The Tragic Assault On Diplomats In Libya And Egypt

I was very sad to hear and shocked to see (careful) that the US Ambassador to Libya has been killed by a mob and that the US embassies in Libya and Egypt have been attacked. As Christopher Hitchens said in this video, diplomatic privilege is one of the most important advantages of civilization and to see it attacked so brutally is just a human tragedy.

Any country needs to be able to maintain embassies and diplomats. This is how we get conversation between nations and how civilization stitches itself together. To violate that is just an affront to civilization as a whole. There’s nothing political to this at all. And, to top it off, the murder of Chris Stevens is just heartbreaking. You can see his body being carried (by a Libyan civilian) in the link above and I can’t get the image out of my head. I mean, that you can beat a man and take the life out of him, that we’re all frail human beings with bodies and hearts and families and blood. It’s just horrifying and wrong. To beat and crush any of these frail vessels over nations or ignorance, it’s just a human shame.

I mean, my God. We were just talking about cartoons and how community outrage and offense can lead to the idea that violence is somehow justified. The idea that there’s this offense that justifies any response just isn’t true and should never been indulged. Worked with I guess, but the idea that any action by any human being justifies violence by another is just never true.

These attacks were ostensibly a response to a video offensive to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) posted on the Internet. The video btw, is so amateurish and insanely dumb that it’s offensive mainly to itself. The depiction of Muhammad is actually pretty horrific, weirdly insulting, sexualized, and so, so dumb. Ignorant and really really disrespectful. And really weird. It’s white people dressed up as Arabs in front of a green screen, talking like valley girls.

Still, this violence does not reflect the Muslims I know or the Islam, the lived Islam, that they have shown me. I agree with this quote by Mohamed El Dahshan.

There is no virtue in displaying lethal outrage (as in Benghazi) whenever anyone throws a feeble punch at Islam and Muslims. Doing so is only a display of weakness, a fear that our religion cannot withstand even the silliest of skits. This idea is insulting in itself. Bring on the insults, I say — bring on the hatred, the mockery, the piques, the spitballs. The amateur films, the Danish cartoons, the Geert Wilders, and the like. There is little harm than can befall Islam as a faith. It has withstood, over the past fourteen centuries, infinitely worse attacks, yet it has neither weakened nor vanished.

Honestly, whatever you think about American foreign policy, this has nothing to do with that. This is just a sad sad day. Human bodies were crushed and human diplomacy was violated. It’s just a sad, tragic day, for everyone involved.

7 Comments

  2. To be honest, when Islam is discussed I think there is an elephant in the room and that is the Prophet Muhammad. The man may have founded Islam, but he can hardly be called an example to follow going by what is the Quran and Hadiths. The man led wars, killed people, had many wives, had sexual relations with an underage girl, supported slavery etc. These may be uncomfortable facts to consider but they need to be considered and not pushed under the carpet.

    I can see how the video is deeply insulting to those of the Islamic faith. It should not have been released and I wonder what they exact motives of the producer are. But certain sections of the Quran itself are quite deeply insulting towards non-Muslims.

  5. “Islam has withstood, over the past fourteen centuries, infinitely worse attacks, yet it has neither weakened nor vanished” Why?
    isn’t this the time to learn real Islam and about Prophet Muhammed, Instead of trying to understand through hatred media (Films, Cartoon, Websites, western news channels…etc)..?

  6. Have you read the Quran? If you haven’t, I suggest you do. Although I suppose when it comes to murder, hatred and senseless violence the Old Testamenttrumps the Quran. And also, do you accept the Hadiths as an integral part of Islam?

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