The DavidCyrus Blog of Wisdom

Where are the Muslims Now?
Attacking any-&-all non-Christian relief for the tsunami

To begin, I urge everyone to help, in any way that they can, to provide some aid to the 150,000 victims of the SE Asian tsunami. If you have an account on Amazon.com, you can give money very easily through their site.

But that's not enough for the Ultra-Right. Emails are circulating that compare the U.S. charitable response to Muslim countries, and then claim that it's Islam that's stingy, not the U.S.A.

Here's a copy of the email I received:

"TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has announced his nation would offer $500 million in grant aid for the tsunami-stricken regions of southern Asia. Saturday's announcement makes Japan the single largest contributor in the relief efforts. The decision to raise Japan's funding level comes one day after the United States increased its aid to the region from $35 million to $350 million, which at the time was the largest contribution by a nation.

The world's fourth most populous country has the largest population of Muslims. Approximately 87% of Indonesia's population are Muslims, so with a population of 216 million, Indonesia is home to approximately 188 million Muslims. The religion of Islam spread to Indonesia during the Middle Ages.

Saudi Arabia - the kingdom's 9.6 million barrels per day (bpd) of production - more than a tenth of world supply

US oil prices in 2004 averaged $US41.48, according to Reuters calculations, the highest in the 21 years of oil futures trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Saudi Arabia - pledges $10 million, Qatar pledges $10 million

Kuwait? Bahrain? UAE? Iran?

Do you have any idea how much money these countries have made this year? Record profits. Why aren't they the ones helping their Muslim brothers now? Why is the world critical of the US when the rich Muslim brothers are doing very little to help?

If actions speak louder than words, then this inaction tells you all you ever need to know about Islam.

Please forward this email to enough people that it comes back to me! Maybe, just maybe, these rich hypocrites will feel enough shame to do their part in this disaster relief.

It took about ten minutes of research on Google to refute this email, and return the following reply to the sender:

Use this link to compare the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the countries mentioned in the email:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29

Iran has a GDP that is a tiny fraction of the USA, roughly 4%. Saudi Arabia has a GDP of even less; about 2.4% of the USA, and the other countries go lower from there. The truth of the matter is that the Middle East countries are far poorer than the USA and Japan.

It also is interesting to note that the USA has 4.1 million Muslims, which is about as many Muslims as Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain combined. One could argue that an equivalent number of the USA's Muslims have already contributed as American citizens.

OK, we can expect a spamfest of self-gratuitous back-patting by those who believe the U.S.A. is the International Champion of Spreading Good Cheer. We also should have expected the knee-jerk reaction to blame the U.S.A.'s stinginess, the revelation of this perspective, and no doubt, the tsunami itself on the New York Times and the rest of our nation's progressives.

Review these thoughts from our favorite living voodoo doll, Ann Coulter:

In her attempt to show that the USA sends bullets of freedom instead of dollars of pork, she states, "Sending the military to liberate millions of people from ruthless dictators, for example, did not count as "aid," whereas sending in peacekeepers afterward did."

Using her logic, the Second World War produced two massive "aid" providers that never really got the accolades they deserve; (1) Nazi Germany, who marched into Russia in an attempt to overthrow Stalin, and (2) Japan, who attacked the drug-lord dictator of China, Chiang Kai-shek.

Another brilliant quote of hers: "The U.S. did not merely write a check to help the oppressed people of Afghanistan and Iraq: The U.S. did most of the fighting and liberating as well as a significant share of the dying."

The U.S. Army is doing a significant share of the dying, and that qualifies as aid? What metric are we measuring now, Ann? Indonesia didn't write anybody a check for the tsunami, and they certainly have done their share of the dying; does that make them a massive aid provider?

Note to Ann; The U.S. Army IS, in fact, in place in Afghanistan and Iraq merely because a check was written to fund those invasions. Does she really believe our soldiers are fighting these wars on principle, pro bono, as volunteers?