East is East and West is West

The leaders of the Islamic ummah have gathered in a rare display of unity to express at the United Nations General Assembly their outrage over what they claim is a rising tide of unsuppressed and hatefully malicious slander against Islam.  What is sacred to Islamic sensibilities must not be taken in light vein by non-Muslims.  As in 'show some respect'.

The United Nations headquarters in New York, where Muslim leaders demanded international action to stop religious insults. (Reuters)

 

Which would be entirely reasonable under different circumstances.  Should not those who hold their faith in such high regard restrain themselves from offering death as a consequence to those whose words they find compellingly offensive?  Verbal abuse in exchange for violent death.  The verbal abuse is insufferable, and completely at fault, causing the pious to respond in such a viciously violent manner.

"Death to America", spoken with passion and a wish to visit instant death on any whom a mob approaches that appear to resemble Americans is excusable, evidently.  Passions have been aroused, and the result of that provocation must be severe.  Mutilation and death are quite severe.  That many Islamic countries have laws that discipline those who take the name of the Prophet or Islam in vain, or who secede from Islam, and thus become fodder for a death sentence is seen as abhorrent in the West.

But Western laws that disallow inhibitions and prohibitions on free speech are held by Islamic countries to represent decadence, a total failure of control and justice, as they know it.  It is just and meet that anyone defying the supremacy of Islam, anyone who has the unmitigated gall to point out the obvious, that too many of its adherents subscribe to violent jihad and irrational notions of martyrdom, be held accountable to Islamic law.

The exculpatory protection of free speech at the price of harming the emotional stability of fanatics is held to be a shield for hatred of Islam, according to Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who claims it is 'time to put an end' to the protection of Islamophobia 'masquerading' as the freedom to speak freely.  Why might that be so, when Muslims continually speak freely of their utter contempt of any religion other than Islam?

When it is common for a majority Muslim society to inflict real harm on minority religion worshippers in their midst.  When fanatical Muslims seek to injure Christians living among them, and see nothing awry in destroying the religious symbols that Christians or other religionists hold sacred?
When churches are destroyed or ancient Buddha statues, does the Muslim national hierarchy issue a stern condemnation?

For that matter, do the kings and tyrants and tycoons and generals gather themselves in outraged condemnation of Islamists slaughtering Muslims?  Have they reached a general agreement on being forthcoming in indicting the Syrian regime for its conduct of war against its own?  Have they urged Iran to speak less menacingly against the existence of a non-Muslim country in a Muslim geography? 

The 193-nation General Assembly heard out the outraged plaints of Turkey and Egypt among others. "Egypt respects freedom of expression, freedom of expression that is not used to incite hatred against anyone.  We expect from others, as they expect from us, that they respect our cultural specifics and religious references, and not impose concepts or cultures that are unacceptable to us", decried the new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi.

But that is precisely the point; Muslim societies like that of Egypt do indeed attempt to impose concepts/cultures that are unacceptable to non-Muslims.  The film, Innocence of Muslims, that has so enraged Muslims was produced by an Egyptian-American Christian Copt, whose experience in Egypt was such that he vented his hatred and frustration in the crudely offensive manner that he did.  It is the Muslim attitudes and behaviour toward other religions that has propelled this activity.


Their righteously outraged stance at being victimized does not reflect reality.


And while the Western leaders at the United Nations have exhorted Muslim countries to foster democratic reforms and respect and uphold human rights and basic freedoms, they cannot and will not respond positively to calls by Muslim leaders for the United Nations to agree to an international ban on blasphemy.  A ban that would reflect the anger of Islam against the West.  Where Islam bears no responsibility for itself.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in whose country over a dozen people have been killed in those anti-Islam film protests was among those demanding criminalization of insults to religion (Islam).  The film represented another "ugly face" of religious persecution according to Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, insisting "Freedom of expression is therefore not absolute", quoting from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that "everyone must observe morality and public order".

King Abdullah II of Jordan, disparaged the film, and the violence that followed.  President Zardari demanded UN action: "Although we can never condone violence, the international community must not become silent observers and should criminalize such acts that destroy the peace of the world and endanger world security by misusing freedom of expression."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke both of the video and the latest incarnation of cartoons in France satirizing the Prophet Mohammed, terming the insults as representing the "depravity of fanatics", a phrase that neatly fits the reactions of the ravening Muslim mobs, destroying, looting, burning, beating and killing.  

But to him and to the 56-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, "Such acts can never be justified as freedom of speech or expression".

"The menace of Islamophobia" he claimed, represents "a worrying phenomenon that threatens peace and co-existence."  And here we were of the apprehended belief that the menace of Islamism represented a worrying phenomenon threatening peace and co-existence around the Globe. 

Clearly, a polarizing perspective of East and West.