Muslim Respect and Tolerance

Well it's been a busy week for Dinah. Not only have I recently been accused of tarring all Muslims with the radical brush, I have also been accused of 'lieing (sic)at Muslims'.

It would seem that the Virgin Mary cartoon (drawn by Muslim Chokri Ben Chikha, a young Tunisian author, actor and singer) in this post has raised some objection from one of my newest Muslim friends. My new friend claims that Muslims honor and respect all religions and prophets and that I need to be educated.

Now, Dinah doesn't claim to be a Muslim scholar but Dinah CAN read. Let's hope my new Muslim friend can too because I have a few things for him to peruse.

There's this from the Religion of Peace in the Philippines (Hat tip to Patrick, over at Clarity and Resolve)

PATIKUL, Sulu -- (UPDATE) Six people, including an infant, were killed when unidentified gunmen shot at houses of three families on the Philippines' insurgency-wracked southern island of Jolo, a military spokesman said.
Jennifer Fontanilla, who said she survived the 1 a.m. attack Friday by hiding under her bed, told government-run Radyo ng Bayan that before the shooting, the armed men roused them from sleep and demanded to know if they were Christians or Muslims.

At least one of the dead is believed to be a Muslim woman married to a Christian, she said. Others included an 8-month-old boy, she said, adding the attack left six dead, including her father.

Yeah, there's some ROP honor and respect there, all right. This also from Clarity and Resolve by way of Reuters:

KRONG PENANG, Thailand, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Suspected Muslim militants killed a Buddhist teacher and wounded four others in two separate shootings in Thailand's restive Muslim south on Friday, police said.

The 41-year-old victim was shot dead by a gunman riding pillion on a motorcycle as he returned home from his school in the southern province of Songkhla, which abuts Malaysia, police said.

"The teacher did not travel in a police motorcade because he had asked to leave the school early," a local police officer told Reuters by telephone.

Shortly afterwards, gunmen attacked a car carrying one Muslim and three Buddhist teachers heading home in the neighbouring province of Yala, police said. All four were taken to hospital for treatment.

More than 1,100 people have died in almost daily gun and bomb attacks in Muslim-majority southern Thailand since a revival in January 2004 of a violent ethnic Malay separatist campaign.

There's this from Palestine:

For years, media outlets have largely refused to report one of the most troubling aspects of the Mideast conflict ― Muslim intimidation and violence against Christians in Palestinian-controlled areas. The latest shocking episode again made its way to very few news consumers: Late Saturday night (Sept. 3), hundreds of armed Palestinian Muslims crying 'Allahu Akbar' descended on the West Bank Christian city of Taibe. For the next few hours, the mob terrorized the community, setting sixteen homes and multiple businesses on fire, looting valuables from both, and destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Said one eyewitness: 'It was like a war, they arrived in groups, and many of them were holding clubs.'

The mob's 'provocation'? A Muslim woman from their neighboring village had had a relationship with a Christian man from Taibe. The woman was poisoned to death by her own family in an 'honor killing', and soon after, the pogrom against Taibe commenced.

There's this from Indonesia (Hat tip Jihad Watch):

POSO, Indonesia — Masked, black-clad and brandishing machetes, the attackers sprang from behind a screen of tall grass and pounced on the four Christian girls as they walked to school. Within seconds, three of the teenagers were beheaded — fresh victims of violence that has turned this Indonesian island into yet another front in the terrorist wars.
"All I could do was pray to Jesus for his help," said 16-year-old Noviana Malewa, who fled with a gaping head wound. "I was streaming with blood." A thick scar runs from the back of her neck to just under her right eye.

Muslim militants are blamed for the October killings, the most gruesome yet in a campaign of terror against Christians on the island of Sulawesi.

Meanwhile back in the Philippines: (courtesy of Strategy Page)

January 19, 2006: Abu Sayyaf, and their allies from the Indonesian based Jemaah Islamiyah, continue to find Moslems in the south willing to shelter and support them. Violence against Christians is popular with many Filipino Moslems because of decades of Christians migrating into the Moslem south. The Christians are often economically more successful, and this creates jealousy that is exploited by the Islamic radicals.

The Muslim tradition of honoring and respecting other people's religion extends to the African Continent as well. This from All Africa News:

"Roughly 20,000 residents and up to 35,000 IDPs from Mershing have arrived in [the nearby town of] Menawashi," said Dawn Blalock, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan, on Wednesday.

The first attack occurred on 24 January, when Arab militia attacked Mershing - approximately 80 km north of the state capital, Nyala. They looted the central market as well as the houses and shelters of town residents and IDPs.

This from an 80 year old woman seeking refuge in Chad:

Ask Kaltouma Yaya Ato why three years into the Darfur conflict, she has only just decided to seek refuge in Chad, and the 80-year old says not a word. She simply rolls up the folds of her skirt to reveal traces of the Janjawid.

Her left leg has swollen to twice its normal size - the result of a beating the Arab militiamen inflicted on the frail old woman using wooden clubs. Her crime? To be out looking for firewood at the wrong time. Her punishment? One month later, she cannot even stand, let alone walk.

Ato is one of some 1,000 refugees from Sudan's Darfur region to have turned up at the Gaga camp in eastern Chad since the beginning of the year, citing fresh Janjawid attacks.

"They show no pity to anyone," she whispered.

And then there's this from Front Page Magazine:

In Australia, Norway, Sweden and other Western nations, there is a distinct race-based crime in motion being ignored by the diversity police: Islamic men are raping Western women for ethnic reasons. We know this because the rapists have openly declared their sectarian motivations.

When a number of teenage Australian girls were subjected to hours of sexual degradation during a spate of gang rapes in Sydney that occurred between 1998 and 2002, the perpetrators of these assaults framed their rationale in ethnic terms. The young victims were informed that they were “sluts” and “Aussie pigs” while they were being hunted down and abused.

In Australia's New South Wales Supreme Court in December 2005, a visiting Pakistani rapist testified that his victims had no right to say no, because they were not wearing a headscarf.

And earlier this year Australians were outraged when Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed gave a lecture in Sydney where he informed his audience that rape victims had no one to blame but themselves. Women, he said, who wore skimpy clothing, invited men to rape them.

A few months earlier, in Copenhagen, Islamic mufti and scholar, Shahid Mehdi created uproar when – like his peer in Australia – he stated that women who did not wear a headscarf were asking to be raped.

And with haunting synchronicity in 2004, the London Telegraph reported that visiting Egyptian scholar Sheik Yusaf al-Qaradawi claimed female rape victims should be punished if they were dressed immodestly when they were raped. He added, “For her to be absolved from guilt, a raped woman must have shown good conduct.”

In Norway and Sweden, journalist Fjordman warns of a rape epidemic. Police Inspector Gunnar Larsen stated that the steady increase of rape-cases and the link to ethnicity are clear, unmistakable trends. Two out of three persecutions for rape in Oslo are immigrants with a non-Western background and 80 percent of the victims are Norwegian women.

In Sweden, according to translator for Jihad Watch, Ali Dashti, “Gang rapes, usually involving Muslim immigrant males and native Swedish girls, have become commonplace.” A few weeks ago she said, “Five Kurds brutally raped a 13-year-old Swedish girl.”

In France, Samira Bellil broke her silence – after enduring years of repeated gang rapes in one of the Muslim populated public housing projects – and wrote a book, In the hell of the tournantes, that shocked France. Describing how gang rape is rampant in the banlieues, she explained to Time that, “any neighborhood girl who smokes, uses makeup or wears attractive clothes is a whore.”

Unfortunately, Western women are not the only victims in this epidemic. In Indonesia, in 1998, human rights groups documented the testimony of over 100 Chinese women who were gang raped during the riots that preceded the fall of President Suharto. Many of them were told: “You must be raped, because you are Chinese and non-Muslim.”

Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported that in April 2005, a 9-year-old Pakistani girl was raped, beaten with a cricket bat, hanged upside down from the ceiling, had spoonfuls of chillies poured into her mouth, and repeatedly bashed while handcuffed. Her Muslim neighbours told her they were taking revenge for the American bombing of Iraqi children and informed her they were doing it because she was an “infidel and a Christian.”

The articles cited above were all found in less than fifteen minutes.

I'm still searching for similar articles about members of Christian, Buddhist and Jewish religions honoring and respecting Muslims in this fashion. I haven't had much luck.