Idiocy From Mark LeVine, And Many Others At Al Jazeera

Mark LeVine, a Beavis-and-Butthead kind of professor of Middle Eastern studies, who thinks music is not only sanctioned in Islam but is a sign of its sudden ability to transform itself, argues at Al Jazeera that it is “colonialism” and the terrible scars it has left that explains the attack on Charlie-Hebdo. He appears not to have noticed, in his trips to Pakistan to talk to musicians (the ones who must worry constantly about being killed) that charges of blasphemy were often dealt with by private parties — Muslim individuals need not wait for the state to inflict a Shari’a-based punishment, but are allowed to inflict it themselves — who would kill Christians accused of blasphemy (a convenient way for a Muslim neighbor to help himself to a Christian’s property– land, house, women). He may have slept through the Rushdie case, and the attempt to kill, and killing, of several of his translators. He may not have noticed that there was a brouhaha over certain cartoons published in Denmark by Jyllands-Posten. Mark LeVine may not have noticed that in all of those cases Iranians, and Pakistanis, and Somalis and others were involved, and so his comment on the supposed great significance of the Algerian origins of the Kouashi killer-siblings, explaining why they did what they did, has no explanatory value whatsoever, for plenty of non-North African Muslims, including those who never experienced, or came from places where could said to have been colonialism, or French colonialism, took part and take part still in punishing those deemed guilty of “blasphemy.”

Mark LeVine should know something about Islam. It’s at the heart of what he teaches, or should be. Has he never read the Qur’an and the Hadith? Is he unaware of all the people who were killed because they mocked the Prophet Muhammad? Does he not understand that the Kouaishi brothers were taught, all Muslims are taught, never ever to let anyone mock, in any way, the Prophet Muhammad? Does he not know that Asma bint Marwan, Abu ‘Afak, and Ka’b bin Ashraf, were all killed by loyal followers of Muhammad, for mocking him? No? What does Mark LeVine, professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of California at Irvine, do all day?

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