We have another story of a Muslim mob murdering a person for offending Islam. A woman named Farkhunda, 32, in Kabul had reportedly burned a copy of the Koran inside a riverside shrine. She was then set upon by a huge mob that burned her alive and then threw her into the Kabul river. This was deemed the moral response to an immoral act by the crowd. [Update: It turns out that the accusations against Farkhunda may be untrue and that she was actually defending what she viewed as the degrading act of selling amulets in a mosque when she was attacked]
Four people have been arrested by the crowd watching and encouraging this despicable act was so large that they broke the railing of the shrine itself in pushing forward for a better look.
The murder occurred in the very capital of Afghanistan at the Shah-Do Shamshira mosque.
Source: La Times
We agree w/ the atheists pathology.
Juris, I was not referring to you.
Is that all it takes to push a normal muslim over the edge?
Well, I got my barf bag ready and read Mespo’s link. I found this little tidbit:
Fundamentalis[m] derives from the very human need for order in a chaotic world and represents an attempt to create uniformity and hence predictability where there is none. Those goals–not evils in and of themselves — provide an irresistible siren’s song to those who would impose their will over others and thereby enhance their own standing. a religious “will to power” as Nietzsche might say. Thus, the lamentable perversion of a concept of generalized good in service to individual avarice and power mongering.
Gee, that definition would apply to the Democratic Party’s various positions on things. For example, the poverty in the Black community is presumed to be the result of racism, not more controllable stuff like marriages and legitimate offspring and adherence to societal norms, etc. The Democratic Party view permits them to achieve the moral high ground and keep their fat, White, liberal members in good high paying government jobs where they can supplement their income with various bribes and favor swapping. Maybe the Democratic Party should be prosecuted???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
If your comment was directed toward me, Nick, for the record, I am agnostic. I consider atheism a religion that is often just as bad about claiming to know things that are impossible to know.
What would Israel do? Well, when they’re going to bomb a nest of extremist terrorists, they take the time to drop leaflets in the area urging people to evacuate the area. The terrorists, on the other hand, plow cars oven women with babies at bus stops, minding their own business.
When’s the last time any other nation did that?
I think we know who wins the barbarism race between Israel and Extremist Muslim Fanatics.
What savage brutality, par for the course in extremist Islam. How terrible for any moderates living in the area. That poor girl.
And I see Po is complaining again about the criticism against the brutality done in the name of extremist Islam.
Extremist Islam can only be cleaned up from within by reformers, and enablers or apologists do nothing to fix the problem.
“The physical and psychological trauma …may have been a contributing factor in the perpetrators’ violent reaction”
He made me do it!
“Also imagine what the Israelis who …might do with… ”
Because imaginary barbarism is totes the same as real barbarism.
No need to get on our high horse, because we might -any of us- burn people alive for, say, burning a copy of my favorite record album.
Just imagine!
So, off that high horse already.
@JT
Although I’m painfully aware of the pathology of religious fundamentalism and am sickened by such alleged manifestations of it, here are some important details in the LA Times article that are worth considering:
“Police were still investigating the incident and offered few details, but said they had arrested four suspects.”
That is, the incident is being treated as a crime by the police.
“Witnesses said that a huge throng of people had gathered at the scene to watch, some scaling the walls alongside the river, others climbing to the roofs of multi-colored stalls lining the streets of the crowded outdoor market where the Shah-Do Shamshira shrine sits.”
Large crowds of people gather at the scenes of fires, accidents, and crimes in the US out of morbid or sympathetic curiosity, not necessarily because they are supportive of the suffering or destruction:
“It was not immediately clear how many people carried out the attack, or whether a crowd egged on the woman’s assailants, but it was believed to be the first time that someone in Afghanistan had been killed for burning a copy of the Muslim holy book.”
“Abdul Wahed, who works in a store next to the shrine, decried the killing.”
The physical and psychological trauma Afghans have endured for decades at the hands of the “civilizing” Soviet and US governments, as well Afghan warlords and the Taliban, may have been a contributing factor in the perpetrators’ violent reaction to the desecration of what they see as holy writ:
“Few details were immediately available about the woman or the alleged Koran burning, but Afghan and foreign health professionals believe that a large proportion of the Afghan population suffers from some sort of psychological trauma after three decades of conflict. The government’s own health surveys suggest that two-thirds of Afghans suffer from psychological disorders in a country where such conditions are rarely acknowledged, and even less often treated.”
And before reading the Afghan Muslim fundamentalists out of the human race, it’s worth recalling the highly emotional reaction of the faculty and administration of George Washington University when a student desecrated a couple of bulletin boards by posting on them swastikas of indeterminate provenance.
Also imagine what the Israelis who sat on a hill in their lawn chairs and watched their government’s bombardment of Gaza might do with someone who burned a copy of the *Talmud* in the Temple Mount.
“The Chicago Cub School of modern World Series history.:”
Ouch!
Hilarious.
“Pogo, why not just take Mespo’s challenge and click on his link? ”
You, Inga and mespo should collaborate in finding the magic word that will crack my Olympian indifference to your opinions.
Hint #1: post a link to the daily terrorism by fundamentalist Lutherans.
Hint #2: Saying But the Crusades! doesn’t count.
The Stevie Wonder School of post modern art criticism.
The Chicago Cub School of modern World Series history.
The Ripple School of Wine Reviews.
“I subscribe to the Sam Harris school of criticism of religion.””
I subscribe to the Onesie school of criticism of fashion.
I subscribe to the Ronald McDonald school of criticism of fine dining.
I subscribe to the Marlee Matlin school of criticism of music.
Moral equivalency, perhaps, but to exemplify Jill’s point, look up the Muslims in Myammar, one will see that if Buddhist monks are able to conduct pogroms, the idea that one religion is the problem is idiotic, at least.
Pogo, why not just take Mespo’s challenge and click on his link? Short of learning a bit more about that which you spout on, ignorantly, you, at least would know where he comes from.
Never fails, everyone contributes to the discussion but the one who lists Islam’s ills, the other who demonizes it wholesale and the third who attacks Mespo.
Now, if only the fourth would come to attack Inga…
And the fifth to blame everything on shariah law…
Needless to say, this is one of the few times, I think, where summary execution is warranted for anyone in that mob who actively participated in that lynching.
This is a horrific act, justified by religion. Horrific acts justified by religion have occurred in many places, many times, over thousands of years. We need, as a species to understand why this is so. It isn’t just those crazy Islamists. Horrific acts justified by religion occurs among Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc.–you name the religion, it’s been done.
In fact, it is not just religion which “inspires” this cruelty. It occurs in secular groups of people. Again, this is what needs to be understood. We do need to stop committing heinous crimes in the name of religion or some other group.
One thing that seems common to these mass crimes is a sense of unquestioning rightness or justness to one’s own beliefs. Dissent or questions are not tolerated but punished. The suppression of dissent has always struck me as a profound act of weakness. It must be that members of the group really aren’t so certain of the rightness of what they believe because they need to commit incredible crimes in order to enforce conformity of thought. Why would you need to do this unless you are terribly afraid that someone might raise questions you can’t answer?
Mass violence also props up unjust leadership and authority. Thus, wealthy, powerful elites of every kind maintain mercenaries as well as use propaganda to whip up ordinary people to do harm to each other on their behalf. We are doing this right now in the US and it is a mistake to think only crazies half a world a way are capable of this type of action.
We need to understand group dynamics and authoritarianism a whole lot better than we do. That way, people who are not given to violence but who will engage in it in a group setting, may be able to stop themselves and others from falling into the black hole of mob violence.
I feel so badly for this woman and the pain and terror that she suffered. In her name, I hope we will stop this violence in the human community.
“mespo:
I subscribe to the Sam Harris school of criticism of religion.”
That’s like subscribing to the Helen Keller School of art criticism.
This is a disturbing act. Also the mob surrounding it is chilling.
The burning of victims reminds me of our drone strikes which often times burn people to a point of unidentifiable status. But that’s only talked about here in relation to our rights, there is no need to worry about the rights of persons in ungoverned villages in Somalia Pakistan and Yemen.
The US had and will have the military strength to wax just about any country on earth. There are sufficient candidates for waxing in Africa and the Middle East. The problem is, as was graphically shown with Afghanistan and Iraq, there was insufficient grey matter in power to deal with the consequences. The midget cowboy should go down as the ‘prima facie’ evidence on that.
The US should, along with France, Great Britain, and Belgium (the other three colonial powers that set most of this up) send in special forces to surgically take out the most extreme nut cases when possible-take a look at what France is doing in their old colonies. Then leave the places to themselves. It will take hundreds of years for them to evolve. The most Western routinely chop off heads for so called blasphemy.