After my post on Thursday regarding the Mumbai massacres, I received an e-mail from a reader named Michael K, as follows:

The woman who escaped from the Jewish Centre with the rabbi’s little kid was hiding in a room with the 22-year-old janitor when she heard the little boy crying outside the door. All three escaped together. And the janitor is a Muslim.

I remember reading a story about an Indian synagogue in The Toronto Star and the people who did all of the maintenance there were Muslim.

Where are the public protests against attacks like this? I agree that we don’t see many.

But the situation isn’t so simple that it’s easy to call everyone’s integrity into question. It encourages the average person who is always passive – to believe the propaganda that we are against him.

The part of my post that probably prompted Michael’s note was:

As always when spectacularly brutal and horrendous mass murders are committed in the name of Islam, the question raises its head once again: Where are the masses of moderate, peace-loving Muslims loudly condemning this evil and declaring, “Not in our name, and not in Allah’s name”?

Well, it’s a question. I think it’s a good question and one for which I’d never apologize, and one which I’ll ask again as the situation requires — as will millions of others like me. To think anything else is to deny reality: the question will continue to be asked until it is thoroughly answered. If there were bands of murderers at loose in the world claiming that Jesus justified their slaughter of innocent men, women and children, and quoting chapter and verse to back up their theology of hate and brutality, I’d have a quibble with them and I expect millions of other believers in Christ would likewise. I don’t know how much you’d hear Christian leaders saying things like: “Well, of-course it’s terrible, but consider their grievances — we must address the root causes which drive these followers of Jesus to commit mass murder. Gay marriage, abortion, the constant contempt the mainstream media shows for their beliefs; we must sort these things out first, before we can hope to have peace.”

All that said — some days from the events, it’s worth noting a few positive signs from elements of the global Muslim community, and it’s worth hoping at least that positive precedents are being set in this regard. Read about it here: Muslims Condemn Mumbai Attacks as Senseless Terrorism, and here: Muslim Council: Don’t Bury Mumbai Terrorists In Indian Cemeteries.

…

Via Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, listen to the “Community Memorial for For Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah,” delivered by Rabbi Marvin Hier at the Chabad House, Westwood, CA.

The world has never experienced such a plague of darkness like the plague of Islamic fundamentalism that reveres death over life – that teaches young people that the preferred way to get to heaven is by murdering and maiming. Even the worst murderers in the history of mankind, the Nazis, who gassed millions – for themselves would do anything to live another day. That’s what Eichmann and Mengele did when they were on the run.

The world should be very clear – achieving martyrdom by killing innocent civilians is an abomination – it is a concept that desecrates religion, denigrates humankind, and defames G-d himself.

…

It is curious to me, by the way, that the clearinghouse for all conceivable Bob Dylan-related news, Expecting Rain, has not featured a single link over the past several days related to the brutal massacre at the Chabad center in Mumbai. There is no religious organization with which Bob Dylan has had closer and more public links, as fans interested in his “journey of faith” would know very well. In fact, there is possibly no organization, period, which which he’s had closer and more public links, other than the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Dylan jealously guards his independence and does not lend his name lightly to just any cause, as attentive fans would also know very well. And readers of Expecting Rain would know that there are often links there to stories which have a far more tenuous relationship with Bob Dylan, and sometimes stories which have no relationship whatsoever with him. And readers of this humble website might remember the attention we gave to a recent link on Expecting Rain to a piece of classic, crazed anti-semitic screed (the kind of thing which, when given a pass by many in Europe in the 1930s, led not so indirectly to the Holocaust — although they didn’t work Bob Dylan into the script back then). Why, by contrast, does the outrage against Chabad in Mumbai not rate a solitary mention on a site that is supposedly about all things Dylan? It’s genuinely curious.

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• On Expecting Rain, Chabad, etc.
• A prayer for Chabad
• More prayers for Chabad