Two things explain the effectiveness of Koran desecration as a means of breaking Muslim morale. The first is that the Koran hosts Allah's incarnate presence, so to speak. The second is the peculiar importance of success to Islam. Unlike Christianity or Judaism, worldly success is the ultimate testimony of Islam; the muezzin calls, "Come to prayer. Come to success!", and its emblem is the crescent, a symbol of secular growth, as opposed to the cross, a symbol of renunciation of worldly things. As I wrote in Horror and humiliation in Fallujah (April 27, 2004),Isn't it ironic, that by completely misunderstanding them, we strike them with the most devastating weapon of trivialization of their deeply-held beliefs!
The West cannot endure without faith that a loving Father dwells beyond the clouds that obscure His throne ... The Islamic world cannot endure without confidence in victory, that to "come to prayer" is the same thing as to "come to success". Humiliation - the perception that the ummah cannot reward those who submit to it - is beyond its capacity to endure.
Abusing the Koran is the equivalent of abusing Allah himself, and tells the Muslim prisoner that his god is powerless to avenge insults. Again, I do not condone such things, but merely observe that an effective weapon is more likely to be put to use. As I wrote in "Horror and humiliation in Fallujah:
Radical Islam has risen against the West in response to its humiliation - intentional or not - at Western hands. The West can break the revolt by inflicting even worse humiliation upon the Islamists, poisoning the confidence of their supporters in the Muslim world.
The ultimate in American condescension is the "Muslim World Outreach" strategy exposed by US News and World Report on April 25. [3] As David E Kaplan reported:
Although US officials say they are wary of being drawn into a theological battle, many have concluded that America can no longer sit on the sidelines as radicals and moderates fight over the future of a politicized religion with over a billion followers. The result has been an extraordinary - and growing - effort to influence what officials describe as an Islamic reformation.
Attempting to engineer an Islamic reformation may be the silliest initiative in foreign policy in the history of the world. The theological department of the Central Intelligence Agency will not persuade Muslims to loosen their grasp on the living presence of Allah on this Earth. In its tragic encounter with Islam, the West cannot help but inflict humiliation.
We may not understand them, and they may be fighting a different kind of battle than we're used to. But it works both ways: they don't truly understand us, and we're not fighting them how they expect to be, either!
The article above also goes into examples of medieval Christian violence, which is really totally irrelevant. What's the point? That doesn't explain or justify anything, and surely does us no good today. What, are we supposed to wait a few hundred years and hope a "reformation" happens? The structure of the koranic text pretty much precludes such an option anyway! Not to mention this notion that religions have to be around a certain amount of time before they "mature" is nonsense; they live in the world of today and had better learn how to live with it. And not to mention that islam is "supposedly" a perfection of judaism and christianity, and in fact is as old as they are -- according to their myths -- with Adam, Moses, Jesus, etc. all being good muslims. So they've had literally ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD for their "religion" to "mature."
It's not happening.
When the radicals are the purest muslims according to the unchangeable -- divine! -- text, there's nothing left to "reform" towards!
Radical islam IS the reformation!!!
