By far the most important news story today is in India, and it's barely being reported.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/30/ayodhya-verdict-hindus-muslims-india

Ayodhya verdict: Muslims and Hindus ordered to share religious site

Ruling prohibits Muslims from rebuilding the 16th century Babri Masjid mosque destroyed by Hindu extremists in 1992


Three Indian judges today ruled that the disputed religious site in Ayodhya, claimed by both Muslims and Hindus, should be shared by both communities.

In one of the longest awaited and most controversial judgments in India's history, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court decided against the claim by the Muslim community that they should be allowed to rebuild a 16th century mosque demolished by a mob of Hindu extremists in 1992.

The site of the mosque would be split between two Hindu groups and one Muslim group, the judges said.

The 2,000-page ruling ordered that status quo at the religious compound in Ayodhya at the centre of the dispute — currently under state control — would be maintained for three months.

(continued at link above)



In the past - and not terribly long in the past - riots over this site have lead to thousands of deaths. Right now, it could very easily reignite tensions between Indians 1,000,000,000-odd Hindus and its 140,000,000-odd Muslims. This is far, far more important than anything happening in the West today.

when I checked just now, with about 40 reports since the verdict, from the serious news sites. Worth putting in LBN, I'd said, if you want to.

Muslim raiders destroy Hindu holy site and erect a mosque upon it to demonstrate and consolidate domination. Where have we seen that before? Temple Mount? Hagia Sofia? Mecca itself?

It's a really bad habit that religion has.

if we want to.
Tolerance is not acceptance.
Tolerance is the discipline imposed by the imperative to leave a person or group alone.
Everyone has the right to be left in his or her course.
That's a fundamental tenet of democracy and tolerance.
It is one we have not followed precisely ourselves.

A more accurate one might be "Hindus (led by future deputy prime minister) tear down Muslim mosque on grounds that centuries ago a Hindu temple may have stood there, and Indian court subsequently rules they get to keep the site".

I note that all the other examples you cite are, likewise, centuries old.

I am not at all convinced that your approach to this is motivated more by the story in question than by pre-existing bias.

I think there are a great many excellent reasons to disparage Islam as interpreted by the majority of its followers, and many liberals are far too reluctant to acknowledge this. Plus, the right to disparage Muslims (et al, of course) is what freedom of speech is all about.

But I worry that the post I was replying to was *unjustly* disparaging Muslims.

In this case, my bias suggests to me that we are about to see yet another fine example of religious piety-driven mayhem, destruction, murder and violence.

I would be pleased to be wrong, but I doubt that I will be.

(And thanks to the OP. This is a hugely important story we should be following.)

so don't single out just one.

I hope they walk the line.

today

Even though the site is possibly the birthplace of Rama the Muslims built a Mosque there where it stood unmolested for about 200 years. Imagine that, 200 years with no problems. So, what changed?

The Indian subcontinent started off as a collection of different nation-states and empires, many of them (I think, I may be wrong) fairly religiously homogenous, and mostly with rulers likely to do nasty things to anyone who rioted. These were then conquered and welded into one by the British, under whom people moved around a bit more, but who still discouraged it and who still imposed martial law.

So it may well be that opportunities for Hindus to protest this only arose post-independence, and what you're looking at is a change in circumstances rather than in human nature.

the aftermath of which was the split of Pakistan from India in 1948, and forced migration of tens of millions according to religious affiliation... Muslims to Pakistan, Hindus to India.

The demographics changed, and quite radically too.

Yeah, like that will happen.

That is, unless some of the adherents of one of the two contesting religions feel their SkyDaddy wants them to get a jump on things and burn their neighbors' houses overnight.

As we know, *od works in strange ways.

Happy birthday, Gandhiji (Oct. 2)