Could this be the real Arab Spring? The Muslim world does not have to blame Pastor Terry Jones any more for burning the Quran or non-Muslims for desecrating it. They are now in shock over seeing a YouTube post of a young Egyptian man doing the unthinkable on camera: tearing up the Quran and putting it in the trash.
This is the summary translation of what he said:
"There it is, Allah's book, this is the basic catastrophe. I don't know what day it is of this disgusting month of Ramadan! You are making the tearing of the Quran such a big and dangerous thing.. it is instinctive to tear this book, those sons of b----s- think they can threaten me and challenge me to tear the Quran, but I want to prove to them that they are nothing and what is the big deal in tearing this book?!! There it is (he starts tearing up the Quran) in the trash. Are you feeling better now?! You cannot touch a hair on my head! We keep blaming Hamas and Gaza, but it is not them, it is this son of a b ----h book that I am stepping on right now. That book is the source of all evil and the real catastrophe. There is nothing new here, it is not Omar Abdel Rahman, Abbud or all the others, it is this garbage that is causing us to run in a demonic circle that will never end."
Although the young man's worlds were very insulting, this is the same language that Muslims commentators use against him and against anyone who leaves Islam. The comments about this video are extremely violent, scary and vastly more insulting than anything this young man said in the video. This is the kind of language many Muslims use against any critique of Islam. I worry about this young man who seems to be living in Egypt. There have been hundreds of fatwas [religious edicts] calling for his death issued against him already: the responses to the video threaten him with, "I will kill you" and "I will cut your tongue, your ears, your arms and legs, as Mohammed would, and leave you for dead."
Instead of giving religious visas to Islamists who come to build mosques in America and preach hate, the US should immediately declare that anyone who leaves Islam and is threatened will get a priority visa to the US, ahead of Islamists. American embassies across the Muslim world should, in fact, stop giving religious visas especially to those who are obviously Islamists: by doing so we are breeding our own homegrown terrorists inside America.
Throughout the history of Islam, many people where tortured, beheaded, jailed, ostracized, or had their limbs cut off for as little as accidentally stepping on the Quran. The Sharia punishment for blasphemy of the Quran and Mohammed is death even if the perpetrator pleads it was an accident and they never meant to desecrate the Quran. There is a Filipina maid in the Arab Gulf who was jailed for accidentally sitting on the Quran which was on a sofa.
Now the Muslim world is starting to face the nightmare of a new kind of challenge from within: Muslims deliberately challenging this taboo and putting their lives on the line.
Islamic customs have elaborate rituals giving the highest esteem to the book itself and physically protecting the Quran from any disrespect. I remember as a child, placing a schoolbook on top of the Quran on a table; my grandparents harshly scolded me for doing that. The message was repeated over and over and over again never -- ever! -- to place anything visually or mentally on top of the Quran. In the same year the Arabs conquered the Christian city of Alexandria in Egypt, 639 AD, the Alexandria Library was burned down and the Quran became the one and only source of knowledge for the country.
The beginning of the end of Islam as we know it may just have begun: that will be the true Arab Spring.
The violence we are seeing today in the Arab world will accelerate when such confrontations to Islam increase and when the Muslim World wakes up from its 1400 year slumber.
In my book "The Devil We Don't Know", I predicted that Islam will fall like a house of cards, but the bloodshed will be huge and the world must leave the Muslim world to settle this on their own. The number one enemy of Islam is the truth and with today's technology, many Muslims are seeing the truth clearly on the internet, satellite dishes etc.
There is an awakening worldwide, not only about Islam, but also about other similar totalitarian ideologies. One hopes that next there will soon be the same awakening to the harm being done by Western liberalism and socialism, cousins and supporters of Islam and its tyranny. All such ideologies aim at covering up of the truth by using intimidation, fear-mongering and hatred, now so prevalent in American politics today.
It is not just the Muslim world that is changing and that needs change, but also America and Europe. We in America must also set aside books such as "Rules for Radicals" and other socialist propaganda of hatred. Whether Islamism or Socialism, both of these are ideologies based on lies, slander, hatred and control. America must protect itself from such corrosive ideologies by unapologetically reaffirming our Judeo-Christian culture and our Constitution of freedoms before they are taken away from us -- or, worse, we blindly give them away.
Nonie Darwish, born and raised in Egypt, is the author of "The Devil We Don't Know."
Jerry