Jones has folded, but thousands of Muslims continue to riot anyway. Just the thought of burning a Koran is enough to set them off. In 2005, as the article points out, Newsweek’s false story about the Koran being flushed down a prison toilet led to riots which killed 15 people and wounded many others.

KABUL, Afghanistan—(AP) Afghans set fire to tires in the streets and shouted “Death to America” for a second day Saturday despite a decision by an American pastor to call off plans to burn copies of the Islamic holy book.

The protests, the largest drawing a crowd estimated at more than 10,000 people, continued despite a decision by a Florida pastor to call off plans to burn copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States that triggered the war in Afghanistan.

…. In 2005, 15 people died and scores were wounded in riots in Afghanistan sparked by a story in Newsweek magazine alleging interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay placed copies of the Quran in washrooms and flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk. Newsweek later retracted the story.

LA replies:

A single obscure pastor in the U.S. plans to burn a Koran. The entire U.S. establishment—every public figure, every organization, every well known writer on Islamic issues—denounces the plan in the strongest possible terms. The American government, the local government, the bank, the ISP, everyone gangs up on this pastor and threatens to ruin his life if he burns a Koran.

And what do the Afghans say? “Death to America!”

Thus, in Muslim eyes, a single American person insulting Islam makes the entire American nation worthy of death.

Jake F. writes:

Thanks for your energetic posting on the Terry Jones situation. VFR is the web site to watch.

I focus on this thought: Our involvement with Muslims has put us in a situation where one person can perform one legal act and spark world-wide violence. (World-wide! Everywhere from Dearborn to Kabul!)

The solutions have ranged from “arrest the pastor” to “tear down his Web site, his church, and his bank account,” thereby revoking someone’s Constitutional rights because of the threat of violence, even the threat of violence by non-citizens outside of American borders.

Although only one man has gotten the publicity, it could be anyone. In a country of 300 million people, I’d bet you can find thousands who would. This whole situation could all happen again, every 9/11, every day, any time, forever—as long as we have troops overseas and Muslims in America.

If that’s really the situation we’re in, then wouldn’t it be better to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and encourage Muslims to leave America?

One liberal friend, on hearing this, said that we can’t encourage Muslims to leave America: “The cat’s already out of the bag.” I told him that if he really thinks that nothing can be done, he’d better buy his daughter a head scarf. That brought him up short, and we started discussing Shari’a and its incompatibility with the West. I think some of what I said made it through.

Jake F. continues:

Only after hitting “send” did I see your last post about the rioters in Afghanistan. We’re pointing out the same thing.

Bjorn Larsen writes:

The transference of a single blasphemous action of a single kuffir into the collective punishment of an entire community is standard practice under the laws of the dhimma. This is what we are now seeing when Pastor Joness threat to burn a Koran (yes! Kuffir version of “Qur’an”) turns into mob cries of “Death to America”.

LA replies:

Which in turn stems originally from Arab tribal/clan ethos. If one member of one tribe or clan harms or dishonors one member of another tribe or clan, the entire clan of the victim has been dishonored, and the entire clan of the perpetrator must be punished to remove the dishonor from the victim’s clan.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 11, 2010 12:39 PM | Send