NY Times
Look in Your Mirror
By _THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html)
Published: 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?” Mr. Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker, was holding up
a
handwritten sign in English that read: “Shut Up America.” “Obama is the
president, so he should have to apologize!”
I read several such comments from the rioters in the press last week, and I
have a big problem with them. I don’t like to see anyone’s faith
insulted, but we need to make two things very clear — more clear than
President
Obama’s team has made them. One is that an insult — even one as stupid and
ugly as the anti-Islam video on YouTube that started all of this — does not
entitle people to go out and attack embassies and kill innocent diplomats.
That is not how a proper self-governing people behave. There is no excuse
for it. It is shameful. And, second, before demanding an apology from our
president, 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. There are
people in their countries for whom hating “the other” has become a source
of identity and a collective excuse for failing to realize their own
potential.
_The Middle East Media Research Institute_ (http://www.memri.org/) , or
Memri, was founded in 1998 in Washington by Yigal Carmon, a former Israeli
government adviser on counterterrorism, “to bridge the language gap between
the Middle East and the West by monitoring, translating and studying Arab,
Iranian, Urdu and Pashtu media, schoolbooks, and religious sermons.” What I
respect about Memri is that it translates not only the ugly stuff but the
courageous liberal, reformist Arab commentators as well. I asked Memri for a
sampler of the hate-filled videos that appear regularly on Arab/Muslim
mass media. Here are some:
ON CHRISTIANS 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.” _http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1528.htm_
(http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1528.htm) — 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.
_http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5200.htm_
(http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5200.htm) — 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),
_http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/992.htm_
(http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/992.htm) — Dec.
16, 2005.
ON SHIITES 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.” _www.memritv.org/clip/en/3466.htm_
(http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3466.htm) — June 13, 2012.
The Egyptian Cleric Mazen al-Sirsawi: “If Allah had not created the
Shiites as human beings, they would have been donkeys.”
_http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3101.htm_
(http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3101.htm) — Aug. 7, 2011.
The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan video series: “The Shiite is a Nasl
[Race/Offspring] of Jews.”
_http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6208.htm_
(http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6208.htm) — March 21, 2012.
ON JEWS Article on the Muslim Brotherhood’s Web site praises jihad against
America and the Jews: “The Descendants of Apes and Pigs.”
_http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6656.htm_
(http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6656.htm) — 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.” _http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6557.htm_
(http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6557.htm) — Aug. 1, 2012.
Dr. Ismail Ali Muhammad, a senior Al-Azhar scholar: The Jews, “a source of
evil and harm in all human societies.”
_http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6086.htm_
(http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6086.htm) —
Feb. 14, 2012.
ON SUFIS 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. _http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19380083_
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19380083) — Aug. 26, 2012.
As a Jew who has lived and worked in the Muslim world, I know that these
expressions of intolerance are only one side of the story and that there are
deeply tolerant views and strains of Islam espoused and practiced there as
well. Theirs are complex societies.
That’s the point. America is a complex society, too. But let’s cut the
nonsense that this is just our problem and the only issue is how we clean up
our act. That Cairo protester is right: We should respect the faiths and
prophets of others. But that runs both ways. Our president and major
newspapers consistently condemn hate speech against other religions. How about
yours?
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
