It's not as though this is some kind of pattern...

It seems militant Muslims have something of a fetish for mutilating bodies.  Interestingly, Nick Berg was Jewish...as was Daniel Perle and the victims in this story: BODY-PART CHIC.  This begs the question: was Berg murdered because he was an American or because he was a Jew.  Does it matter?

10:09:27 PM    

Blood of Martyrs, Blood of Infidels

A 'Clash of Civilizations' may be underway in Iraq.  There is definitely a contest: who can be more depraved?  Right now, the Muslims are winning.

The muder of Nick Berg by decapitation at the hands of Arab terrorists follows the revelations of prisoner abuse at the hands of Army guards at the Abu Gharib prison.  It is specious, however, to question whether the one might have led to the other.  Terrorists have no need of such justifications to kill Americans.  They were doing it before Abu Gharib, and they will continue.  The real questions are harder.

I have known Muslims so peaceful, so profoundly decent, that any religion would be proud to raise them up as examples of the transformative experience of faith in God.  They believed, each of them, that bloodshed was always wrong.  There could be no martyrdom by suicide in the Islam they lived.  I now share some small portion of their anguish at being associated with the depravity of terrorism.  The jailors of Abu Gharib do not represent the America I know; they do not represent American ideals or our intentions and hopes for a transformed Iraq.  They represent the worst of what human beings are capable of doing when helpless individuals are placed entirely within their power -- and no one is looking.

There have been hundreds of protests across the Western world against the war in Iraq and millions have marched.  In a democracy, we can all respect each other's opinions and right to dissent -- even when we disagree vehemently with their premise and logic.  We also believe firmly that the light of public scrutiny is the only just response when our system fails in such terrible ways.  There will be inquiries and Congressional hearings into what went so terribly wrong at Abu Gharib.  The guilty will be punished. 

Where are the protests in the Muslim world against terrorism?  Where are the investigations, the public inquirires? It is their religion that is being maligned, their god in whose name these atrocities are being commited.  Where is their outrage? Why aren't they the first to denounce these atrocities when they occur?  How can they stay silent when the world is told that the degradations commited against Muslim men must be paid for by the blood of infidels?

I don't have an answer for that, but I do know that I have given up being an apologist for Islam.  Let Muslims make their own case.  If the murder of Nick Berg does not represent the true Islam, if his murderers are not true Muslims, then let Muslims be the first to denounce it.  What will the vaunted 'Arab Street' have to say about the graphic video of one man's blood being shed in involuntary atonement for the sins of Abu Gharib?

While they contemplate that, I think we as Americans -- especially those of us who are Christians, need to do our own introspection.  How is it that members of our society, our government, our Army could be capable of such depravity?  These were our classmates, our neighbors, our friends -- or at least not very different from those we know.  How could they turn out to be such monsters?  And if it could happen to them, if they could do these terrible things, then what about our own friends, our own family, our own children?

9:31:06 PM