May 31, 2004
UN-ISLAMIC:
CLERICS CONDEMN KHOBAR CARNAGE (Ahmad Wahaj Al-Siddiqui, 5/31/04, The Saudi Gazette)
ISLAMIC scholars and high authorities condemned the deadly terrorist attacks at the Arabian Petroleum Investment Corp. residential compound in Al-Khobar.It is most abhorring to kill innocent people who came to Saudi Arabia on its invitation to help build the country and who are under a covenant to get protection under Islamic order, the clerics said.
These criminal acts only strengthen the Zionists in their aggression against the Palestinians, they said.
Dr. Abdullah Abdul Mohsin Al-Turki, the Secretary General of the Muslim World League and member of the Supreme Council of Islamic clerics at Makkah, explained why terrorist acts have no place in Islam.
Islam came at a time when the world was a lawless state, he said. It is Islam that laid down the constitution to govern and brought peace and made every one including the ruler subservient to peace. This caused Islam to spread quickly. But now these terrorists are indulging in un-Islamic and inhuman acts of barbarism which no religion ever allows.
He appealed the people to cooperate with the authorities in achieving and maintaining peace in the Kingdom.
Not as graceful as one would like, but progress... Posted by Orrin Judd at May 31, 2004 12:09 AM
Islam seems a little TOO wedded to order; If they'd've allowed a little creative disruption, such as Christian missionaries, perhaps they'd've followed the West and Asia into the 20th century.
Catholicism more or less "allowed" Protestantism, and although it made Rome less important in the religious sphere, it also helped Rome remain relevant in mainstream American society.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 31, 2004 2:31 AMdon't know if you saw this article by Dennis Prager. He talks about the act of committing evil in the name of God as the one unforgivable sin in the Bible. About Islam, he says:
One can only pray that Muslim institutions will realize the immensity of damage done to the name of Allah and to Islam by those Muslims who preach or practice evil in the name of Allah and Islam -- and the even greater damage done by the rest of the Islamic world's failure to protest against this evil.
Finally, what the #### have the Palestinians got to do with any of this?
Posted by: Dave Sheridan at May 31, 2004 7:05 AMIslam is not wedded to order so much as it is to authoritarianism (not unlike other religions or institutions of the spirit, though seemingly only more so---since the word of God is, after all, the word of God...).
Catholicism allowed Protestantism is a creative way to put it, since such allowance was granted only after the Church tried, and failed, to destroy Protestantism; e.g., in the sense that Great Britain allowed the USA.
(Unless you mean it was the excesses of the Church that spawned Protestantism; in which case one could say a lot of things about extreme reactions/responses.)
Dave: I think that the Palestinians are in there because the Sauidi's need to distinguish unIslamic terrorism from Islamic terrorism.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 31, 2004 8:00 AMBarry:
No, I meant that the Catholic Church could have tried harder, for longer.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 31, 2004 8:05 AMMr. Meislin;
But the UK did "allow" the USA. The settlers, their beliefs, the emphasis on colonization vs. exploitation, etc. all contributed to the creation of the USA. The fact that the UK attempted to suppress it later on is a rather minor point.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at May 31, 2004 10:55 AM