Reuters Revisionism

Another h/t to LGF.

The previous post, Drawing of Mohammed = Death Penalty for Christian Convert? referenced this Reuters article by Tom Heneghan. The content and the title of the article have been substantially changed, something that, if done by a blogger, would either be prominently noted by the blogger, or publicly condemned by other bloggers who caught him at it. So much for the MSM’s vaunted responsibility in comparison to the stereotypical pajama-clad blogger.

The rewritten article is as offensive as the original, which I was able to find a copy of on the Kaleej Times Online.

ROME (Reuters) – Western political leaders and the media have reacted with mounting indignation to the news that a Kabul court threatened to impose the death sentence on an Afghan man who abandoned Islam and coverted to Christianity.

Two months ago, political and religious leaders in the Muslim world were rounding on Western European media and governments for printing and defending caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad that they considered blasphemous.

The cases are clearly different. Western leaders from President George W. Bush down have spoken up to save the life of a man whose religious freedom is a universal human right which his judges say is secondary to Islamic law.

In the cartoons case, demonstrators sacked Western embassies in Damascus and Beirut, lives were lost in unrest and Muslim leaders demanded apologies and curbs on Western press freedom.

The cases are not clearly different. They are clearly the same. In both cases, Islamists demand that people of other faiths submit to their faith. In the case of the cartoon jihad, Danish cartoonists and ultimately all of the West were expected to submit to an Islamic doctrine (which has been disputed by some scholars) that images of Mohammed should not be created. In the case of Abdul Rahman, a Christian is being tried and possibly executed, for violating Islamic law by becoming a Christian. Mr. Heneghan removed the “shock and incomprehension” phrase from the revised article, perhaps in acknowledgement that being offended over a drawing is in no way comparable to being offended over the death penalty for converting to another faith.

Amin Farhang, the Afghan economy minister who lived in exile in Germany for 22 years before returning in 2001, illustrated the gulf between Western and traditional Islamic views when he tried to make a link between the two controversies.

“Following the row about the cartoons, which has cost so many lives, we should look calmly at things and work for a fair solution,” he told the German daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger.

He said Kabul was trying to build democracy after a United States-led coalition drove the fundamentalist Taliban from power in 2001, but Afghanistan was a traditional Islamic society.

“Afghanistan cannot switch suddenly from one extreme to the other,” he said, presenting the right to convert as too much for a country that upholds the Islamic punishment for apostasy.

What fair solution? Mr. Heneghan passed up a chance to question Amin Farhang’s bizarre view not once but twice. What compromise is possible or advisable? We submit to Islamic law and censor our press and citizens accordingly? We sit quietly while this man is executed, and complain next time?

The whole multiculturalism cult which declares that all cultures are equal is quite simply wrong. A culture in which a person is executed for his faith, or where a woman has her fingernails ripped out because she applied polish to them, where a woman can be tried, convicted, and executed for having been the victim of a rape, or a man has such a warped definition of “honor” that he kills his daughter for marrying a man who was not his choice, is simply not equal to the west, which acknowledges basic human rights. It is not different yet equal. It is inferior. The version of Islam which not only denies those basic human rights but declares that it intends to dominate the entire world is inferior to the west and ought to be stamped out of existence. If there are truly moderate Muslims, they should be on our side.

If Islam is truly a religion of peace and tolerance, where are the moderate Muslim scholars with the verses from the Koran that show these radical Islamists that they are wrong? Where are the Islamic missionaries who will go into those countries with Wahabbis and other radicals, to promote a more correct version of Islam? Since physically going to those countries is not a practical option – it would likely result in their deaths – could those moderate Muslims at least start publishing articles to educate these poor confused Islamists? Can they get an ad campaign going? Something?