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Juan Williams, Vivian Schiller, and SuicideBombers
By Frank KaufmannNew York, NY, October 25, 2010Multan- Khalid Tanveer, in his AP articlewrites of the suicide bomb killing 5 andwounding 13 during morning prayersMonday at the Farid Shakar Ganj shrinein the Punjab province in Pakistan. The bomb, planted on a motorcycle,exploded at the gate of a famousSufi shrine dedicated to a 12th century saint.Reading throughthe short articlealertsus to similar recent events including thesuicide attack earlier this month on abeloved Sufi shrine in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, killing at least eight peopleand wounding 65 others, the suicide attack in July that killed 47 people at thenation's most revered Sufi shrine, Data Darbar in the eastern city of Lahore, andthe roadside bomb that struck a passenger van in theOrakzai tribal regiononMonday, killing three people and wounding two others.According to Tanveer, the attacks derive from the perception that the practice of mystical Sufism clashes with hard line interpretations of Islamist militants.Pakistan, formally known as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is 95% Muslim. The overwhelming burden of sadness that fills our hearts as we ponder the tragicand violent deaths and maiming of innocent people who had arisen in theirmodest lives to pray at dawn, is so perfectly different from the gagging I feelwhen wading through more media narcissism this time on the pampered overimportance afforded such celebrity bourgeoisie as Juan Williams and VivianSchiller. Yet both stories address the same deeply serious matter, namely thecontemporary dimension of violence associated with Islam.In Tanveer’s report, we are spared for a moment the confounding and confusingfactor of “Islam” and “the West.” In the 95% Muslim nation of Pakistan we have amore “pure case.” We can engage this question filled with a human heart of careand compassion, and still for a moment the inane screeching and ignorant artificeof American, mid-term politicians wielding grotesque wedges in obedience to thecynical campaign leeches and numbers-crunchers they hire. The horror, the sadness, and the sacrilege here is in a single fabric and culturalsphere. Regardless of what frightens Mr. Williams, the blood on the ground, the
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