Battle of the Unfaithful

On April 22, Pastor Terry Jones will gather his supporters together to protest in front of one of the largest American mosques in Michigan. “Our goal is to show everyone how dangerous Islam can be,”* he says. We can only guess how this action will be received in Afghanistan where an “asymmetric response” to the burning of the Koran in Florida has become a massacre in Mazar-e-Sharif.

“You must understand who Terry Jones is,” says Lev Yampolsky, professor at East Tennessee University. “He’s not just some average American but the pastor from the American South. This is a very conservative, fundamentalist environment. As an example, our neighbors are a typical Christian family of Southerners. They have six children because using means of contraception is a sin. Children are not allowed to the movies. On Sundays, of course, they go to church. In general, they live the way their ancestors did. In New York and along the coasts there is a mixture of Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, Muslims and Chinese. Here, the population is homogenous. They never saw a living Muslim. And, if they are told in the church that Islam is of the devil, why not believe that? Terry Jones himself admitted that he hadn’t read the Koran. He says, ‘All I need to know about the Koran, I have read in the Bible.’ And, he is not concerned about the fact that the Bible was written 600 years prior the Koran. So, he’s quite well matched with the guys from Kandahar.”

The majority of the Americans certainly consider him an idiot but the story didn’t receive a rapid response. Burning the Koran, they think, is undoubtedly a bad thing to do but the U.S. Constitution doesn’t forbid it. One of the basic American freedoms is the freedom of expression. What’s wrong with burning the Koran when Ku Klux Klan followers sometimes burn crosses at their back yards? And, despite all their local political correctness, nobody forbids it.

“America is unlike Europe,” explains Mikhail Gronas, professor at Dartmouth University, “they don’t prosecute for ‘hate speech.’” The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the State from abridging the freedom of speech. Here you can shout with impunity: ‘Beat the Jews!’ However, you can’t say, ‘Let’s beat the Jews at the corner of Broadway and 10th Street tomorrow at 11 A.M. …’ A call for the use of specific type of violence is an indictable offence.”

And, what about political correctness?

“Political correctness is not the law but an obligation assumed by particular organizations like educational institutions. If I say: ‘Beat the Jews!’ at one of my lectures, I may get fired. But, if I sue them, I’ll win the case. Freedom of speech is very important to the Americans. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has tried to decide twice on whether one is allowed to publicly burn the American flag. Both times the U.S. Supreme Court decided that ‘yes.'”

Initially, the American press didn’t notice the protest of Pastor Jones. He’s just some crazy marginal, the leader of a tiny sect in a provincial town. So what’s the deal? However, the news spread into international news agencies. Three days later, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai appeared on television with a special statement in which he demanded U.S. authorities punish the desecrators of the Koran. Actually, from that speech the Afghans learned about what happened in Florida. And, the combination of the two has led to the tragedy.

On April 1, an anti-American rally started in the crowd, which poured out of the main mosque in Mazar-e-Sharif after Friday prayers. Then, the crowd, for some unknown reason, moved toward the U.N. office, disbanded the police, stormed the building and started the slaughter. The following day, riots and pogroms took place in Kandahar and other cities, thousands of people fled the streets, chanting: “Death to America! Death to Karzai!” About a hundred people were killed in the clashes, several hundred were injured. As a result, the killing of the U.N. staff members caused many to feel that the American pastor was right…

“Deaths of civilians in Afghanistan, caused during the NATO operations, are being reported every week,” says Mikhail Galustov, a photographer in Kabul. “People don’t like foreigners here and, in addition to that, they are [the Americans] are burning the Koran. All together leads to bursts of anger like this. Despite Kabul being pretty much a quiet place, some teenagers tried to stone me the other day.”

“It’s not about the Koran,” says Yury Kozirev, the photographer who used to work in Afghanistan. “Of course, it would have insulted any Muslim. But, these things happen simply because of the war that’s been going on here for 30 years. First, it was our troops, then the civil war and, finally, the Americans. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and expectations betrayed. The country is exhausted. Of course, the source of all evils for them is ‘the unfaithful.’ And, people really are quite medieval here, their morals are rigid. Here is the result. It’s not about some fool burning the Koran. It’s about what the Americans have been doing here for ten years.”

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.