Qur’an
Down the Toilet! An Insult Beyond Belief
By Dr Ghulam M. Haniff
US
“Down the toilet is where Islam belongs”
is the vulgar message symbolically conveyed to
the Muslims by the offensive act of flushing into
the pit-hole a copy of the Qur’an. When
the report of this incident first surfaced Muslims
were aghast, stunned beyond belief, that such
a thing could happen in the bastion of western
civilization at the beginning of the 21st century.
During their long and glorious history Muslims
have experienced innumerable indignities, with
insults to their faith galore, but humiliation
of this magnitude, with Qur’an thrown in
the toilet, stands in a class by itself. No Muslim
would have imagined such a barbaric act of sacrilege,
anywhere, least of all in a society that claims
for itself the moral high ground worthy of universal
emulation.
Muslims have come to believe that desecration
of the Qur’an is meant not only to torment
the detainees, many of whom are naïve, innocent
and young, and picked up randomly on mere suspicion,
but is designed to degrade the spiritual foundation
of Islam and to emotionally bankrupt its followers.
It is indeed a form of mental torture that many
Muslims find incredible, and unbearable.
The world is gradually coming to understand the
mind-set of the people who run the detention facilities.
Almost everyone is struck by their obsession with
sexual perversion, graphically dramatized by the
pictures taken at Abu Ghraib, and scatological
matters, centering on human excreta and toilet,
of which there are so many, with most shocking
ones involve the defilement of the Qur’an
with feces. In the Muslim mind this is the ultimate
insult.
Reporters around the world have noted with disgust
the increasing evidence on “the sexual humiliation
of Muslim prisoners, their shackling to seats
in which they defecate and urinate, the use of
pornography to make Muslim prisoners feel impure”
and the active role of “female interrogators”
who, teasingly and titillatingly, touch their
genitalia and that of their victims.
Physical beatings and the use of dogs to frighten
and bite prisoners is so routine that eye-witness
accounts are beginning to be written with decreasing
frequency. One recent exception is the story of
an innocent Afghan taxi driver Dilawar, reported
by Tim Golden in the New York Times, who was beaten
to a pulp and spent the final days before his
death tormented and chained to the ceiling. He
died begging for water, which was denied but was
forcefully sprayed on his face.
Responding on ABC News about questions on sadomasochism
and toilet related means as aspects of torture
Colonel Patrick Lang, formerly of the Defense
Intelligence Agency who specialized on the Middle
East, wondered out loud whether this was a “scene
from Dante’s Inferno” and rhetorically
asked “what level of hell are we on to?”
Reference to feces and sex is not only confined
to the military’s “culture of filth”
but is widespread in the mainstream society. Most
people who watch television and have conversation
with others are familiar with at least two four
letter words used in the vernacular culture. When
Newsweek retracted the Qur’an story the
New York Post jumped to headline: “Holy
Shiite – Newsweek Retracts its Deadly Toilet
Tale.” No one is left wondering what that
headline meant. Readers, of course, grasped right
away that Muslims have been equated with feces.
Not to be outdone even a church got in the act.
The Danieltown Baptist Church in Rutherford County,
North Carolina, put up a sign on its billboard
proclaiming: “Koran Needs to be Flushed.”
The pastor, when interviewed, expressed pride
in the sign by saying that it is “only to
affirm and exalt the Bible and its teachings.”
A joke going around in some circles has the punch
line which says that Muslims have been finally
put where they belong - right in the toilet. And
Ariel Sharon will flush them down into the cesspool.
No one should be confused how Muslims are seen
by the powers that control the Middle East.
“Make no mistake about it,” is what
one person said recently at a gathering, “the
clash of civilizations is alive and well. It is
in full swing. Muslims are the selected victims.”
When Qur’an is so abhorrently desecrated
in the worst possible manner it is hard to believe
anything else.
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