Posted on 06/05/2005 10:04:35 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Over the last few weeks, Afghanistan has been in the news again--unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. The media pack has made a brief reappearance in Afghanistan to report on carefully staged "spontaneous" riots, which briefly erupted around the country, ostensibly in protest over a report in Newsweek (later retracted) about desecration of Koran.
Sadly, in the rush of commentary about Afghanistan's slide into anarchy and America's deteriorating position in Kabul, most of the international media again missed or downplayed many other stories, some of them arguably far more consequential than an antigovernment rampage whipped up by opponents of President Hamid Karzai. Take this story:
A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai. The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September.
Symbolically, the ulema shura, or council of clerics, was held at the Blue Mosque in the southern city of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban movement.
At the same venue in 1996 the Taliban leader held up a cloak said to belong to the Prophet Mohammed, which is kept in a shrine in the mosque. He was proclaimed Amir ul-Mumineen or Leader of Muslims by the same clerical body, one of the few occasions the title has been granted anywhere in the Islamic world in the modern era.
This important gathering and its implications were reported by only a handful of news outlets around the world--
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Those monumental hypocrites destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas because they were "idolatrous". But when you see the video snippet of Omar with that ridiculous dirty rag of "Mohammed", the brain-damaged and demented Taliban are bowing and scraping and keening before it in an obviously "idolatrous" fashion.
The Islamists and the Taliban are contemptible, but also so patently looney as to be a wonderment.
As Dick Cheney said in his brilliant interview on Larry King Live last week, the fools in Afghanistan (remnants of the Taliban) attacked an Afghan Cultural Center in Jalalabad after hearing about the Newsweek koran-toilet article. They burned the whole cultural center to the ground. It had contained four hundred very fine copies of the Koran!
Cheney cracked his fabulous, funny little crooked smile at Larry King, and quipped, "They destroyed over 400 rare copies of their Koran over false reports of one mass-produced copy having gone into a toilet at Guantanamo Bay."
How "out there" can these people be?!
Char :)
Perhaps I'm coldhearted, but I actually salute Newsweek for its bogus Koran stories. A dozen or 15 fewer whackjob Islamists walking the planet is a big plus, IMHO.
In fact I think Newsweek should do a regular column, "Koran Defilements Of The Month," e.g. "Koran Used As Doorstop", "Koran Used To Blow Nose", "Koran Mocked By American Grammar School Students."
With the resulting Islamist hysteria and self-directed bloodletting, perhaps 20 or even 50 nutcase whacko Islamists might self-martyr every month, or even more often. Newsweek would thus be doing the civilized world a great favor.
Which makes me wonder in the first instance whether Newsweek was in fact doing the bidding of dark and evil forces within "the CIA."
Think about it. Ha ha.
Yes, but the one in Guantanamo was probably one of the Saudi-backed CAIR approved versions. The Korans that were destroyed in Afghanistan were undoubtedly old ones with elaborate calligraphic writing and even color and even gilding that are routinely confiscated from pilgrims to Mecca and destroyed. The Saudis see these beautiful old Korans as representing an un-Islamic emphasis on aesthetics.
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