From the Advocate. The prejudices of Arab media The world has a chance to see how misinformed is the Middle Eastern public because of the disparate treatment in Arab media of two sad incidents in the chronicle of misfortunes of Iraq. One incident was an apparent accident in the heat of battle. A U.S. Marine was seen on videotape shooting and killing an apparently unarmed man during the battle for Fallujah. The video has been played and replayed in Arab media as a symbol of what is widely viewed among ignorant masses as U.S. aggression in Iraq. Little attention is given that the U.S. military has detained the Marine and is investigating. At the same time as the Marine shooting is given intensive attention, the brutal execution of a British-born Iraqi woman by terrorists is hardly mentioned. One of the more prominent Arab television outlets, al-Jazeera, discovered its squeamish side, refusing to play the tape of the killing. Perhaps President Bush is right, and democracy will take root in the Middle East. But will a people raised on such one-sided propaganda paraded about as "news" have the wisdom to use their votes properly?
that's the billion dollar question. could take decades, maybe a century yet no one knows. At least they will be afforded that opportunity. That's the most almost anyone can ask.
Shooting an innocent woman in the head is against islamic religious practices and would have been a sobering reminder to muslims that kidnap/murderers are not freedom fighters. Funny time for Al Jazeera to get squeamish when they showed the marine shooting on the same day.
who are we to say what is islam and what isnt? we are qualified to say what is "real" islam the way i am qualified to tell you what real christianity is. which is none. thats the thing with religions, you can make up whatever you want and say thats the religion. perhaps "real" islam holds that adultery and being an infidel is punishable by death. by american standards thats ridiculous. but i am sure we could find some muslims that feel that way. then for every islamic scholar we could bring in to disagree, we could find others who were positive they were right. people say the militants pervert the verses of the koran. but isnt the koran pretty damn hardcore? and if you are a "freedom fighter", because you believe the only real government is a fundamentalist regime that you believe is guided by god, and not the infidels that are part of the democray, you are just as right as any other muslim. such is the nature of religion, it is all interpretation. thats what you get when you live by a system of foolishness and faith, instead of rationalism. i don't agree that there is a a right or wrong version of islam. there certainly is a violent sect, and a less violent sect. who are we to say what allah wants? (well, i don't believe in allah, but most of you do not have that luxury) the whole idea that we are trying to figure out the "real version" of a religion is totally absurd. the only long term solution to the problems of the world is the advancement of rationalism, the death of radical fundamentalism, whether it be through simply killing or by forced democracy, which could take many generations. we basically got ****ed the moment we got involved in the jihad. at least we have a president with the courage to fight, thats about the only good news there is. i would have liked our situation better if we had just decided decades ago we would have no favorite in the arab/israeli conflict, and allow the miserable bastards to kill each other until they were finished. people like to say terrorists hate us because we are free. bull****, they hate us because we take the side of israel.
