Islam and the destruction of books: What Rice should have said

After I posted the quote by one of the most prominent Moslem leaders in history urging the destruction of non-Islamic (i.e. our) books, a reader wrote:

The story you’re looking for is the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. The Muslim commander said, “If the books confirm the Koran, they are superfluous and may be burned. If they contradict the Koran, they are blasphemous and must be burned.”

Indeed the reader is correct. [Or perhaps not, as far as the library of Alexandria is concerned. See next blog entry.] Which leads me to the following thoughts.

Imagine if instead of kneeling before the “Holy Koran,” Secretary of State Rice had said:

“We Americans do not desecrate the holy books of other faiths, because that is not our way. It is not that we believe that all people and beliefs are equally good and true. It’s just that there are certain types of brutality that we as a people reject.

“However, the world should understand that Moslems, who profess burning outrage and have committed murderous mob violence in several Moslem countries because of a supposed desecration of a single copy of the Koran in a U.S. prison in Cuba, are members of a religion that systematically has destroyed not only the books but the entire countries and civilizations of non-Moslems, and would do so again as soon as it had the power to do so.

“So let there be no mistake. We Americans do not desecrate the Koran. But if we did, the Moslems would be the last people in the world who would have a right to complain about it.”

An America that had a secretary of state who spoke that way would be an America I could believe in again, not this dhimmi America that we have at present.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 16, 2005 12:02 PM | Send