Time Square protesters: all you need is LOVE

On Dec 17, 2012 in Time Square, New York, a pastor called Terry Jones made an anti-Islamic speech. The speech described how evil the Islam religion is, and it’s a time-bomb inside the America. However, not everyone in Time Square agreed what Terry Jones said. There are some voices of different opinions. People knew not all Muslims are terrorists, and those protesters stood out and countered this speech by singing the Beatles. They told Terry Jones a message,"all you need is love". Although people in New York had being though 9/11, Time Square bomb and many threats by Muslim terrorists, but most of they still believe Muslim is an important part of America, and that is how different nation be together, become the United States of America.

Innocence of Muslims: Unfair Description

"Innocence of Muslims" is the title attributed to an anti-Islamic movie trailer. The movie is reported to have been written and produced by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, using the pseudonym of "Sam Bacile".The 14 minutes trailer uploaded on July 2012 on YouTube begins with describing the increasing persecution of Copts and poor human rights in present day Egypt, including growing religious intolerance, sectarian violence and church-burnings. The content is very anti-Muslim and the facts the movie described mostly are nonsense. So the movie caused many Muslims protests in many nations, through Islamic countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa as well as the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands and Australia. Also the violent mobs provided a backdrop and a cover for the terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three of his staff at the U.S. mission to Libya on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. It is just so sad that a director’s unfair opinion caused such big chaos. 

Tragedy in Lahore：The conflicts between Christians and Muslims still happens

On March 10th 2013, over 3,000 Muslims protesters who against Christians live in Joseph Colony area in Lahore, Pakistan went on street. Later on the protest turned violent and the angry Muslims protesters burned out over 100 Christians' houses in the eastern city of the Lahore. The picture above is a Christian family stand in their burnt house. According the local police office’s report, 178 houses, 18 shops and 2 churches were damaged by fires and hundreds of people became homeless. Although in the last two weeks I was trying to explain sometimes Muslims are victims, the conflicts they caused are still serious problems. Many Muslims, especially the Muslims in middle-east area are easy to be in rage and then lock their attacking targets on innocent citizens. The conflicts among Islam and other religions still continues, and it seems no one can stop it.

Rohingya Muslims: In Danger and Homeless

For the week 2, I am going to focus on the Muslims in Myanmar. There are about 800 thousand Muslims in Myanmar, but the Myanmar government regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Muslims in Myanmar can not get citizenship and jobs. On Feb 1st 2013, because of the war ,130 Rohingya Muslims escaped from Myanmar by ship, but they got trapped on the sea for 25 days and 97 of them died of hunger. The picture above are the survivors in that ship. One survivor said that they paid 465 dollar per person to get on board. Although they know it is a dangerous tour, but they need jobs and a place to survive. The UN Refugee Agency also concerns the increasing death of Rohingya Muslims. They suggest Myanmar government should protect Rohingya Muslims' basic human rights in action. Just like what I said in week 1, although Muslims' religion may be different from the primary religion in many countries, they just seek a good and peaceful life like other average people, and most of them should not be treated like heresy.