FACEBOOK PICTURE LEADS TO RIOT AND DEATHS BY FIRE

A blasphemous picture of the Kaaba on Facebook leads a Pakistani mob of 1,000 to riot and to burn a grandmother and her two young granddaughters to death

Ahmadis are members of a minority sect that is an offshoot of Islam, but they are forbidden by Pakistani law to identify themselves as Muslims.

Blasphemy, disrespect to Allah or holy things, is one of the most serious offenses under Islamic religious law.

The Kaaba is the sacred shrine in Mecca toward which all Muslims face during their daily prayers.

Aqib Saleem, 18, an Ahmadi youth, supposedly uploaded a picture on Facebook of the Kaaba, with a seminude white woman sitting on top. That led a mob of 1,000 to rampage Sunday night through an Ahmadi neighborhood in the eastern Pakistani city of Gujranwala. The mob looted and set Ahmadi houses on fire. Bushra Bibi, 55, and two of her granddaughters, ages 7 and 8, died in the flames Here is how The New York Times described what happened:

Officials said that a Muslim friend of Mr. Saleem’s, Saddam Hussein, 18, noticed the Facebook post and alerted others in the neighborhood. Soon, a crowd of about 400, including some Muslim clerics, reached a nearby police station and urged the police to register a blasphemy case. Meanwhile, the larger mob began rampaging around Ahmadi houses in the Arfat neighborhood of Gujranwala, an industrial city in Punjab Province.

Ahmadi community leaders accuse the police of looking the other way while the violent mob ransacked property, obstructed a fire brigade truck and threw stones at ambulances on their way to the scene. At least eight houses were set on fire.

As the flames spread, Bushra Bibi, 55, and two of her granddaughters, a 7-year-old and her 8-month-old sister, were trapped in their house and died of smoke inhalation, officials said. Another Ahmadi woman, who was seven months pregnant, had a miscarriage.

Whatever possesses people to riot over the photoshopped picture of a semi-nude white woman sitting on top of the Kaaba? Whatever possesses them to riot over a 2006 Danish political cartoon depicting Muhammad having a bomb with a lit fuse in his turban? You don’t see Christians riot over blasphemies perpetrated against Jesus Christ. Remember “Piss Christ”?

Piss Christ was a 1987 photograph of a small crucifix immersed in a jar of the photographer’s pee. The ‘artist’, Andres Serano, won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition for his disgusting and obscene ‘masterpiece.’

So, how did Christians react when Serano placed a crucifix in a jar of piss for all to see? They sent letters and voiced their protests to members of Congress and to the National Endowment for the Arts, a U.S. government agency which helped sponsor the competition. But Christians did not riot all over the world. As a matter of fact, they did not riot anywhere.

Let me add that I get perturbed at some of my friends when they refer to America's Muslims with suspicion, seeing them all as unpatriotic and potential terrorists. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of Muslims in this country are not Islamists. They are hard working loyal Americans. And none of them rioted in reaction to blasphemous cartoons of Muhammad or an anti-Muslim video put together by a crackpot Christian preacher.