No, really. I was reading this article that says–hold onto your hats here–that some of the rioting against Denmark (like, say, in Syria) had Arab government complicity. (Gee, ya think? In a country like Syria where you can’t blow your nose in public without it being reported by a Ba’athist spy?) Well, in the middle of that story was this astonishing fact:
The caricatures, which have been republished recently in several European and New Zealand newspapers as a statement on behalf of a free press, provoked a genuine and deep anger among many Muslims as Islamic tradition forbids any depiction of the religion’s holiest figure.
One caricature showed the revered prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a burning fuse. That image that reinforced the belief among many Muslims that the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not simply in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, but part of a Western war against Islam little different from the Crusades of the Middle Ages.
Excuse me? Excuse me?
EXCUSE ME?
Did the AP just accuse America of causing the current unrest among Muslims, or are they saying that the Danes publishing those cartoons reinforced the belief that America was really after Islam, not after terrorism? Or is it both?
I do believe the AP has just blamed America for, well, everything. Including the Crusades, in spite of the fact that those happened centuries before America was born. (But we’re descendants of Crusaders, and there are Jews here, so, y’know….)
But the writer isn’t through yet.
Although many Muslims were appalled by the terror attacks on the United States, images of abuse by American soldiers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and reports of deplorable conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison also have reinforced suspicions that Arabs in general have become targets of the anti-terror war.
Okay, now Abu Ghraib is responsible for making Muslims think that the U.S. isn’t conducting a war on terror, but instead, a war on Muslims. So now I get the gist of this article. According to Bassem Mroue, the writer, and the editor at AP who approved this article, no matter what happens, it makes Muslims think that the U.S. is not conducting a war on terror, but a war on Islam.
Which, when you think of it, reinforces the attitude that causes angry young Muslims to go out and riot. But that’s not AP’s fault. Somehow, it must be America’s.