MAIL ONLINE – BLOG – MARY ELLEN SYNON: Islam is a religion of peace and mercy, part 47.
Today in Saudi Arabia, the richest and most influential Islamic state in the world, a Saudi man who was convicted in court of paralysing a fellow countryman is being threatened by the judicial authorities with having his spinal cord cut as an official punishment.
It is Islamic law and Saudi Arabia enforces it: an eye for an eye.
As I write this, the case judge in the north-western province of Tabuk is waiting for replies to the letter he has sent out to several hospitals asking for their advice on whether it is medically possible to slice the spine.
Is the judicial mutilation going to happen? We will have to wait and see. But we do know that ten years ago an Egyptian worker had an eye surgically removed in a Saudi hospital as punishment for disfiguring a fellow worker in an acid attack.
I mention all that because I am going to write about two dust-ups going on in America now, both of them tied to Islam and what Americans are supposed to make of the Muslims in their midst.
Dust-up one is the question of whether a foreign-financed campaigning group of Muslims will be allowed to build a £65m mosque just two blocks from Ground Zero.
Dust-up two is the continuing question of whether or not President Obama is actually a Christian. A poll last week showed that one in four Americans believe he is not. They think he is a Muslim.
Now, the first response from people in this country to either of these issues is predictable. On the question of the mosque, the response is: ‘A mosque is a place of worship and to deny a place of worship to a religion because of a group of terrorists’ links to Islam is offensive. Islam is a religion of peace and mercy. Bin Laden does not represent Islam. He espouses a warped interpretation of Wahhabism.’
‘Warped?’ What, unlike the Wahhabism embraced by the Saudi state? See first paragraph. That ‘unwarped’ interpretation of Wahhabism enforces mutilation and beheading of criminals, execution of homosexuals, stoning of adulterers and violent suppression of all other religions. Sweet mother of Jesus, you’d be hard-pushed to spot just where the line is crossed between warped and unwarped if that sort of barbarity is okay.
We’ll leave that question for the moment and get on to Barack Hussein Obama and whether or not he is a Christian and whether it ought to matter anyway.
The first response to that question by most people in this country is to mock what they believe are the religious obsessions of the American rightwing.
Here’s the problem with that response. It is not the American right who have been making the most influential arguments that Mr Obama is Muslim. They don’t need to. All they have to do is point to arguments which have come instead from powerful Muslims such as President Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, and from intellectuals such as Dr Edward N Luttwak, a military specialist and historian writing in the Democrat New York Times.
The sheer frustration of the White House in all of this is shown in their determination to show that instead it is leading right-wingers such as the broadcaster Rush Limbaugh who are making the accusations.
Which leaves Mr Limbaugh laughing. He has challenged the White House to find any instance in which he said the President was a Muslim. Problem is the President’s staff can’t find a single instance. Continue reading and comment >>> Mary Ellen Synon | Monday, August 23, 2010
