2004.05.13
Reactions
Following yesterday’s news of the beheading of an American, the Arab world seems strangely quiet. Then again why should I be suprised by this? They don’t have freedom of the press, and even where there is some leniency in what they can publish there is always fear of recrimination and retaliation.
That being said here (and to a lesser extent here) is a summary of Arabic reactions so far. I hope that this reaction quoted here is the most common reaction from people on the streets.
[O]ne Baghdad citizen, Adel Karim, told CNN: “If they are Muslims, the messenger of Allah, Mohammed, says, ‘Don’t kill, even sick dogs.’”
What suprises me is the reactions of, “perhaps America deserves this for starting a cycle of violence.” I do not believe for a minute President Bush’s assertion that we went into Iraq to combat terror, but I also do not believe we started a cycle of violence. If anything, America is too reactionary on a great many issues. We reacted to the September 11th attacks, we reacted to the stringing up and mutilation of four Americans in Fallujah… Unfortunately we are now reacting to prisoner abuses, too.
“We didn’t start the fire,” goes the song, and unfortunately it might never end until the Muslim majority makes up their minds. That won’t happen until these terrorists and “activists” start killing Muslims as well as westerners. Maybe then there will be an effective reaction against these terrorists and an end to the cycle of violence.
Comments Off Categorized: thoughts
You can follow responses with a RSS 2.0 feed or via email using the checkbox below. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
