Cathy Seipp shares her thoughts on Islamic hypersensitivity (if in fact it is that) in contrast to the other religious sensitivities:

An orthodox Jew I know, for instance, told me that the handwritten Torah (not a mass-produced copy, like the Korans of those detainees) is considered so sacred that people have died trying to prevent it from being desecrated. But there are no riots when it gets desecrated anyway. Christian religious scholars point out that the Koran is not really comparable to the Bible - it's comparable to Jesus Christ, who is seen as the eternal Word of God. But Christians didn't riot when artist Andres Serrano depicted a crucifix in urine several years ago.

Woodward's commentary about the relative holiness of the Koran compared to the Torah or the Bible is beside the point anyway. Who cares what any given group of barbarians decides is worth rioting about? Muslim extremists also find it offensive when women drive, or appear in public without burkas, or when anyone tries to enter Saudi Arabia with Korans that differ from the hard-line Wahhabi version. (Pilgrims journeying to Mecca with non-Wahhabi-approved Korans see them confiscated and destroyed by Saudi authorities.)All this over the notion of books as objects. But what about the far more important function of books as purveyors of ideas? As it happens, around the same time as the Koran-flushing non-incident, an Italian judge ordered bestselling author and journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial for defaming Islam in her new book "The Force of Reason," which was supposed to be available in English this fall but has been delayed until January. Perhaps that's because Fallaci herself, who worries (not without cause) that Europe is in danger of becoming an anti-Western Islamic colony, has been delayed by wrongheaded Italian rules against defaming religion.

While there's a lot of talk about Islamic "sensitivities" and "sensibilities" (leading to things like banning cutesy pig pictures) I'm not all that convinced that there isn't an element of bullying involved.

Aren't a lot of adults forgetting that bullies often love to play victim? That they'll pick on someone, only to complain if their victim fights back? That they'll often walk around with a chip on their shoulder, just waiting for the slightest imagined offense?

Perhaps it's because I lived in Berkeley, California too long, but many times, I've seen activists behaving in exactly the same way. Often they'd challenge Berkeley's well-trained and highly restrained police to the breaking point in the hope that some officer might "lose it," and then they'd have a case of "police misconduct." Sometimes the activists would be right, of course, and they were usually quite knowledgeable about exactly what the law would permit. Waving inflammatory signs while screaming at the top of your lungs can sometimes cause even well-trained officers to behave in an unconstitutional manner. I can remember one review board I sat on in my capacity as Police Review Commissioner in which an officer went so far as to snatch away a sign he thought was inflammatory ("F--- THE POLICE!" type of stuff). After spending hours, we ruled that the officer shouldn't have done that. But the demonstrator's claim of massive outrage was just a bit strained.

Because I know the pattern when I see it, I've been quick to identify anti-gay activist Michael Marcavage as a highly skilled provocateur. An advocate of the death penalty for homosexuality, he's fond of making noise and waving highly provocative signs at just the right place and time, then claiming "religious persecution" when people overreact to his "message."

I thought about Marcavage last night when I read about this provocative conduct at a football stadium in New Jersey:

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - New Jersey officials denied yesterday that racial or religious profiling had anything to do with the detention of five Muslim football fans at a New York Giants game on Sept. 19, even as several of the men insisted that they had been singled out for praying at the stadium.

An FBI spokesman told the Associated Press that the men had been interrogated because they had congregated near Giants Stadium's main air intake duct.

At a news conference yesterday in New York, Sami Shaban, 27, a Seton Hall Law School student who lives in Piscataway, said he and four friends had just gotten to the game when it was time for one of the daily prayers required of all Muslims. They prayed, then took their seats to see the Giants play the New Orleans Saints.

Around halftime, 10 security officers and three state troopers approached and told the men to go with them, Shaban said.

"I'm as American as apple pie, and I'm sitting there, and now I'm made to feel like I'm an outsider for no reason other than I have a long beard or that I prayed," he said.

And now CAIR is involved.

The incident has prompted the Council on American-Islamic Relations to launch a national "Pray For Understanding" campaign, hoping to educate the public about Islam's five daily prayers.

"This is a teachable moment," said Wissam Nasr, executive director of the group's New York City branch, where the men spoke to reporters. "When you see Muslims praying, it's not a terrorist act; it's not a prelude to terror."

How about a prelude to a lawsuit?

LaGuardia recently designated a grassy area for Muslims to pray, he said, and Kennedy is on the verge of designating new space inside a building for the cabbies' religious needs.

One of the five Muslims detained, Sami Shaban, said he and others have contacted civil rights groups and have not ruled out suing authorities.

On April 21, a university employee named Mostafa Khalifa delivered a lecture to ISRU members on the nature of leadership. The apparent intent of the lecture was to assure that the ISRU election would have an "Islamic," rather than a democratic and American character. Ms. Agha described Khalifa as an exponent of "fundamentalist thought." She complained that he not only exploited his position as a university functionary to support his ideological agenda, but that, since he is an alumnus of the university and not a student, as well as older than the students, his involvement in the voting process represented an inappropriate effort to steer students away from voting according to their own preferences and opinions.

Further, Ms. Agha complained, "His participation exert(ed) a chilling effect on the participation of any students who disagree with his ideas and all of whom are younger than he." For anyone who knows the American Muslim community, the 'shock of recognition' is immediate: in the authority-driven environment of American Islam, older males are listened to, obeyed and almost never challenged.

The seven elected representatives would then choose the ISRU president, who would bear the title "amir" or "commander." This last detail, showing that ISRU had adopted the vocabulary of a paramilitary group rather than a student organization, is the most disturbing element in this story. Ms. Agha notes that, as announced during the elections, the "amir" of the Rutgers Muslim students would be required to be male and would enjoy "dictatorial power."

According to Ms. Agha, aside from the interloper, Mostafa Khalifa, the participants in the election, i.e. the candidates, were forbidden to make speeches; election tellers did not identify qualified voters or provide a structure to ensure fairness - they did not even ask to see Rutgers I.D.

But would it be "profiling" to ask?

Whoever he is, the Rutgers man ("Amir"?) certainly knows how to make provocative-sounding statements:

Prepare for battle. So how can we prepare for this battle? We need each other. It has become very difficult to keep the same intensity up as we had in Ramadan. We need to continue to surround ourselves with good brothers and sisters who want to hold strong to each other, to work hard together, to pick one another up when we need that support. Prepare for battle.

Prepare for battle. Our brothers and sisters, our young and our old, our sick and our weak in Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, the Philippines, Sudan, Gujarat, Guantanamo Bay, Europe, North and South America -- they are all suffering because we have let them suffer, by not fulfilling our duties to Allah and to each other, thinking only of ourselves. I intentionally left this part to the end. We need serious people with enough patience to get through one of my e-mails willing to work toward this goal. I am looking forward to all of your responses, and to working with each of you who have taken the time to read this, think about these words and to do your part to be a part of the solution and the renaissance of our community. Prepare for battle.

Kull sana wantum tayyibeen ... kull `aam wantum bi khayr ... kull sana wantum salmeen ... Eid mubarak ... Eid kareem ... Eid sa`eed ... Feliz Eid Ul-Fitr ... Happy Eid Ul-Fitr. Prepare for battle. Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar! Laa illaha illa Allah! Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar! Wa lillah-il-hamd! Asalaamu `alaikum,

Mostafa Khalifa

I should probably be relieved that the New York Times' Alan Feur ends his writeup of the incident on a positive note, jokingly joining the speculation that they might have been praying for the Giants to win.

I have no objection to anyone praying, whether for the Giants, for the Goliaths, or for the Davids.

What I can't shake is this suspicion that Christians would not have been praying in front of a ventilation duct at a large stadium like that, and if they had, that they wouldn't have been so quick to make charges of religious persecution.

Except, maybe, Michael Marcavage at a baseball event....

Hmmm....

Would it constitute "persecution" to ask these air duct prayer-leaders about their views on the death penalty for homosexuality?

(My bias may be showing, but when I was a kid, bullies loved to pick on homos.)