Little Red Blog

While my intent had been to discuss this in the first post of the day, as I began to write (er… type), what came out was my inaugural thoughts post below. So here is another attempt.

Charles, and others, has pointed out a Reuters’ story on the stoning of the Jamrat al-Aqabah, the three pillars representing the shaitan, Iblis or Satan, at Mina during the Hajj. How did my intent to post on this required, Arabic “fard”, component of the Hajj turn into a response to the inaugural address? Here’s the pertinent piece to help understand:

Many pilgrims said they were thinking of Bush and his allies while they were hurling pebbles at the site where the devil is said to have appeared to the biblical patriarch Abraham.

“Yes, the devil is Bush and that other one from Israel — (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon. And there’s (British Prime Minister) Blair too,” said Egyptian Tia’amah Mohammed. “We throw the stones so we can vent our anger at them.” ...

British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who converted to Islam following her capture by the Taliban in 2001 in the buildup to the Afghan war, said: “During the stoning I couldn’t help thinking of Bush, Blair and Sharon.”

The President has gone to great lengths to extend an arm of inclusion and acceptance to Muslims both inside and outside the United States. He went so far as to visit a masjid and to include the Qur’an in his inaugural address. We know that men who to one degree or another where inspired by the ethical monotheist religions of Judaism and Christianity founded this nation. No one, including the President, is attempting to supplant our Judeo-Christian ethic or history with a Judeo-Christian-Islamic doctrine. Yet the President is going so far as to advocate the idea that Islam serves the same role in developing moral thought and behavior among its adherents.

Many times before this space has been filled with the troubling realization that the practice of Islam, as it is most commonly found today, has failed to focus on the moral and ethical principles of the faith, and instead focused on the Arab cultural, psychological and tribal misgivings about our world. I have no problem with the President doing what I believe he is confident is the right thing to do. Yet it strikes me that without wholesale changes in the practical application of Islamic thought, he is the proverbial dog barking up a tree, and moreover, the tree is likely to throw stones down at him.