Whoa! This article from the Jakarta Globe earlier this week was stunningly frank. By the way, I am behind on my updates on the Rohingya situation; there are a dozen or more stories every day, and it’s hard to keep up.
Here is where we are: more Rohingya boatmen are coming ashore in Thailand and Indonesia and the clamoring is growing louder from their advocacy groups and from international human rights groups for them to be treated as asylum seekers and not illegal aliens. Asylum seekers can ask for refugee status from the United Nations and then possibly end up in the west (in your town!).
Now to the story that says a whole lot about the Palestinian issue and makes my point that Muslims don’t take care of fellow Muslims generally (except when they can make Israel the bad guy). Christians and Jews are guilt-tripped into doing the caring.
From the Jakarta Globe:
Indonesian Muslim hard-liners have adopted a cautious tone in their reactions to the plight of 193 Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled to Sabang Island in Aceh Province after being persecuted in their home country of Burma.
Their measured approach stands in sharp contrast to their hard-hitting outcry in defense of their Muslim peers in Palestine during the three-week Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in January. At the time, many groups were quite vocal in their condemnations of the Israeli attacks and in announcing their intentions to send fighters to the region.
Irfan Awwas, chairman of the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, or MMI, said on Monday that his organization was strongly committed to defending any Muslims who suffered mistreatment.
“However,” he continued, “our attention has been focused and our energy has been exhausted on the Palestinian issue.”
Irfan said that his organization would investigate what manner of persecution the Burmese government had exacted on the Rohingyas.
Taking care of Muslims is the government’s job, not our job!
Irfan stressed that providing for the refugees’ welfare was first and foremost the government’s responsibility, and not just the duty of fellow Muslims.
I will remind readers that wealthy Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia are NOT taking in Muslim refugees anywhere that I know of. There will be much hollering that European countries, the US, and Australia take care of and resettle these Rohingya Muslim boatmen.
Human rights groups say there are hundreds of thousands of stateless Rohingya Muslims but I guess there is no political gain for the Islamists to criticize Burma.
Chep (Chep Hernawan, head of the Islamic Reform Movement) denied that his organization was treating the Rohingyas differently than their Muslim brethren in Palestine, saying that the emergency faced by Gazans was greater than the Rohingyas’.
Hey, Chep, I would argue that these Rohingya are in a much worse predicament then the Palestinians in Gaza who have an entire UN agency feeding them and taking care of their every need. These guys are hungry and desperate. I don’t see the Gazans getting in boats to try to find work and a place to live.
Then there is this! Can you imagine the western politically correct mainstream media making this point:
But Muslim scholar Anis Baswedan said Muslim hard-liners had to be careful in their advocacy to avoid appearing discriminatory, otherwise the public would wonder whether their primary concern was the welfare of Muslims or the welfare of Palestine.
Right on Anis!
Catch up on the Rohingya issue in our special category here.