Thursday, February 23, 2006

Blast at the shrine...

I sent the following to a mailing list I am on yesterday. This was before Sunni mosques started being attacked--a development that only makes the statement even more relevant...

I say we all--Shia, Sunni, Progressive, Conservative, Muslim, non-Muslim--observe Ayatollah Sistani's call not just for calm, but for mourning. Whether one accepts their status as Imams (as Shias do), the assault on the object of such reverence is a symbol of all that's wrong with our world today.

To quote the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., I am not a doctrinaire pacifist. Wars can be necessary. The USA had a civil war that is today considered both necessary and positive in in its long-term effects. What I rise to condemn is the act of wanton, offensive violence which can in no way be considered a valid act of war whichever side committed it.

And I pointedly do NOT want to express any opinion on who did it. Whether it was an anti-Shia act, an act to fuel the civil war by one side to intimidate the other, or an act of a cynical player to make the Shias angrier against Sunnis, or even by someone to discredit the US. I don't care. I think it was a heinous thing to do.

And we need to call it that.

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