The naivete heralding an Arab spring has only reaped the bitter fruit of an Arab winter. The assault upon the U.S. Libyan consulate in Benghazi, the commandeering of our flag, and the murder of American citizens is an attack on U.S. sovereignty and constitutes an act of war. This unrestrained violence is barbaric and tyrannical, and the antithesis of human civility. Notably, this  behavior often manifests itself where the house of Islam is culturally predominate. Whether this was a premeditated terrorist attack or not, the rioting in the streets here and the issuance of death threats against the video trailer producers, the scope of which endangers all Americans, still exists. An answer as to why this is so recurrent lies at the core of Islam itself, as Muhammad cultivated revenge in his followers as a response to those he perceived as insulting “Allah and his messenger.”

Islam mandates death for non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic state who mention “something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet, or Islam” (Umdat al-Salik, 011.10). Such laws revert back to passages in the Hadith and Sira in which Muhammad orders the murders of people he considers to have insulted him, the poetess Asma bint Marwan one case among several (“The Life of Muhammad”, A. Guillaume, pp. 675-676).

Our Muslim friends repeatedly decry the negative stereotyping of Islam as Islamophobic, but as long as this cesspool of violence continues, this image will never be quelled.

 

Kent Larson

Stewartville