{"id":10794,"date":"2011-04-06T07:02:29","date_gmt":"2011-04-06T07:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/04\/06\/general-petraeus-the-koran-and-political-correctness-in-the-military\/"},"modified":"2011-04-06T07:02:29","modified_gmt":"2011-04-06T07:02:29","slug":"general-petraeus-the-koran-and-political-correctness-in-the-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/04\/06\/general-petraeus-the-koran-and-political-correctness-in-the-military\/","title":{"rendered":"General Petraeus, the Koran, and Political Correctness in the Military"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here<\/a> is General Petraeus' condemnation of the burning by a Florida pastor of the Koran.  And here <\/a>is some excellent commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy.  Excerpt (emphasis added):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Down at Gitmo, the Defense Department gives the Koran to each of the terrorists even though DoD knows they interpret it (not without reason) to command them to kill the people who gave it to them. To underscore our precious sensitivity<\/a> to Muslims, standard procedure calls for the the book to be handled only by Muslim military personnel. Sometimes, though, that is not possible for various reasons. If, as a last resort, one of our non-Muslim troops must handle or transport the book, he must wear white gloves, and he is further instructed primarily to use the right hand (indulging Muslim culture\u2019s taboo about the sinister left hand). The book is to be conveyed to the prisoners in a \u201creverent manner\u201d inside a \u201cclean dry towel.\u201d This is a nod to Islamic teaching that infidels are so low a form of life that they should not be touched (as Ayatollah Ali Sistani teaches<\/a>, non-Muslims are \u201cconsidered in the same category as urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors,\u201d and \u201cthe sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things].\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This is every bit as indecent as torching the Koran, implicitly endorsing as it does the very dehumanization of non-Muslims that leads to terrorism. Furthermore, there is hypocrisy to consider: the Defense Department now piously condemning Koran burning is the same Defense Department that itself<\/em> did not give a second thought to confiscating and burning bibles in Afghanistan<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Quite consciously, U.S. commanders ordered this purge in deference to sharia proscriptions against the proselytism of faiths other than Islam. And as General Petraeus<\/a> well knows, his chain of command is not the only one destroying bibles. Non-Muslim religious artifacts, including bibles, are torched or otherwise destroyed in Islamic countries every single day as a matter of standard operating procedure. (See, e.g., my 2007 post<\/a> on Saudi government guidelines that prohibit Jews and Christians from bringing bibles, crucifixes, Stars of David, etc., into the country \u2014 and, of course, not just non-Muslim accessories but non-Muslim people are barred from entering Mecca and most of Medina<\/a>, based on the classical interpretation of an injunction found in what Petraeus is fond of calling the Holy Qur\u2019an (sura 9:28: \u201cTruly the pagans are unclean . . . so let them not . . . approach the sacred mosque\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like book burning either, but I think there are different kinds of book burnings. One is done for purposes of censorship \u2014 the attempt to purge the world of every copy of a book to make it as if the sentiments expressed never existed. A good modern example is Cambridge University Press\u2019s shameful pulping of all known copies of Alms for Jihad <\/em>(see Stanley\u2019s 2007 post<\/a> on that). <\/strong>The other kind of burning is done as symbolic condemnation. That\u2019s what I think Terry Jones was doing. He knows he doesn\u2019t have the ability to purge the Koran from the world, and he wasn\u2019t trying to. He was trying to condemn some of the ideas that are in it \u2014 or maybe he really thinks the whole thing is condemnable.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a particularly aggressive and vivid way to express disdain, but I don\u2019t know that it is much different in principle from orally condemning some of the Koran\u2019s suras and verses. Sura 9 of the Koran, for example, states the supremacist doctrine that commands Muslims to kill and conquer non-Muslims (e.g., 9:5: \u201cBut when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) . . .\u201d; 9:29: \u201cFight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the people of the Book [i.e., the Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya<\/em> [i.e., the tax paid for the privilege of living as dhimmis under the protection of the sharia state] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued\u201d). <\/strong>I must say, I\u2019ve got a much bigger problem with the people trying to comply with those commands than with the guy who burns them.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is General Petraeus' condemnation of the burning by a Florida pastor of the Koran.  And here is some excellent commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy.  Excerpt (emphasis added): Down at Gitmo, the Defense Department gives the Koran to each of the terrorists even though DoD knows they interpret it (not without reason) to command them … Continue reading “General Petraeus, the Koran, and Political Correctness in the Military”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,163],"tags":[740,707],"class_list":["post-10794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islamism","category-leftism-and-political-correctness","tag-petraeus","tag-political-correctness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}