The AP reports suspected Sunni militants today destroyed “one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines,” triggering a wave of 90+ reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. The Askariya shrine was 1,200 years old–dating back almost to Mohammed’s time.
Elsewhere, we see Muslims labeling as “blasphemy” cartoons that depict Mohammed as a terrorist.
Does Islamic teaching generally equate destroying a mosque with attacking Allah himself? Is there historical precedent for sparing mosques, in times of war–or might they be considered “fair game”?
Without straying into IMHO or GD, I’m trying to understand how certain Muslims factions might be be outraged at the insulting caricature of Mohammed, yet not be so visibly equally outraged at the destruction of what Westerners might liken to a house of God/Allah?
Well, the Mohammed cartoons were published by a newspaper but the mosque was blown up by terrorists. Both acts are (seen as) blasphemous but the difference is that a newspaper is a legal entity whereas a terrorist group do not see themselves as bound by the law. Thus there is no point in demonstrating against a terrorist group since you cannot really hope to change their agenda. A newspaper, on the other hand, is amenable to public pressure.
And in any case, they are outraged. There have been several retaliatory strikes on sunni mosques. In a sense, it’s not all that blasphemous because it’s sunnis blowing up shia mosques and shia blowing up sunni mosques. To be truly blasphemous, we would need to have sunnis blowing up sunni mosques or shia blowing up up shia mosques. I think that, when you get wars between two sunni countries, they tend to avoid attacking the mosques (eg Pakistan v Bangladesh).
Personally, I wish we could blow up all mosques, churches, temples and synagogues and be done with the whole religious thing altogether since religious people are a bunch of tools, but that’s just me.
Well, it’s hard not to stray into GD, but a common thread of religious texts and traditions seems to be that you can make them say anything you want. Thus, a mosque gets blown up, the guy on one side says the Quran condemns these acts, guy on the other side says it’s justified in Jihad subparagraph 2a under “dastardly acts by unbelievers.” Happens in many religions.
Also… I’ve been kind of watching the headlines for the past 15 years or so and I’ve noticed a pattern… often times after a bomb or airstrike, it will be invariably hit “the most sacred shrine in Islam” or “the holiest of holy mosques in Islam” or “oh no, not THAT telephone booth, it’s the divine…” etc etc. Is that a put-on or are there really so many superlative religious sites in Islam? Or is it a case of “the van is always parked by the mosque?”
If you wish to Pit an entire group(religious people), you need to do this in the Pit. You are in General Questions. You just don’t do that here. Personally I wouldn’t do it, as you will get your ass handed to you.
You are posting in General Questions here. Don’t post statement such as you did above. OK?
Also… I’ve been kind of watching the headlines for the past 15 years or so and I’ve noticed a pattern… often times after a bomb or airstrike, it will be invariably hit “the most sacred shrine in Islam” or “the holiest of holy mosques in Islam” or “oh no, not THAT telephone booth, it’s the divine…” etc etc. Is that a put-on or are there really so many superlative religious sites in Islam? Or is it a case of “the van is always parked by the mosque?”
There are a lot of Jewish and Christian holy sites in Israel. Someome unfamiliar with siginificanse of those sites could just as easily feel that there were a seemingly endless number of them and that they were all regarded as ridiculously important. Is there any site holy site in Jerusalem that Jews or Christians would be ok with blowing up? How about the Tomb of Abraham? The Holy Sepulchur? The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem? There are dozens of sites in the Holy land associated with various Biblical events and all are considered sacred to one degree or another.
It’s the same with Muslim sites. You may not be familiar with their historical significance to Muslims but that doesn’t mean the significance is contrived or illegitimate.
So the answer is no, it’s not a put on. These sites generally do have some real meaning in Islamic history. Unfortunately, the media tends not to spell out what that significance is, choosing instead to characterize this or that shrine as “one of the holiest,” “The third holiest…” etc. without explaining WHY.
And may I take this opportunity to apologise to any person of even the slightest religious persuasion whatsoever for any offence (however minor) I may have caused by calling them all tools?
You can’t really compare the cartoon riots and the shrine bombings. The riots weren’t really about the cartoons. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused a lot of anger in the Muslim world. The insulting cartoon was just a “trigger event,” the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. (Notice how quickly the riots morphed into a general anti-Western, and even anti-American protest.)
Incidentally, the top Shiite cleric in Iraq has forbidden Shiites from trying to get revenge for the bombing. Obviously, this isn’t stopping some people, but it does help to squash any claims that the counter-attacks are a just cause.
I’m interested in the historic precedence of such attacks. Might they have been commonplace in the 19th, 15th or 12th centuries, or is this a relatively new trend?
Google last night revealed that these attacks have been occurring worldwide in the last few years, though generally not with the devastating effect seen with the Askariya shrine.
I think that a comparison with Northern Ireland might be valid. Does anyone know if the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Unionists have a history of attacking each other’s churches?
There were attacks on some places of worship but that was just because of who was inside.
NI wasn’t about religion. The religion of the people was only a useful identifier as to what side they fell on but the repression wasn’t about religion and the anger and terrorism that ensued wasn’t about religion. It was about bigotry intolerance and Irish nationalism.
One interesting thing is that the age of religious or quasi-religious sites in and of itself does not seem to be a driver of attachment for many Muslims. Witness the slated demolition of a number of buildings in Mecca to make room for the hajj, even though some date back to the time of the Prophet. Putting antiquity above current use of space or buildings to promote Islam, or one’s particular sect thereof, is close to idolatry for some.
I’d say for the most part it is a relatively new trend. In times past if one sect were to usurp the position of another it would simply reassign any mosques seized to their own sect if they were less tolerant ( or pragmatic ) or simply allow them to continue to serve the vanquished sect if they were more so. So for example the premier Sunni religious institution and theological school in Egypt is at the Al-Azhar mosque, which was originally built by the Fatimid dynasty for Shi’a worship.
For that matter quite a few mosques were turned into churches and vice versa ;).
As far as pre-modern internal terrorism, well lacking easily portable bombs and what not intersectarian violence generally wouldn’t have revolved around physical attacks on mosques. Religious leaders might be assassinated, but attacks on congregations at prayer I don’t think were common ( though they may have occurred here and there ).
One example that comes to mind was the successful raid/assault in 930 by the Qaramita ( spiritual cousins of the Fatimids ) of eastern Arabia on Mecca, wherein they sacked the city and in addition carried off the Black Stone to their base in the east. In the process they were said to have massacred thousands, including as many as 2,000 around the Ka’ba itself. They had also consistently preyed on pilgrimage caravans and sacked Basra and Kufa at various points, in the latter of which they garrisoned their troops in the mosque there.
Their actions were indeed considered horrendously sacrilegious by most, but they themselves apparently had some contempt for “worshippers of idols and shrines.” In some ways they almost seem part of a continuum of ultra-orthodox Arabian Bedouin that adopted puritannical views of Islam ( from different angles ), as with the earlier Kharijites and much later Wahabis.
The shrine–whatever that might fully entail–is ancient. The golden dome is relatively new. Yesterday’s attack destroyed the dome. No word on the shrine itself but the dome, in some eyes, might be emblematic of the shrine itself. Either way, it’s an attack on a mosque and carries immense symbolic/metaphoric import.