By AIJAZ Z. SYED ARABNEWS
Are the Americans really that dumb? I mean after spending 11 years in the world’s most dangerous battlefield and dealing with the fiercely proud and famously hot-blooded Afghans you have to be stark, raving mad to be doing what the Americans were found doing last week.
Why is it so hard for the West to see that faith plays a pivotal role in Muslim societies and lives of the believers? The renunciation of faith may be the first step toward liberation for the West with its best and brightest minds, from Christopher Hitchens to Richard Dawkins, competing with each other to run down their Maker.
But what the West finds to be “delusional” is held in highest esteem by the Muslims. This reverence extends to the Book that they believe to be the last word of God and the Last Prophet, peace be upon him, who brought it. The faithful cannot imagine or tolerate slightest of slurs or affront against these icons. Anyone who has seen the Muslims handle the Book would know it.
They hold it with utmost reverence and do not even touch it unless they are in a state of purity. And when it comes to love and reverence for their faith and its icons, perhaps no one can outshine the Afghans.
When those spiteful caricatures surfaced in the scenic Scandinavia, they provoked spontaneous protests all around the world but the strongest of them were witnessed in Afghanistan.
Many died in the angry demonstrations that went on for weeks. History repeated itself when two years ago an attention-hungry pastor in the distant Florida vowed to make a bonfire of the Islamic scripture.
The Afghans are seldom known to allow a provocation go unchallenged. Killing and getting killed for honor and what is close to heart is all in a day’s work — or Pakhtoonwali (the Afghan way) for the ordinary Afghans. Not for nothing this land enjoys the reputation of being the “graveyard of empires.”
After spending more than a decade and $500 billion dollars in Afghanistan, not to mention the thousands of lives lost on both sides, it is hard to believe the Yanks didn’t know this already. So you have to be either totally stupid or utterly callous, or both, to incinerate the copies of the Book at the Bagram air base.
After days of protests and the unprecedented killing of many US troops including two senior US military personnel right inside the Interior Ministry by their Afghan allies, President Obama coughed up a terse apology: “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies.”
His commander in Afghanistan Gen. John R. Allen, who has issued an equally sincere apology, has directed that all US forces undergo 10 days of “sensitivity training in the proper handling of religious materials.”
Eleven years into this war — isn’t it a bit late for that, general? Besides, it’s not as though the Americans and their comrades in Afghanistan are exactly ignorant of Afghan and Muslim sensitivities. We have been here before, repeatedly, with similarly sensitive American shenanigans being followed by equally perfunctory apologies.
In 2005, Afghanistan was rocked by violent protests when there were reports of the Guantanamo Bay interrogators defiling the Qur’an as part of their methods of persuasion. Last year the Afghans were outraged by the revelations about the US ‘kill teams’ that hunted civilians for fun, duly capturing their Kodak moment for posterity standing over their ‘trophies’.
Categories: Afghanistan, Asia, Islam, United States
My answer would be: ‘Yes, they are’. ‘America’ may be in Afghanistan for 11 years, but not the individual soldiers. They keep changing, coming from the ‘American outback’ straight to Afghanistan, with little ‘cultural awareness training’. Soldiers are killing machines, that is what they are trained for. they are not even trained well for ‘peace-keeping’.
And if they do receive ‘cultural awareness training’? Who are the trainers? Often they are Jewish Americans, who are considered ‘Middle East Experts’ (as they have a second passport from the Middle East). What to expect?