Pakistani girl accused of Qur’an burning could face death penalty

Guardian:

Tensions rise between Muslim and Christian communities amid claims that 11-year-old desecrated text

A Christian neighborhood in Islamabad

A Christian neighborhood in Islamabad. Around 900 Christians living on the city’s outskirts have been ordered to leave. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP

An 11-year-old Christian Pakistani girl said to suffer from a mental disorder could face the death penalty under the country’s notorious blasphemy laws, after she was accused by her neighbours of deliberately burning sacred Islamic texts.

Rifta Masih was arrested on Thursday, after complaints against her prompted angry demonstrations, and Asif Ali Zardari, the president, has ordered the interior ministry to investigate the case.

As communal tensions continued to rise, around 900 Christians living on the outskirts of Islamabad have been ordered to leave a neighbourhood where they have lived for almost two decades.

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The Price of a Koran

Sultan Knish:

What does a Koran cost? You can get a full color one for the Kindle for only 99 cents, just don’t expect it to feature any pictures of old Mo. If you want to go deluxe, you can get a hardcover edition that runs three different translations side by side for around 40 bucks. But if you want to be more practical about it, the price of a Koran is the lives of six American soldiers.

That butcher’s bill doesn’t count the soldiers who burned the Korans, who despite following procedure will be penalized on orders of the White House which thinks that punishing American soldiers will somehow satisfy the Koran fueled bloodlust of men who aren’t satisfied with their corpses.

The nature of the marketplace of human affairs is that a thing is worth what we will pay for it. Once upon a time Americans decided to pay any price for freedom. The price was high, but they got what they paid for… at least for a season or two. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were works of freedom written in blood. They made a free nation possible because that nation was willing to pay the price for them.

Muslims are equally willing to pay the price in blood for slavery, their own slavery and ours, for a book of slavery, written by an owner and abuser of slaves, who created a religion of slaves, where the optimal position was to stand on as many people as possible while reaching for heaven.

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H/T J Practical

Michael Coren on the destruction of the grave yard in Libya

I wonder. Is there a way to define the word ‘savage’ or ‘barbarian’ that would not apply to the way we have seen the Islamic world behave towards non-Muslims, towards Islamic and non Islamic women, between various sects of Islam and towards minority groups in majority Islamic areas? I would be interested to hear one if there is one.

Great example of the pathetic state of Western reportage.

Not one worthwhile question.

This video is from Friday on Finnish news about Kurdish Muslims demanding a new actionable law against koran burning…

At no point did the reporter ask even the most obvious questions. Two that come to mind immediately are, ‘Why should non-Muslims hold the koran as important to them? Isn’t it enough that you are allowed to hold it sacred to you in a non-Muslim land? or, ‘So if we do this, then you will protest for the open and free practice of Christianity and Judaism in Saudi Arabia including Mecca and Yathrib (Medina) and other Muslims countries?

I won’t hold my breath.

Thanks to Tundra T for the translation and video-tip

One thing is for sure. It would be great to find a way to make these Kurds go a whey

There is another way to look at Obama’s obsequiousness

Obama’s act of self flagellation, as well as his order to have the generals of the US army also castigate themselves before a murderous bunch of animal-raping misogynistic savages in Afghanistan and the rest of the Islamic world, is perceived by his critics as an act of surrender and appeasement. And certainly that is a likely reason for it as well as the notion that by doing so, one averts more hostility towards US and allied troops in Afghanistan.

The other possible explanation is that Obama is so utterly confident in his superiority to these people that he feels he and the other US commanders are in such a position of strength that the real cost of these acts of contrition are not measurable. And this might also be true. Despite the truth of all these analysis, it was the wrong thing to do.

The right thing would be to say that prisoners who defiled the Koran (if you buy into that narrative at all) by using it to write incendiary remarks or communicate plans to attack, or in fact the people who printed versions of the Koran, the implications being that Iran did it, with changed or modified text to create additional hostility towards non-Muslims, lose their privilege of having this fetid journal of a madman in their cells and they get burned. If they don’t like that, then don’t abuse the privilege of being allowed to have this crappy book in jail.

Why Apologize to Afghanistan?

National Review:

An anti-U.S. protest in Mehterlam, Afghanistan, February 23, 2012

Andrew C. McCarthy 

We have officially lost our minds.

The New York Times reports that President Obama has sent a formal letter of apology to Afghanistan’s ingrate president, Hamid Karzai, for the burning of Korans at a U.S. military base. The only upside of the apology is that it appears (based on the Times account) to be couched as coming personally from our blindly Islamophilic president — “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. . . . I extend to you and the Afghani people my sincere apologies.” It is not couched as an apology from the American people, whose frame of mind will be outrage, not contrition, as the facts become more widely known.

The facts are that the Korans were seized at a jail because jihadists imprisoned there were using them not for prayer but to communicate incendiary messages. The soldiers dispatched to burn refuse from the jail were not the officials who had seized the books, had no idea they were burning Korans, and tried desperately to retrieve the books when the situation was brought to their attention. 

Of course, these facts may not become widely known, because no one is supposed to mention the main significance of what has happened here. First, as usual, Muslims — not al-Qaeda terrorists, but ordinary, mainstream Muslims — are rioting and murdering over the burning (indeed, the inadvertent burning) of a book. Yes, it’s the Koran, but it’s a book all the same — and one that, moderate Muslims never tire of telling us, doesn’t really mean everything it says anyhow.

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SEVEN DIE IN KORAN BURN PROTESTS

Now it’s 20 dead.

Islam 101: Spilling blood is not offensive.

Seven die in Koran burning protests

At least seven people have been killed in protests around Afghanistan against the burning of Korans at a US air base.

The latest violence raised the total number of people killed since the protests broke out to 20.

The governor’s office in western Herat province said six died in three incidents there.

Three people were killed when a truck full of ammunition exploded after protesters set it ablaze. Three others died in two separate incidents when armed men among the protesters exchanged gunfire with security forces.

Another protester died when Afghan security forces fired in the air to prevent demonstrators from storming a Hungarian base in the north.

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Afghans protest over reported Koran desecration at U.S. base

Once again, Muslims show us that Islam is more of a fetish than a religion. “You hold this thing sacred for no reason other than I will hurt you if you do not” defines fetish. Religious people tend to hold things sacred because there is something of great personal value and meaning to them inside it.

YAHOO NEWS

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) – About 2,000 Afghans protested outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday over a report that foreign soldiers improperly disposed of copies of the Koran.

U.S. helicopters fired flares to try to break up as many as 2,000 demonstrators who massed outside several gates to the base, chanting anti-foreigner slogans and throwing stones.

Roshna Khalid, the provincial governor’s spokeswoman, said copies of the Muslim holy book had been burnt inside Bagram airbase, an hour’s drive north of the capital Kabul, citing accounts from local laborers.

“The laborers normally take the garbage outside and they found the remains of Korans,” Khalid said.

NATO’s top general in Afghanistan attempted to contain fury over the incident, which could be a public relations disaster for the U.S. military as it tries to pacify the country ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops in 2014.

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