Author: Dennis Prager
Publication: World Net Daily
Date: November 26, 2002
URL: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29790
This past week, Muslims in Nigeria
rioted. The reason for the beatings, and killings of Christians and the
torching of Christian churches; the West's reporting of these riots; and
the official Muslim reactions to the riots explain almost everything you
need to know about the threat non-Muslim civilization faces at this time.
To understand the threat the non-Muslim
world faces, you need to understand the reason for the Muslim riot.
Muslims in Nigeria, a country that
is about half Muslim, opposed the presence of the Miss World pageant in
their country. They condemned the pageant's "nudity" and its "encouraging
of promiscuity."
In an article on the Muslim opposition,
on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2002, the popular Nigerian newspaper ThisDay (almost
half of whose staff is Muslim), published a piece by one of its reporters,
journalist Isioma Daniel. In the piece she wrote, "The Muslims thought
it was immoral to bring 92 women to Nigeria and ask them to revel in vanity.
What would Muhammad think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen
a wife from one of them. The irony is that Algeria, an Islamic country,
is one of the countries participating in the contest."
To most of us, this paragraph is
utterly innocuous, insulting of no one and no faith. To many Muslims, however,
it was more than insulting. It was blasphemy.
Though the management and editor
of ThisDay immediately and profusely apologized in print day after day,
"Islamic fundamentalists gathered after prayers outside the national mosque
in Abuja, then marched through the city chanting 'God is Great' and burning
cars, churches and houses. They also burned down the offices of ThisDay,
despite a groveling apology from the paper" (The Sunday Herald, Scotland).
As reported in the Nigerian press (The Vanguard, Lagos) "Muslim youths
chanting 'Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar' God is great, God is great, brandishing
swords, cutlasses, knives, cudgels and other dangerous implements faced
some churches, hotel (sic) and other known Christian places of businesses
which they razed."
Christians counterattacked, and
as of this writing, over 200 Nigerians are dead, some burned alive in gasoline-soaked
tires.
To understand the threat the non-Muslim
world faces, you need to understand the way in which Western news agencies
report Islamic violence.
Blame is almost never placed on
the Muslim rioters. Rather, the passive voice, "violence broke out," is
regularly used, and Muslims and Christians are simply reported to be killing
each other in "sectarian violence." The Voice of America news report actually
identified with the Muslim rioters: "The riots were sparked after a newspaper
published an article mocking the Islamic leaders' protest."
It is crucial to identify this each-side-is-at-fault
reporting. It characterizes world news organizations' descriptions of Arab-Israeli
violence as well. Just as in Nigeria, where the press blames "sectarian
violence" rather than Muslim rioters, in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the
press blames a "cycle of violence" rather than Muslim terrorists.
To understand the threat to the
non-Muslim world, you must understand the official Muslim reaction to the
Muslim rioters in Nigeria.
One would think that leaders of
any great religion would condemn members of their faith who murdered innocent
people, destroyed others' houses of worship and homes, and burned down
a newspaper's offices.
Yet in all the statements made by
Nigeria's leading Muslim officials in the Nigerian press, I could not find
a word of condemnation of the Muslim murderers. The Muslim leaders called
for calm after accepting the newspaper's abject apologies. But the leaders
made it clear that they, not only the Muslim rioters, consider the original
article a grave insult to Islam. In fact, they compared the woman who wrote
it to Salman Rushdie, whose death sentence they reaffirmed.
So here's where we stand:
Nigerian Muslim rioters murder innocent
Nigerians and burn down over 20 churches because of an innocuous sentence
in a Nigerian newspaper.
The West and its press choose to
regard the Nigerian violence as merely "sectarian violence," and hold Nigerian
Christians equally culpable.
Muslims kill non-Muslims and the
victims (i.e., the editors of the newspaper whose offices were razed) are
told to apologize - just as after 9-11, America has been repeatedly told
to apologize to the Muslim world, and just as Israel, while enduring massacre
after massacre at the hands of Muslim terrorists, is told to apologize
for defending itself.
Nigerian Muslim leaders do not say
a word against their murderous co-religionists, but they do declare one
innocuous sentence by a young woman writer to be an "abomination."
The woman who wrote the sentence
has been fired.
The editor of ThisDay has been arrested
and not been heard from since. One fears for his life. And ours.
(Dennis Prager, one of America's
most respected and popular nationally syndicated radio talk-show hosts,
is the author of several books and a frequent guest on television shows
such as Larry King Live, Politically Incorrect, The Late Late Show on CBS,
Rivera Live, The Early Show on CBS, Fox Family Network, The O'Reilly Factor
and Hannity & Colmes.)
