U.S.: Help me, I'm a Muslim
There are times when those words cut no ice. This is one of them.
Bullet-riddled BBC reporter cried in Arabic for help from bystanders as they watch him bleed in Riyadh.
What kind of people are capable of watching a man bleed without helping? Where is the milk of human kindness? Where is the fellow feeling and recognition of common humanity?
RIYADH - Riddled with bullets, BBC correspondent Frank Gardner pleaded for his life in the Saudi capital shouting to bystanders to help a fellow Muslim, a police officer said on Monday.H'tip to Charles at LGF. There is something grievously wrong in a country in which fear and hatred trump humanity.
"I'm a Muslim, help me, I'm a Muslim, help me," the British father of two daughters cried in Arabic, the officer said.
Gardner was stretched on the road, covered in blood from multiple bullet wounds in a slum area of southern Riyadh known as a hotbed of hardliners.
A fluent Arabic speaker with a degree in Arab and Islamic Studies, he was carrying a small copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, a device used by Westerner reporters to try to reassure Islamist militants.
He was gravely wounded and his Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers killed Sunday evening as they filmed near the home of Ibrahim al-Rayyes, a wanted terror suspect killed in a clash with security forces in the area last December.
Gardner was in a coma on Monday at King Faisal Specialist Hospital after undergoing emergency surgery.
posted by Helen at 4:39 PM
2 Comments:
I don't know all of the details in this story but not "getting involved" isn't restricted to the Arab world. The people may have been afraid for their lives or their families' or they hate the West more than they love their fellow Muslims. I don't know. This is reprehensible but, as I said, it's not restricted to them. We had a case last year in the Pacific Northwest where a woman was bound, gagged, and left in a garage where another woman saw her. The bound woman was then taken and killed. The woman who saw her... well,
===
EVERETT — The woman who found Rachel Burkheimer bound
and gagged in her garage testified yesterday that she
was "flung" from the room before she could cut the
Marysville woman free.
But as Conner cut the bonds, she felt someone behind
her. It was then that Anderson "flung me out of the
garage," she said.
Just before Snohomish County Superior Court Judge
James Allendoerfer excused jurors for the day, Conner
said she thought to call 911 but couldn't find the
cordless telephone. She is scheduled to continue her
testimony today.
===
Sad? Yes. Disgusting? Definitely.
No doubt about it, this is high class slackness. She could've saved this woman's life. Likewise with the Kitty Genovese story in Queens, NY, in the 70s, I think.
In the case of this Saudi crowd, I tend to doubt the fear factor; just as I did with the Kitty Genovese murder. What the three stories have in common is indifference to the human condition.
In the 70s, with the Genovese murder, that might have been attributable to sick fascination with a real live murder playing out before everyone's eyes. The outcry was such that the attitude of NYers changed. With this woman, I don't know that much will change because she could not be bothered to inconvenience herself for someone else. With the Saudis, the indifference might have another source altogether. For them, it may well be anti-West hatred; or, it may just be indifference to the death of a man who might not be a Muslim since non-Muslim life isn't worth very much in Islamic countries.
In every case, the commonality is disregard for human life. The true difference might be the motivation. In the Saudi case, unlike the other two, the motivation may well be rooted in an ideology which consents to such indifference. If it is ideological, then it is cultural for it is the Islamic ideology that shapes the thinking of the people.
Therefore the difference between the three situations may be summed up thus: culture shaped by ideology sanctions such uncharitable behavior amongst the Saudi. The same may not be said for this country. The U.S. may be decadent in some respects; however, the milk of human kindness still flows.
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