Pakistan Militants Attack Christians Over Cartoons

[ECH1969]

More anti-Christain violence was expected in Pakistan Thursday, February 16, as deadly protests against published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad spread across the country.

At least five have been killed in protests this week, and on Thursday, February 16, tens of thousands of demonstators shouting "God is Great" marched though the southern Pakistan city of Karachi.

http://www.bosnewslife.com/news/1870-news-alert-pakistan-militants-attack-christia

[uppityperson]

1. I respect fundamentalists right to freedom of speech, not of action

You can protest, hell go protest and protest and protest and work to try to get things changed. But using violence is not the answer. Especially not the answer to caricatures of your group as a violent group.

[napi21]

2. Why are they attacking Christians? I thought they were mad

at Denmark for publishing the pics, and as far as I know, the Danes aren't considered real religious!

[coalition_unwilling]

3. Isn't Bush a Christian? (n/t)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. The violence is abhorrant

I believe it is being whipped up by small fundamentalist parties in Pakistan that are making a bid for more political power. I just wish we could have a way to let the Pakistanis who are rioting to know the full picture about this whole matter.

[megatherium]

5. Anti-Christian riots in a Muslim country where "blasphemy"

(disparagement of Islam or the Prophet) is a capital offense? How odd. :sarcasm:

[Bozita]

6. Saudi financed madrasses and this violence -- Is there a link?

[Igel]

11. Probably, but not necessarily.

Pakistan has its own homegrown repressive Islam, and the government helped it along by funding the madrassahs and pushing Islam as the way to distinguish itself from India. Haq especially, it seems, played to his base--the Muslim fundies. Qutb is a big name there, and I've seen an English-language newspaper or two even run series of excepts of his venom. Did I say "venom"? I meant "inspirational writings".

The Sa'udis are also in the mix, but the differences between them and the homegrown loons aren't especially important. Both are triumphalist and supremacist in nature, strict in their backwardness. I think that in the last couple of years foreign funding for Pakistani madressas has been illegal; at least there was a push for that, I'm not entirely sure it was made law.

[genie_weenie]

7. Always ask, "Who Benefits?"

ayeshahaqqiqa, has touched on this in numerous other threads covering this manufactured crisis. And points it out in this thread as well. Who gains from this and what do "they" gain?

[Igel]

12. And again, "Cui bono?" leads mostly to fallacies.

It presumes omniscience, near omnipotence, and completely rational self-interest on the part of everybody concerned, including the person asking the question.

I've seldom seen completely rational self-interest (as I'd define it), and I've certainly never seen anything approaching omniscience or the level of omnipotence necessary to make "cui bono?" a reasonable question. It can start the inquiry by generating leads--mostly false ones, maybe the right one, and quite possibly leading the investigator in a completely wrong direction--but gets no further to an answer by itself. It fails the "critical thinking" test.

Consider the Danish cartoons. Cui bono? Well, currently the Danes are cut out of the Muslim dairy market. Butter producers from other countries are reaping increased profits. By "cui bono?" logic, we'd have to suspect them.

Remember, always ask "Who benefits?" But don't take any answer you get seriously.

[enigami]

8. Ah, the religion of peace

[jahyarain]

9. yeah, but it applies across the board

the christian bible, the koran, and the torah say one thing in one passage, then the exact opposite in another. keeps 'em all confused and fearful of the others. there can never be an end to this ignorant violence until all these silly superstitions are eradicated. Peace

[Igel]

10. Of course.

Tradition Islamic jurisprudence for the last 1200 years has been communal. No different from the way the Klan operated: a black man gets too close to a white woman, and the entire community suffers. Makes humiliation easy and submission virtually guaranteed, because the minority or oppressed communities start to police their own.

This sort of thing isn't new. The little rampage in Beirut dropped out of the MSM with stunning speed. Most of the other occurrences in the last 1200 years of Islamic history are simply overlooked as irrelevant; similar occurrences in the Xian world are openly discussed and condemned, even by ardent Xians.

What's surprising is that any thinking person would be surprised by all this. Perhaps they bought the version of history written by the victors for public, face-saving, consumption, in which the many thousands of Jews and Xians killed by Muslims in revenge for imagined wrongs or injustices simply drop out of history.

The Xians did not submit properly; it's not "Danes" or "Italians" or "Americans"; think communally. Therefore, Xians must be subjected to pacification. And remember, the root of 'pacification' is 'pax', the Latin word for ... peace.

[genie_weenie]

13. BTW, your linguistics are showing...

but, I figured if you were going to go for a root word that is pertinent to this issue, you would choose Islam and it's roots in submission...