By Nicola Nasser*
The blind sectarian rampage, which has
been waging a war on worship mosques, churches and religious shrines have
become a modern Arab trade mark phenomenon, since what the western media called
from the start the "Arab Spring" overwhelmed the Arab streets.
The sectarian
rampage is sweeping away in its rage cultural treasures of archeology and
history, hitting hard at the very foundations of the Arab and Islamic identity
of the region, but more importantly tormenting the souls of the Arab Muslim and
Christian believers who helplessly watch the safe havens of their places of
worship being desecrated, looted, bombed, leveled to the ground and turned
instead into traps of death and monuments of destruction by the "suicide
bombers" who are shouting "God Is Great."
The only regional precedent for the
destruction of worship places on such a scale was the destruction of some one
thousand mosques since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. A research by Israeli professor Ayal
Banbanetchi, Rapaport noted that after 1948, only 160 mosques remained in the
area. In the following years, this number shrank to 40, meaning that 120 were
destroyed. Palestinians in
the Gaza Strip documented the names and locations of 47 mosques that were
destroyed completely and 107 others partially damaged by Israeli bombing during
the "Operation Cast Lead" in 2008.
May be because those crimes went
unpunished the western public opinion turns a blind eye to the new Arab
phenomenon.
Most likely, t he leaders of the Israeli
fundamentalist Jewish "Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement" are
watching closely and wondering whether the current destruction of mosques by
the Muslims themselves would be enough justification to carry out the
movement's public threats to build the "third temple" on the debris of Al-Aqsa
Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, in Jerusalem.
It is
noteworthy that this destructive phenomenon was an integral part of the "Arab
Spring," which so far has ousted two presidents in
However
containment has been so far unsuccessful in the
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