More new martyrs

  • Appar­ently I was wrong about there not being any new riots, though there weren’t any going on when I wrote yesterday’s entry. The Car­toon Jihad in Pak­istan:

    Else­where in the Mus­lim world on Sun­day, demon­stra­tors with wooden staves and stones tried unsuc­cess­fully to storm the U.S. Embassy in Indone­sia, while tens of thou­sands ral­lied in the Turk­ish city of Istan­bul and com­plained about neg­a­tive West­ern per­cep­tions of Islam.

    Com­plained about neg­a­tive West­ern per­cep­tions of Islam?? I would still be con­sid­er­ing the irony of that state­ment if the next para­graph hadn’t made me for­get all about it:

    Troops patrolled the deserted streets of the north­ern Niger­ian town of Maid­uguri, where thou­sands of Mus­lims attacked Chris­tians and burned churches Sat­ur­day, killing at least 15 peo­ple dur­ing a protest over the car­toons. Most of the vic­tims were beaten to death by rioters.

    And via Drudge:

    Chris­tians also have become tar­gets. Pak­istani Mus­lims protest­ing in the south­ern city of Sukkur ran­sacked and burned a church Sun­day after hear­ing accu­sa­tions that a Chris­t­ian man had burned pages of the Quran, Islam’s holy book.

    The Mus­lims are try­ing like mad to pick a fight. Appar­ently, they’re under the impres­sion that Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism won’t be able to sur­vive intact against pas­sive but per­va­sive sec­u­lar mate­ri­al­ism (which, as I said, I think they’ve got right). Faced with change and a kind of extinc­tion, they want to fight. The sec­u­lar world won’t fight the reli­gious war they’ve got in mind. But if Mus­lim rad­i­cals start attack­ing Chris­tians in great num­bers, the bat­tle switches from Mus­lim vs. sec­u­lar West to Mus­lim vs. Chris­t­ian. (John Mark Reynolds has a much more informed and inter­est­ing take on this HERE, which I think I’ll try to take on in a later entry.)

    These are the things that Touch­stone usu­ally includes under the head­ing “The Suf­fer­ing Church.” Lord, have mercy.

    Here, via Michelle Malkin, is an inter­ac­tive map of the areas of the world where the riots have taken place.

    Oh, and by the way, if this all seems too dis­tant and removed, here’s the story that doesn’t seem to merit much space in the papers: 10 Bap­tist churches burned in Alabama


    Related posts:

    1. Is this what the [bleep] is going on?
    2. Mus­lim cul­ture clash — what hap­pens now?
    3. Car­toon rage, cont.
    4. No room at the inn. Or the megachurch.
    5. Gosh. Can’t they take a joke?

    February 19th, 2006 | Grace | No Comments |

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required