(Nonie Darwish) - Could this be the real Arab Spring? This is huge! The Muslim world does not have to blame Pastor Terry Jones anymore for burning the Quran or non-Muslims for desecrating it. They are now in shock over seeing a YouTube post of an Egyptian young man doing the unthinkable on camera: tearing up the Quran and putting it in the trash.
This is a summery translation of what he said
- There it is, Allah's book, this is the basic catastrophe. I don't know what day it is of this disgusting month of Ramadan! You are making the tearing of the Quran such a big and dangerous thing.. it is instinctive to tear this book, those sons of ----- think they can threaten me and challenge me to tear the Quran, but I want to proof to them that they are nothing and what is the big deal in tearing this book!! There it is (he starts tearing the Quran) in the trash. Are you feeling better now! You cannot touch a hair in my head! We keep blaming Hamas and Gaza, but it is not them, it is this son of ----- book that I am stepping on right now. That book is the source of all evil and the real catastrophe. There is nothing new here, it is not Omar Abdel Rahman, Abbud or all the others, it is this garbage that is causing us to run in a demonic never-ending circle that will never end.
The young man's worlds were very insulting, but, unfortunately, this is the same language that Muslims commentators of this video use against him and against anyone who leaves Islam. The comments on this video are extremely violent and scary, and more insulting than anything this young man may have said in the video. This is the kind of language many Muslims use against any critique of Islam. I am very worried about this young man, who seems to be living in Egypt. There are hundreds of fatwas of death issued against him already, and the responses to the video threaten him: "I will kill you" or "I will cut your tongue, your ears, your arms and legs, like Mohammed, and leave you for dead."
Instead of giving religious visas to Islamists who come to build mosques in America and preach hate, the U.S. should immediately declare that anyone who leaves Islam and is threatened will get priority visa to the U.S., ahead of Islamists. American embassies across the Muslim world should stop giving religious visas, especially to those who are obviously Islamists, because by doing that, we are breeding our own home-grown terrorists inside America.
Throughout the history of Islam, many people were tortured, beheaded, limbs cut, jailed, ostracized -- and for as little as accidentally stepping on the Quran. The sharia punishment for blasphemy of the Quran and Mohammed is death, even if the perpetrator pleads that it was an accident and that he never meant to desecrate the Quran. There is a Filipino maid in the Arab Gulf who was jailed for accidentally sitting on a Quran which was on a sofa. Now the Muslim world is starting to face the nightmare of a new kind of challenge from within: Muslims deliberately challenging this taboo and putting their lives on the line.
Islamic customs have elaborate rituals giving the highest esteem to the book itself and physically protecting the Quran from any disrespect. I remember, as a child, placing a schoolbook on top of the Quran on a table -- my grandparents harshly scolded me for doing that. The message was often repeated over and over again to never, ever place anything visually or mentally on top of the Quran. In the same year the Arabs conquered the Christian city of Alexandria in Egypt, 639 AD, the Alexandria Library was burned, and the Quran became the one and only source of knowledge to the country. continue reading
