Why Muslims Think Muslims Riot

The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published a series of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad. . .

. . . including two showing him naked.  An obscure US film insulting the Prophet was translated into Arabic and circulate throughout the Arabic world (but not in Saudi Arabia) by the Saudis,.

Following, there have been some demonstrations in 20 Muslim countries, and some people, including a US ambassador, have been killed.

These two insults to the prophet are said  have produced the demonstrations.

From The Guardian, September 12, 2012:

Condemning the publication of the cartoons in France as an act verging on incitement, Egypt's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, said on Thursday it showed how polarized the west and the Muslim world had become.

Muhammad and his companions had endured "the worst insults from the non-believers of his time", he wrote on the Reuters blog Faith World.

"Not only was his message routinely rejected, but he was often chased out of town, cursed and physically assaulted on numerous occasions.

"But his example was always to endure all personal insults and attacks without retaliation of any sort. There is no doubt that, since the prophet is our greatest example in this life, this should also be the reaction of all Muslims."

•  •  •  •

Gomaa said insults to Islam and the response, including the killing of the US ambassador in Libya and attacks on other western embassies in the region, could not be dissociated from other points of conflict between the west and the Muslim world.

He cited the treatment of Muslims at the US detention centre in Guantánamo Bay  the US-led war in Iraq, drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, and the denomination  of Muslims by far-right European parties as "underlying factors" for the tension. [Emphasis added]

Well, maybe so.   You have to love a country deeply to be truly angry with it.  Folks in Cairo don't know the US, they know a cartoon of it; the anger reflected in the Muslim demonstations have a theatrical quality, and were easily put down by authorities. (The well-executed attack on our consulate in Benghazi is another matter.)

I, am a Unites States citizen: I denounce the horrendous prison at Guantanamo Bay and also the one at Pelican Bay, just sas bad, with its non-judicial solitary confinement for life; the cruel and blunderous Iraq war that hurt Iraqis so badly and even now harms US interests. Drone strike in Yemen are another matter; not as bad as an innovation of Yemen, which we could still do, and not as good as cooperating with the Southern Secessionist Movement

So I don't  accept the good Worthy's assessment uncritically.

Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa was appointed to his high position by the dictator and friend of the US, Hosni Mubarak, in September 2003.  Google does not report anti-West sentiments by Gomaa until it became obvious that his patron would fall.  Then he became sympathetic with the "youthful demonstrators".  Gomaa focuses on Western flaws and faials to mention Mulim ones:  the grossly unfair treatment of it's women and the murder by hanging of  Gay men; depositing horded billions of dollars "safely" rather than investing them in jobs that could feed their people; the ungracious ignoring of billions of aid the West has praovide to the Muslim world.

We all see the world through prisoms; no reason to expect a High Religious Eminence to be better than the average run of mankind.

∼  ∼  ∼

The Web images, in the main, remind me of youthful pranks I might have  joined with glee when I was 18.

Some of the images below are tragic, some are hurtful, some defiantly disrespectful of the all-powerful West and Israel (What fun that must be, and at what little personal cost to most!), some are dignified, some are of bravery, but mostly they are of youngmen letting offf long-pent-up steam.

Here are some of riot images I like, mostly from Cairo.  I like them for a variety of reasons, some artistic, and some you won't like, for reasons of misplaced patriotism:

Male bonding, Cairo

From The Guardian:  Pakistani soldiers hold back 

Muslim protesters shouting anti-US slogans 

as they attempt to reach the US embassy 

during a demonstration against

 the anti-Islam film 

in Islamabad. 

Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Image

Outside the US Embassy in Yemen.  From VIN, The Voice of the Jewish  Orthodox Community."  

Yemeni hvve a special 

reason for disliking the US 

which hass to do with 

tribes, abuse of power,  

and an instinct for democracy.  

More in a different  blog.

Pakistan

Sudan

Outside the US Consultate in Libya.  

Some, like this image, have been blogged so many times 

that I can't tell its origin.

Sudan.  Someone is  preparing to burn someone's flag, 

and others are intent on stopping him.  

Explain, please.

Pakistani lawyers, no doubt.

India.  Don't know who is depicted with Hussein.  

Looks artificial and posed.

Said to be Bagdad or in Pakistan.  

My kinda guys.  I loved climbing flag poles. . . when I was young.

Cairo

Cairo

Pakistan

London.  Perhaps a Londoner standing near by would hold a sign:

"Muslims, Keep out of  English lands",

but that would be boorish.  I have a button from the 60s:  

"US Out of North America."  

I guess is was only partly a  joke.

Cairo.  A Baroque image.

Mannerly Irrnians

Yemen at our embassy gates.  

Note that there are no images from

 the Horrible Saudis, 

because public displays of  anything at all 

are prohibited.

Bad boys playing with fire.

Somalia.  Somebody is abut to burn a flag,

 others are bent on stopping him.  

What's going on here?

In my dreams,

this would be me.

Salafis, Shiites,Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Battle for Syria

The New York Times today, with a magnificent and disturbing set of photographs, reports on the rapid deterioration of sanity in Syria.

The crowd beating a suspected government agent.

The Times notes

In interviews last week, some residents of Homs, including several Christians and Alewives, expressed fears that hard-line Sunnis known as Salafis were forming armed groups and stoking violence.

My concern is that the Saudis are financing armed, jihadist rebellion in Syria, in opposition the interests of the majority of those who hope for a peaceful, nonsectarian transition of government.. The Times article notes

One prominent leftist activist in Homs, heeding the concerns, said he was pressing his fellow activists to renounce the armed movement and stick to peaceful protests.

If Wikipedia has it right,

Salafis often appeals to younger Muslims as a way to differentiate themselves from the beliefs of parents and grandparents because it is seen as a way to get weapons and militant training. 

A majority of Salafi scholars stand firmly with the present-day manifestations of jihad, particularly as it relates to terrorism and the killing of civilians and innocents. They hold their opinion against as:

"No individual has the right to take the law into his own hands on any account. Even the closest of Prophet Muhammad's companions never killed a single of his opponents even when invectives were hurled at him day and night in the first thirteen years of his Da'wah at Makkah. Nor did they kill anyone in retaliation when he was pelted with stones at Ta'if."

In recent years, Salafis have come to be associated with the jihad of Al-Qaeda and related groups that advocate the killing of civilians, which are opposed by most other Muslim groups and governments, including the Saudi government. Debate continues today over the appropriate methods of reform, ranging from violent "Qutubi jihadism" to lesser politicized proselytizing. 

Salafism differs from the earlier contemporary Islamic revival movements of the 1970s and 1980s commonly referred to as Islamism, in that (at least many) Salafis reject not only Western ideologies such as Socialism and Capitalism, but also common Western concepts like economics, constitutions, political parties and revolution. 

Salafis promote that the Sharia (Islamic law) takes precedence over civil or state law.

Egyptian scholar Tawfik Hamid says that Salafist Muslim fundamentalists believe that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift, and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by God. Thus this extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from the Saudi Arabia to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia. He says "is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys."

It is, in the Sunni mind, the Shiites, mostly concentrated in Iran, who are the Apostates who should be killed.  Nasr, The Shia  Revival.  Iran is surrounded by a great sea of Sunni.

Mr. Assad, the dictator  of Syria, is an Alawite.  Many Muslims do not think of Alawites as Muslim., the the religion has a number of Christian celebrations; Easter, for example.  And though a majority of the Syrian population is Sunni, the population is mixed.  There are other important groups -- Christian, Druze, Kurdish, and others.


I fear that the Saudis, with their trillions of dollars and their evangelical, fundamentalist religion which they impose on all they can control, in their paranoia, wish to see Syria turn into a fundamentalist Salafi state because they fear and despise Shiites, Jews, and liberated women; and the Iranians wish to see Syria in Alawite hands and aligned with them, to protect it from the overwhelming mass of surrounding Sunni.

Iraq hangs in the balance.

Thee is a lot at stake.



Here are some images of Salafi, at work and play (their kind of play).

A mural for Somali Salafi

Salafi at the beach

An Egyptian Salafi goalie

Just kidding. Just kidding.

Tank-top Salafi in Lebanon, preparing for Syria

Teaching young Salafi to be, er, Men

A Salafi, er, Man

Respected women's fashions

Disrespected women's fashions

Miss Saudi Arabia