Commenting on the Pace University student’s potty placements of Korans, Andrew G. Bostom recalls a past protest in India, in the mid-1980s, that should serve as an important lesson for U.S. students.
The non-violent acts of protest by Hindus served to educate the Indian public about Koranic doctrines. Many Hindus were ignorant of the Koranic injunctions which inspired the bouts of jihad and Muslim colonization of India.
Many Americans, Bostom writes, are similarly uninformed. Thus:
We must encourage US students confronting Muslim jihadist front student organizations on campuses, or anti-jihad activists wishing to make meaningful statements elsewhere (for example, in front of CAIR’s Washington, DC offices, 453 New Jersey Avenue SE) to engage in the kind of constructive and thoughtful protests which took place in India some 20-25 years ago. The pious Muslim claim that the Koran is the immutable, perfect word of their God Allah, as transmitted through the Muslim prophet Muhammad, cannot be exploited in a diverse society as yet unconstrained by the dictates of Islamic Law, to preclude open, critical examination of the Koranic contents. Twenty years ago [a chronicler of the Hindu protests, Sita Ram Goel] made an impassioned plea for such unfettered examination which we would do well to heed:
Note: Bostom includes here a litany of striking citations from the USC-Muslim Student Association Compendium of Muslim Texts, Pickthall Translation, for example:
(9:5) Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
