in some meaningful sense Muslim. Therefore, understanding the desecration of corpses as an expression of hatred for Americans even at the cost of disgracing oneself before God must be understood as a reasonable interpretation of the recent events in Faluja. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
