I saw this article on the murder of Shi’ah in Karachi a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t want to do another article on Muslim-on-Muslim violence; they weren’t anything new. Last night, I had a conversation with a friend and something occurred to me: Pakistan is a Muslim country, at least 99% of the population is Muslim. There are some Christians, and the Ahmadis (different post) were declared non-Muslim, otherwise the assumption is that everyone in Pakistan is a Muslim. The Ahmadiyya situation indicates that the Sunni majority could work to legally have the Shi’ah declared non-Muslim, like in Saudi Arabia. What sense does the violence make? Then it dawned on me, that the people who are killing other Muslims are insecure in their own Islam, and the easiest way to become secure in that identity is to destroy all differences. The question is do the perpetrators of these acts see others as being more secure/comfortable in their Islam? What is the difference that is so challenging? Or is difference enough to instigate this level of violence? This rhetoric is that of Wahabbism, the Taliban and Osama. There is only one version of Islam, and it is each of their’s and they need to destroy all other understandings of Islam, including each other’s.
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The Cost of War
Haroon links to some goodness on Afghanistan. The Atlantic has an email from Afghanistan. Nick Kristof on building schools. The New Yorker on the individual cost of war for an Iraqi veteran. The New Yorker also had a moving photoessay on the cost of war. The photo below is from the series. It’s same photo Colin Powell mentioned in his Obama endorsement.
Disturbing and Sad
A film that might prove objectionable to some is not being released. Now I understand that this is not a universal rejection, just in the South, and there are commercial interests involved. However, from commercial interests to implicit censorship is not a far stone’s throw. We saw it with Buster the Rabbit. How far will this go? At what point to stop being creative for fear of offending? At what point do we stop being thought provoking? At what point do we become soylent green?
600,000
The latest study puts over 600,000 Iraqi civilians dead since the occupation began (here and here). It’s a good thing we don’t believe in science or facts (and more and more it seems we don’t believe in God), otherwise we might be concerned. [editor’s note:] The “we” refers to us as Americans, not just the members of islamicate. Technorati Tags: Iraq