Indisputably Barbaric Acts

"The council strongly condemns the heinous, inhumane, barbaric act of disrespecting the Koran and other religious books by American forces in Bagram base."

The Ulema Council of Afghanistan has insisted: "That such a devilish act is not forgivable by apologies and that the perpetrators of this crime should soon be publicly tried and punished." It does not, obviously, represent barbarity to infuse people with rage and encouraging them to congregate and mount attacks on Americans as representatives of those who despicably degrade the Koran.

The learned council members have no interest whatever in hearing an explanation that would inform them that the five identified military men who had begun the incineration of desecrated copies of the Koran - desecrated not by them but by Afghans who had been held in incarceration and to whom the copies had been given so they could freely practise their faith - had no idea until they began to burn, what they represented.

Barbarity is seen to represent disrespect offered to a sacred tome. Which is to say a book sacred to Islam. Which same tome, the Koran, urges in various parts, that human life be respected, not eliminated. However, it is seen as a duty by all those of the faith to uphold the values and virtues of Islam by responding with blazing, righteous, violent rage when it is perceived that the sacred text has been desecrated.

Have they turned on those Afghans who took it upon themselves casually to deface the pages of the Koran by inscribing it with jihadist messages? The truth is the response against American soldiers, and widened to include all foreign elements in Afghanistan as suitable targets for revenge, represents an opportunity for the people to express the hatred instilled in them from childhood, of all foreigners on their soil.

The five American soldiers will receive a reprimand, one suited to the occasion of men having been tasked to clear away detritus and mistaking abused texts for additions to the waste pile to be destroyed, not reflective of a crime against Islam. The Islamists within the country may continue to demand the death penalty for these foreign destroyers of a symbol of the divine, for this is how justice is delivered to their own, but it obviously does not extend beyond their borders.

It is hardly conceivable that relations between NATO and ISAF and Afghanistan and Pakistan could deteriorate any more than it already has managed to descend to. Heritage, culture, religion, social mores and values are all so radically different from one half of the equation to the other that, steeped in the quagmire of war, suspicion and hatred could never be allayed.

The Ulema Council, representing Afghanistan's top religious council, demanding a public trial take place to satisfy their rabidly zealous piety, makes few inroads into reasonable interaction between cultures and religions. Tribal and religious strife between Afghans themselves, to which the West has dedicated its men, resources and treasury to help resolve, has more than adequately demonstrated that there is no meeting of minds and values.

It is past time to exit that culture that worships a divinity that its faithful believe demands they execute those who do not.