Tidy Bowl

Just what the world needs now is another reason for a billion Muslims to riot. Not that it takes a lot. I mean, thse folks are the most sensitive people outside of the Bubble Boy. And it's true, they have bad weather, a lot of nasty governments and retrograde social restrictions that would make anyone surly. But oh, do we have to stir the pot?

A recent item in Newsweek's "Periscope" news recap suggested that Muslim prisoners in Guantanomo were subjected to the sight of a Koran being dumped into a toilet. Compared with the standard torture being administered, apparently to little avail if the point is to catch Bin Laden or Zarqawi, this would seem a minor offense. But the insult was deemed so severe that it caused riots throughtout Muslimdom, leading to fifteen deaths in Afghanistan, a nation perhaps resentful that it's no longer the focus of American intervention, except to keep their poppies mowed under and their farmers idle and indigent.

After the hyper-reaction to this desecration, and some Condoleeza lip service to try to assuage the Saudi "allies," Newsweek eventually printed a mea culpa retraction. Definitely this was closing the barn door after the horses escaped. Arab hostiles were not impressed. Whether or not this happened, it was plausible, and just another Occidental slap-in-the-face. Now we're hated even more than ever, and not even an edition devoted solely to the Koran (which Newsweek actually has issued) could do anything to mollify the anger. It's a mess. So who's at fault here?

First, there's Newsweek itself. The editors should have been extremely careful, recognizing the incendiary potential of such charges, to verify them completely. They relied on assurances from the Pentagon (The Citadel of Truth) which now appear to have been as reliable as the old WMD guarantees that so embarrassed Colin Powell. On the other hand, I believe the event actually did happen. After Abu Ghraib, why should we doubt some military policeman's dunderheaded attempt at prisoner humiliation? But did they really, really have to report it?

Then there's American policy, still simpleminded and Christian-centric, believing in the sledgehammer approach to the entire terrorism problem. Bonk 'em on the head enough and they'll give. This is an extension of our condescending, polarized view of the entire Muslim world that has so enraged the Arabs that nothing we will say for the next twenty years, benign or condemnatory, will have any different reaction.

Then, of course, there are the Muslims themselves, whose spiritual beliefs hold them in such desperate thrall that they can't allow themselves to see any light but that which shines through the mosques. Sure, there are aspects of this religion that are as wise and humane and pacific as anything the daddy religions Judaism and Christianity could proffer. But they take this sprituality oh so damn seriously. What's with all the fatwas? Fatwa for this, fatwa for that. It's the 21st century and they're still lashing out at infidels. (Not that Christian fundamentalists are much of an improvement, but they are not precisely flinging out universal death sentences to everyone who commits a thought crime). And the stultifying rituals of this faith make Catholicism seem positively Unitarian. Hey people, get a life. Or at least, get a Reformation.
Isn't it enough that a few of your radicals set in motion events that will alter the course of American and world history, and not for the better? Lighten the fuck up, will you? It's only a book. It's only a mythology. There ain't no seventy-two virgins in Heaven. You won't even find seventy-two virgins in Syracuse. But at least there is a Syracuse.