Based On Past Experience, A Muslim May Have Burned Down That Mosque

A Palestinian mosque in the village of Jabaa was vandalized and partially set on fire early Tuesday morning, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, with both sides suspecting Israeli settlers of the attack.
CNN, Palestinian mosque burned in suspected settler attack, June 19, 2012

If Israelis were responsible for the burning of the mosque, then they should--and will--be held responsible.

By the same token, there is a possibility that the burning of the mosque was done by Muslims.
After all, Muslims have burned mosques before:

• In June 2011, the New York Times reported that a suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Iraq (To be thorough, another suicide bomber then attacked the hospital where the survivors were being treated. Nineteen were killed, including the imam).
  
  
• There was the mosque destroyed in Lebanon in a fight between Hezbollah and a rival group in August 2010
  
  
• There's the Turkish general who in September last year admitted to destroying a mosque on purpose back in 1974 in order to psyche out the enemy:
  

  In remarks published in the Haber Türk daily yesterday as part of an interview with Gen. Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, who led the Special War Department in 1971 and also worked to mobilize civilian resistance during Turkey's military intervention on Cyprus in 1974, said: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent's incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example,” in an attempt to clear things up.

Issues of holiness are balanced against utilitarian concerns--after all, who can forget the case of the Muslims in Afghanistan who defaced the Koran in order to sell Heroin:

The Taliban are using pages torn from the Koran to package heroin sold on the streets by kids. ISAF forces operating in Souther Afghanistan found children with "pockets of heroin and wads of cash" according to USA Today's Gregg Zoroya. The heroin was packaged in ripped up pages from Islam's most holy document. The story also details how the Islamic radicals are using children, aged three and up, as human shields or to plant roadside bombs, as well as peddling drugs to help fund the insurgency.

Investigation of the evidence will indicate who is responsible for burning the mosque, but at this point--based on past history--we know that it is just as possible for a Muslim to have burned a mosque as for a non-Muslim


Technorati Tag: Israel and Mosques.