The Religious Version of Flat Stanley

Jeff Jacoby writes a piece today in the Boston Globe that states a theme that I mentioned in a previous post - the differences between how Islam reacts and other religions react to perceived insults:

IT WAS front-page news this week when Newsweek retracted a report claiming that a US interrogator in Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. Everywhere it was noted that Newsweek's story had sparked widespread Muslim rioting, in which at least 17 people were killed. But there was no mention of deadly protests triggered in recent years by comparable acts of desecration against other religions.

No one recalled, for example, that American Catholics lashed out in violent rampages in 1989, after photographer Andres Serrano's ''Piss Christ" -- a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine -- was included in an exhibition subsidized by the National Endowment for the Arts. Or that they rioted in 1992 when singer Sinead O'Connor, appearing on ''Saturday Night Live," ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II.

There was no reminder that Jewish communities erupted in lethal violence in 2000, after Arabs demolished Joseph's Tomb, torching the ancient shrine and murdering a young rabbi who tried to save a Torah. And nobody noted that Buddhists went on a killing spree in 2001 in response to the destruction of two priceless, 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha by the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Of course, there was a good reason all these bloody protests went unremembered in the coverage of the Newsweek affair: They never occurred.

Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don't lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted. They don't call for holy war and riot in the streets. It would be unthinkable for a mainstream priest, rabbi, or lama to demand that a blasphemer be slain. But when Reuters reported what Mohammad Hanif, the imam of a Muslim seminary in Pakistan, said about the alleged Koran-flushers -- ''They should be hung. They should be killed in public so that no one can dare to insult Islam and its sacred symbols" -- was any reader surprised?

As we now from translated documents, the official terrorist handbooks teach their students that if captured, claim abuse, torture, and best of all, blasphemy against Islam. Is it no wonder now that media outlets, in an attempt to get Newsweak off the hook, are interviewing released detainees, all of whom claim to have witnessed some sort of Koran desecration? I'm sure these witnesses are all highly trustworthy, and you know the media will take them at their word without any attempt to verify the information. After all, they're "eyewitnesses".

Before you know it the Koran will become the religious version of Flat Stanley and will be said to have appeared in all kinds of disgusting places at the hands of the evil U.S. Military. You can count on the media to report each and every rumor, no matter how flimsy the evidence.

Sadly for the bad guys and the media, thinking people will ignore these reports, but the part of the world that is desperate to be insulted will still get upset with every report. The Newsweak debacle will have long-lasting repercussions.