Thomas Friedman's most recent column contains this eye opening sentence:
Because the message from these terrorists is: "There are no limits. We have created our own moral universe, where anything we do against Americans or Iraqis who cooperate with them is O.K."
Of course, muslims don't create their own moral universe. Neither do christians or jews. All three faiths are revealed wisdom from on high. God sets their moral compass and though they fight, kick, and scratch each others eyes out, they worship the same God.
So, where's the support for Boykin? After all Friedman later complains that President Bush hasn't fired the man in the very same column. It stems from this. One of the most controversial of Boykins' statements was about a confrontation with a warlord who claimed that Allah would protect him. "My God was bigger than his god" was Boykin's reply and he hunted that warlord down.
If that warlord were a muslim, this is a twofold insult, first that Allah does not protect his warriors and second there is a God higher than Allah. But if the warlord is, like the bomber of the ICRC in Baghdad, someone who has created their "own moral universe" then there is no insult to Islam because the man being discussed was, at best, a lying hypocrite, an apostate muslim who merits death according to sharia law. Claiming that the God of Abraham is a higher god than an apostate's deity is no insult to Islam.
Posted by TMLutas at October 30, 2003 05:15 PM