From Iran Focus:
Tehran, Iran, Feb. 10 A senior Iranian cleric called on Muslims on Friday to direct their fury over cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad at the United States, rather than Denmark.
When crowds of worshippers in Tehran chanted “Death to Denmark” during his fiery sermon, Tehran Friday prayers leader Ahmad Khatami told them, “We shouldn’t say ‘Death to Denmark’. Denmark is nothing! We must say, ‘Death to America’. It’s the Americans who set up the likes of the Danes”.
I must have missed the history class that outlined how America established the sovereign country of Denmark. To the best of my knowledge Denmark has been around much longer than 230 years. Where is the moderate Muslim Cleric calling “BS” on this rhetoric? CNN, CBS, ABC, MSNBC? I haven’t seen him. “Death to (insert here)” called for by a religious leader during prayers – what kind of religion is that?
If main-stream moderate Muslims do not speak up and condemn such irrational statements by their radical brethren they are placing themselves in a dangerous position. Without a rational voice separating moderates from the fanatics calling for violence the non-Muslim world is left to fill in the void with its own thoughts and fears. Call it profiling, persecution, or survival instinct – I’m sure there are certainly several other titles I’ve neglected – but the silence from the moderates is likely to result in the average individual collectively grouping all Muslims. Rightly or wrongly so, I wouldn’t want to be lumped in that group.
I’ll stress it again: where is the moderate Muslim voice?
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