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Wednesday
1 February 2006
British Liberty (1215 - 2006)
Well, it's been a
good run. From Magna Carta until today's passage of the Religious
Hatred Bill, Britain has enjoyed nearly eight hundred years of liberty.
Now Freedom of Speech has gone the way of the Right to Silence, Trial by
Jury, and the general right for the government to mind its own damn business
and keep out of mine.
Hang on, what are you talking about, you ask. The revised bill was defeated. The key amendment from the House of Lords stands. It's a victory for free speech and liberty in general. This is a time for popping champagne corks.
Codswallop.
This is an appalling defeat for liberty. True, the government has been defeated in its attempt to overturn the House of Lords' amendments to the bill, but those amendments were like putting a finger plaster on a severed leg. By obtaining this "victory" we have still allowed the Religious Hatred Bill to pass into law. We have ceded the principle that the government can outlaw what we say, what we think, and what we feel. Even with the amendments, it is still an offence to speak your mind. The bill in its amended form is a classic example of the middle ground fallacy. In a choice between cutting a man's head off and not cutting his head off, Parliament has settled for cutting him in half.
What a marvellous world New Labour has given us. Once upon a time an Englishman's home was his castle and his conscience was his own. There was a time when a man could live his whole life without having a thing to do with government unless he broke the law or petitioned the courts. Then in the 1980s free speech had to be curtailed in the interests of public order and in the 1990s it had to be reined in again to fight "racism." And now under New Labour it has been made clear that our thoughts, our very emotions, are the government's to control as it sees fit and the descendants of free-born men must now look over their shoulders for fear of being overheard and denounced for committing thoughtcrime.
I wish that I was wrong about what is happening to the land of the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, and the Mother of Parliaments, but when a law, even an amended one, is made that can face someone with seven years in prison for making a "reckless" joke about religion, then we are deep in Orwellian territory. This bill in whatever form has the same flaws as the earlier Racial Hatred Bill. It attempts to provide protection for things that the law already forbids. A threat is a threat and is punished as such. An assault is an assault and is likewise punished. It doesn't matter tuppence what the threatener's or assailants opinions are, no matter how repellant, or who he offends. It is what he does. At least in the case of race there is the tenuous point that skin colour is an objective fact, but in the case of religion you are outlawing an opinion about someone else's opinions. But in both cases you are outlawing thought.
Worse, this was a law that addressed no real problem. Britons are not at one another's throats over religious divisions. Even the battles between Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland were more convenient labels for political factions, not a replay of the Thirty Year's War. The IRA never claimed to be the sword of the Pope, nor would the Vatican have had them if they'd offered. The only faction which declares war against other religions in Britain comes from Jihadist Muslims who carry out suicide attacks in the middle of London, attempt to blow up aeroplanes with shoe bombs, run off to join Al Qaeda, and try to murder decorated British soldiers because they fought terrorists in Iraq. And what staggers the imagination is that these maniacs are the staunchest supporters of the law because they can use it as a weapon to attack anyone who tries to criticise them.
Don't believe me?
Look at how the Public Order law has been
stretched out of all recognition until you don't dare ask the local council
if you can put Christian literature next to pamphlets supporting Civil
Unions for homosexuals for fear of having the Bill fingering your collar.
Now imagine that same attitude being wielded by a load of Muslim fifth
columnists who want to have the Satanic Verses taken off the shelves and
Salmon Rushdie doing porridge. You don't have to try very hard.
When it was first published they attempted exactly that using the blasphemy
laws before the courts told them, quite rightly, to push off.
And we weren't at war then. Now we are. We face an enemy who have proven in both word and deed that they want to kill and enslave us and New Labour conveniently ignores that vital fact so that they can kowtow to the EU and curry favour with the most extreme elements of an increasingly vocal Muslim minority and to Hell with our ancient liberties. Even moderate Muslim groups are aware of this. This bill didn't need amending. It needed killing.
One of the functions of the monarchy is to watch out for the interests of the people against a tyrannical government. If Her Majesty gives the royal ascent to this bill, then she will be grievously failing in her duty to her subjects.
Thursday
2 February 2006
Grim Milestones Reach Grim Milestone
Britain is going
through an absurd echo of the "grim milestone" that the United States went
through last Autumn when the American press pounded the drum over the 2000th
US soldier killed in Iraq. Yesterday, the British press
celebrated marked the
100th British soldier killed in
Iraq. Actually, it's 77 killed. The press had to add in deaths
from accident and illness to reach the magic one double-o.
This sort of thing says much more about the press than it does the war. It's one of those incidents where I want to buttonhole the editor who decided to run that story and ask him just what is so newsworthy about it. That soldiers die in war? That's tragic, but it's also what one expects in a war. It's a dog bites man story. That so many soldiers have died? This is not Isandlwana and 5000 men were not killed in one battle because someone forgot the cutters to open the ammunition boxes. One hundred in almost three years of fighting a load of suicidal fanatics has to count as one of the lightest casualty rates in history. Why do you refer to these as "nightmare numbers?" Do you know that the British lost 2700 men on the beaches of Normandy? That 700 more died in training for D-Day? Why did you rush to get juicy anti-war quotes from the grieving parents? Do you, sir, have some other agenda for your magic number? What might that be, sir? To make every news story into an anti-Coalition screed? To improve your chances on embarrassing Tony Blair or President Bush by hoping your own country loses as many soldiers as possible? To encourage the enemy into thinking that Britain will cut and run? To undermine the war effort? To sap civilian morale?
There is a word for that sort of thing. In fact, there are several, but this is a family site.
Defeatist Nostalgia
CNN
international correspondent Christiane Amanpour has missed the boat by
about, oh, thirty-eight years. On a recent Larry King show she
declared,
The war in Iraq has basically turned out to be a disaster. And journalists have paid for it, uh, paid for the privilege for witnessing and reporting that.
In 1968 Walter Cronkite handed the North Vietnamese Communists victory on a plate when he declared the war lost-- right after the US smashed the Viet Cong in the Tet Offensive, but in doing so Mr. Cronkite turned the mainstream media from a news service into a political party, so Ms. Amanpour's pronouncement is less an objective assessment than a policy statement.
Tip o' the hat to the Officer's Club, which has a perfect photo and headline to match Ms. Amanpour's character and ego: "I am Become Cronkite, Destroyer of Wars."
Reality Check
"I am shocked, shocked that the IRA has held on to its weapons."
Daring Move
The Royal Navy is
returning to the big ship era with the launch of
HMS Daring.
First of the Type 45s, she will have more firepower than the entire fleet of
the Type 42s that she replaces.
This is excellent news for the Navy and Britain. Five more of the Type 45s are on the ways, HMS Dauntless, Diamond, Defender, Dragon and Duncan, but whatever their capabilities they are not enough. One Type 45 may be able to outgun a fleet of Type 42s, but it can't be in two places at once. We not don't need fewer and better ships. We need more and better ones.
Tres Bien!
The
pushing against Denmark for daring to stand up to the Islamofascists over
the cartoon controversy has finally caused a push back. A German
magazine has republished the "offensive" cartoons of Mohammed and even the
French have got
into the act.
This is exactly the sort of thing Old Europe must do to protect its freedoms. It may sound absurd to have a stare down over a load of caricatures, but if you don't draw the line in ink now Europe will be drawing it later in blood.
Update: I guess it was too good to be true. This just in from the BBC,
France Soir originally said it had published the images in full to show "religious dogma" had no place in a secular society.
But late on Wednesday its owner, Raymond Lakah, said he had removed managing editor Jacques Lefranc "as a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual".
Mr Lakah said: "We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who were shocked by the publication."
The president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), Dalil Boubakeur, had described France Soir's publication as an act of "real provocation towards the millions of Muslims living in France"
Well, at least the French had one day when they acted like men and not mice. Pass the Vichy water, please.
Electric Scuba
Looks like they are
still trying to create
artificial gills.
This time they're using electrically-powered centrifuges to squeeze oxygen
out of the water, which is one of the reason some divers are still
sceptical.
Oh, well. At least they're in good company.
WHY!?!
French
Vitner has created "Lir;"
a wine which has only six percent alcohol as opposed to the thirteen percent
of regular wine.
Like decaffeinated coffee, the reason for doing such a thing escapes me entirely
Very Good, Jeeves.
The Japanese National
Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has developed what
it claims to be a
robot butler.
Called Promet, it can run errands, respond to verbal commands, fetch drinks,
and turn on the telly.
Given that it looks rather like an anime battle robot I suspect that launching missiles and striking silly, pretentious poses are also part of its programming.
Tip o' the hat to Samizdata.
Bleedin' Satellites!
Meanwhile, the
University of Bristol is developing a
satellite that can bleed. The idea is that a satellite that is
struck by a meteorite would be able to repair itself by oozing sealants
encased in microtubules that are broken by the impact.
This development has been condemned by some space engineers who say they faint at the sight of resin.
Highland Kitties.
If you thought the
West Anstey boar invasion was alarming,
then you may want to cancel your holiday in Scotland. Fife police
claim to have confirmed that there is a big cat, possibly a
black leopard
running around the countryside.
Now if we could just get the boars to move from Devon to Scotland or vice versa we could solve at least one of the problems.
You've Got Crabs
Britain is doing it's part to help out our Norwegian neighbours to combat an invasion of giant crabs.
It seems that back in the heyday of the Soviet Union Stalin introduced giant red king crabs into the Barent's Sea-- possibly for food, possibly as the nucleus of an invincible army of atomic mutant crabs. I'm not sure. Since then, however, the crabs have multiplied and migrated into Norwegian waters where an estimated 50 million of them are now threatening fish stocks.
And how is Britain helping to fight this menace? Atomic depth charges? SBS forces equipped with electric laser spear-guns? No. Britain is battling the crabs by helping the Norwegians eat them. All across the British Isles restaurants are bringing in emergency supplies of stock pots, crab mallets, and butter, as in the case of Chef Pascal Proyart of Knightsbridge's One-O-One restaurant,
We sell 45 to 60 kilos of these giant crabs each week and many customers order both starters and main courses made with the meat. It is very versatile; you can use different parts of the animal for different dishes, and a single crab can easily feed a party of eight or ten.”
Such sang froid in the face of battle is admirable, but it is rumoured that if the posher restaurants have to carry the burden, it will not be enough despite the fact that the Grenadier Guards are being trained in emergency cordon bleu techniques to act as kitchen reinforcements. Ephemeral Isle has been informed by sources that the government plans to introduce legislation that will make crab and chips a mandatory part of all menus and that crab burger recipes are under development at Porton Down.
But all of this is only the first step. Remember that there are 50 million of the pincered little bastards, so break out those lemon wedges, tie on those bibs, and select a crisp little white wine.
Have a crab supper for victory!
Friday
3 February 2006
Grim Milestones in perspective
I was happily surprised to see this piece in the BBC by a military historian who points out that the casualty rate for British soldiers in Iraq are the lowest of any British military conflict in the past century; the only lower one being the Happy Fluffy Fun Bunny War of 1947.
Auntie actually lets this sort of thing slip through from time to time when the editors nod and they lapse into practicing journalism, but as Mike Jericho points out, they make up for this with counterbalancing the feather of Truth with a hod of propaganda bricks in the other pan.
Cartoon Controversy
The
Cartoon
Controversy continues to heat up and as some in the Western media try to
stand up for free speech, the British press has decided to sit this one
out. Stephen
Pollard notices that the BBC goes one better and actually censors its
own coverage by blacking out the cartoons in its reports as if they were
pornography while the
Front Page has a rundown of the diplomatic toings and froings.
Sadly, the editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, where the cartoons were first published, has admitted defeat. In a New York Times interview he said,
My guess is that no one will draw the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark in the next generation, and therefore I must say with deep shame that they have won.
This isn't just idle speculation. The Brussels Journal reported that one leading Norwegian cartoonist noted for mocking Christianity has learned his lesson about trying the same thing with the Religion of Peace and has become a good little dhimmi,
(Finn) Graff, who was known in the 1960s and '70s for his satirical drawings of Jesus Christ, said that he does not draw pictures mocking Muhammad. He does so out of fear for Muslims, and also "out of respect." Muslims, he said, are very sensitive about their religion and their prophet, which is something one has to take into account and one has to respect. (Morten M.) Kristiansen said he had received many protest letters in the past whenever he mocked Christ. The same applies to cartoons about Muhammad, but lately the protest letters from Muslims had increasingly become threats, including death threats in e-mails from places such as Iran. Unlike Graff, Kristiansen said he will not change his behaviour because of these threats because it is important to defend the right to freedom of expression.
Those threats are not idle, as this British Muslim group makes plain.
The new BBC logo
Update: The BBC is doing its usual dance to cover up its self-censorship in this hand-wringing piece about how important it is to respect religion and not give offence to others-- a sentiment that the Beeb seems to have discovered rather late in the day. They reinforce this with a number of side articles of the "See? It's no big deal," variety, such as this one where a carefully picked selection of "moderate" Muslims and happy multi-culti Danes "debate" the issue. Notably absent in all this is the elephant in the living room, which is the fact that there are Jihadists out there who will act out their "offence" by committing murder and that this entire row started because a children's author couldn't find an illustrator who would draw a picture of Mohammed for his book because the artists were afraid for their lives.
Update: Meanwhile, Jack Straw has hit a new low in dhimmitude as he tries to make a virtue out of cowardice by praising the British media for being "responsible" by refusing to show the public what the controversy is all about. Where, one might ask, was Mr. Straw asking for "responsibility" when the BBC aired the Jerry Springer Opera in its entirety despite protests from Christians offended by Our Savior running about in a diaper. Oh, that's right. The Christians weren't threatening to behead anyone with a dull knife. Maybe someone should explain to Mr. Straw that there is a vast gap between being responsible and caving in to homicidal fanatics.
Update: "Homicidal fanatics?" That's a bit thick, isn't it, old boy? Think so? In London today there was a march by Muslims in protest of the offending cartoons. This "moderate" group,
...held placards, one declaring: "Behead the one who insults the prophet." Another said: "Free speech go to hell."
Or this lot reported by The Times,
Europe, you will pay. Demolition is on the way
Slay those who insult Islam
In Indonesia the protester were more direct,
The first protests took place in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, when around 150 members of the Islamic Defenders Front tried to storm the Danish Embassy in Jakarta after pelting the building with eggs. "Let’s slaughter the Danish ambassador!" Read banners carried by the crowd. "We're ready for jihad!" They shouted.
In Gaza the call was,
Sever the hand that drew!
Little Green Footballs has photos from London of these charming sentiments,
Europe take some lessons from 9/11
Europe is the cancer, Islam is the answer
Exterminate those who slander Islam
And then there's this gem,
Behead those who Insult Islam
This is indeed about responsible journalism. The only responsible course is to show some courage, stand up to the Islamofascists, and tell them that dhimmitude is not an option.
The Strange Ride of Susan Osthoff II
There
doesn't seem to be any bottom to
the Susanne Osthoff saga. The more her
rambling, self-contradictory accounts of her "kidnapping" are
straightened out,
the more it seems as if the German government was conned out of $5 million
by a Baathist sympathiser working for one of Saddam's personal physicians.
The only reason she hasn't been arrested is probably because that would mean the Germans would have to admit having paid that ransom they always denied paying.
Monday
6 February 2006
Whistling in the Dark
The cartoon controversy
looks set to become the Cartoon War if things don't improve soon.
Violent protests have erupted across the Muslim world. The
Danish and Norwegian embassies embassies in Damascus have been set fire
to and the Syrian government is being held responsible by the
Danes,
Norwegians and Americans. The latter is somewhat surprising, since
the day before the US State Department had fallen back on its usual
pursed lip mode. The
Danish
embassy in Beirut was also torched despite efforts by the Lebanese
police and Army. "They should have respected our religion," said one
of the Arsonists for Allah.
Meanwhile, Jordan has done France one better. Not only was the editor of a paper that printed the offending cartoons fired, but he and another editor have been arrested for "insulting religion."
And just to show that the battle isn't just in the Middle East, a Muslim lawyer in Norway has demanded that the country adopt "anti-blasphemy" laws. Mr. Abid Q Raja said,
I would like a new blasphemy regulation that defines limits for what type of offensive expression shall be allowed towards society's minorities.
Translation: What you Lutherans need is a good dose of sharia to keep you in your place.
In Britain the only law being talked about by the Tories is incitement to murder. They want to know why the Muslim protesters carrying signs saying things like "Slay those who insult Islam" aren't being arrested. According to Mr. David Davis, the shadow home secretary,
Whatever your views on these cartoons, we have a tradition of freedom of speech in this country which has to be protected. Certainly there can be no tolerance of incitement to murder.
In response to this a senior Scotland Yard officer said,
We have to take the overall nature of the protesters into account. If they are overheated and emotional we don't go in.
That means that if a load
of Islamofascists look like they mean business, we aren't going near them.
That was apparently the philosophy
outside the Danish embassy in London where a man was allowed to walk
around wearing what was allegedly a "fake" suicide bomb belt. This is
a far cry from the days after 7/7 when a Brazilian man who ran from police
was gunned down rather than taking the risk of his having a bomb under a
jacket. Now the drill seems to be if a man is seen outside an embassy
in a vest that could be packed with Semtex
it is the duty of the Metropolitan police to protect this bit of street
theatre from photographers!
Courtesy of Jawa Report
For the BBC, though, it was business as usual. Auntie has determined that the real story isn't about a load of Jihadists demanding with threats of violence to impose sharia on the West, but how all this is affecting Muslims for whom all of this sort of "just happened."
For example, there is this story about Asghar Bukhari, chairman of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, who condemned the protesters saying,
I condemn them without reservation, these people are less representative of Muslims than the BNP are of the British people.
Which is quite commendable, but since many Muslim leaders have a tendency to say one thing in English and exactly the opposite in Arabic, I'd be a lot more at ease if the BBC had taken the trouble to provide more context on the gentleman and looked a bit into his track record. Is he being honest? Duplicitous? And if honest, do his words carry any weight? Given the fact that after 7/7 Mr. Bukhari was on record as saying that condemning suicide bombers depends on who is being bombed, some investigation is called for.
Then the BBC was off to a local mosque to see how the Faithful were dealing with the dreaded backlash that never seems to materialise no matter how fervently predicted. My favourite qoute in the piece is,
His voice competing with the call to prayer, Abdul Aleem, 20, explains why he thinks the cartoon to be so dangerous.
"People who are not Muslim would think it's not a peaceful religion, seeing the Prophet as a terrorist.
"It's a misrepresentation and gives a negative view to the world, after we tried so hard after 9/11 to get across to the world we are not all like that. This sets us back."
Of course, setting off bombs
in underground trains and buses, slaughtering filmmakers in the street,
shooting schoolchildren in the back, treating women like slaves, and
ramming airliners into buildings
does nothing to give "a negative image."
Then there is this choice plum by Robert Plummer, BBC News business reporter, whose article "Firms feel pain of people power" has got to win the price from the most blinkered headline of the week. Mr. Plummer seems not to have noticed that little matter of a bloody terrorist war being waged against the West and apparently believes that the Muslim boycott against Denmark as one with such trendy lefty causes as refusing to buy chocolate from Nestle because it so heartless as to sell infant formula to the Third World. In addition to the Nestle campaign, Mr. Plummer also points to the pressure brought against Barclay's Bank to disinvest in South Africa to protest against apartheid, environmentalists harassing Disney World Hong Kong into taking shark's fin soup off the menu, and boycotts of French wine in an attempt to halt French nuclear testing. It is interesting that Mr. Plummer makes no mention of the much more recent boycott against France because of its shameful actions in the run up to the Iraq War, but perhaps only leftist causes need apply for his imprimatur. Of course, Mr. Plummer does miss that tiny little detail that in none of his examples were the participants backing up their demands with threats of bloody murder nor were one of their supporters a nation of crazed Islamofascists bent on getting the bomb before the next Hajj.
Mr. Plummer should spend a few minutes listening to Australia's Sheik Fehmi El-Imam, the general secretary of the Board of Imams of Victoria. This is a man who should be running a protection racket. He's got the delivery down pat.
In some parts of the world there is rioting against the Danish and the Dutch, we don't want that in Australia.
Unfortunately, New Zealand has (published the cartoons) ... I'm trying to avoid, to put far away, any possibility of disturbing the peace in Australia.
"You don't want to buy one of our posters? That ain't very healthy, guvnor. You know that caf that burnt down? They didn't 'ave a poster. And the pub 'round the corner wot got done over? They didn't 'ave a poster nivah."
Over at The Times, Jasper Gerard says that Islam is not the religion in Britain that is being blasphemed against-- and for a very nasty reason.
An open season is indeed what we have on Christianity. The Virgin Mary depicted as a crack whore? “How dreary,” we would sigh, “not again.” Jesus on the cross enjoying a nice spot of S&M? Too tame to win the Turner Prize. Another G&G masterpiece carries the inscription “God Loves F******!”. Yet even artists whose shtick is to shock would never lampoon God’s Islamic oppo.
The one established faith in this country is the only one we are free to insult. Since cinemas looked so silly banning The Life of Brian, the church has given up asking not to be jeered. It seems almost grateful for the attention. Who would protest if an Islamic cartoon showed an Anglican suicide bomber packing Semtex in the boot of his Morris Minor?
Turning a tolerant cheek is one of Christianity’s most appealing aspects. Certain other faiths lack that blessed gift: the ability to laugh.
Perhaps Muslims take offence more because they believe more. We should be sensitive to that. But they must also realise that the West’s real religion is rationalism: all beliefs, even faiths, should be open to reasoned attack.
Our self-censorship shows why the clause that would have banned religious insults was not needed. Islam is protected by an invisible blasphemy law. It is called fear.
Mark Steyn enlarges on this topic,
(W)e should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.
Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.
And to give some historical perspective, zombietime.com has a compilation of images of Mohammed from both the Islamic and non-Islamic world that indicate that there is more than a small dose of hypocrisy in the current outrage.
Tuesday
7 February 2006
The Cartoon War
The Cartoon War (the
newspapers are starting to call it that) is
turning
bloody. Five people have been killed in-- two of them outside the
US airbase at Bagram, Afghanistan. Apparently the rioters didn't get
the State Department's
grovelling memo. These five deaths do
not include a
Catholic priest in Turkey, who was gunned down by a "youth" shouting
"Allah Akhbar." Turkish police refuse to link the killing to the
Danish cartoons.
The Danish embassy in Tehran has had firebombs thrown at it and in a bit of poor planning the Austrian embassy was also attacked. This is surprising given the "well-planned spontaneity" that the Groaniad noticed in Beruit.
However, in a refreshing turn of events, a Muslim group has set up a web site to apologise for the actions of their more excitable fellows,
Anyone offended by the content of a publication has a vast choice of democratic and respectful methods of seeking redress. The most obvious are not buying the publication, writing letters to the editor or expressing their opinions in other venues. It is also possible to use one’s free choice in a democracy to conduct a boycott of the publication, and even a boycott of firms dealing with it. Yet an indiscriminate boycott of all the country’s firms is simply uncalled for and counter-productive. We would be allowing the extremists on both sides to prevail, while punishing the government and the whole population for the actions of an unrepresentative irresponsible few.
We apologize whole-heartedly to the people of Norway and Denmark for any offense this sorry episode may have caused, to any European who has been harassed or intimidated, to the staff of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Embassies in Syria whose workplace has been destroyed and for any distress this whole affair may have caused to anyone.
Well done and if more truly moderate Muslims stood up to the Jihadists and made themselves heard we'd be halfway toward winning this war.
Another apology has come from the man who wore a fake suicide bomb belt in London the other day, though his apology was more about causing distress to the families of the victims of 7/7. Again, this is a good thing, but I am still appalled and amazed that the police allowed this man to walk around unhindered. The moment he got off the bus he should have been in a sniper's crosshairs and told to get on the ground NOW!
One apology we don't need however was from the BBC saying how sorry it was for not bowing to Islam and fleetingly showing the infidel cartoons on television.
Of course, not everybody is in an apologetic mood. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the radical North London cleric, prefers the more traditional approach and has called for the cartoonists to be executed-- after a fair trial under sharia law, of course. If Western countries refuse to co-operate, Mr. Mohammed says that they must “face the consequences.”
Why this man has been neither arrested nor deported remains a mystery to anyone sane. Maybe it's the same logic that made a South African court conclude that the way to handle death threats against an editor who published the cartoons is to ban said cartoons.
Of course, they could have been simply following Jack Straw's lead in the Neville Chamberlain act-alike contest,
If people looked at these cartoons and were to replace the images of the Holy Prophet with images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary, they can see that, even in our culture, if they were directed at the Judeo-Christian traditions, there would be similar outrage.
"Holy Prophet?" When did Straw convert? Powerline has the best rejoinder to this,
Yeah, right. I can just imagine a bunch of Lutheran ministers inciting their congregations to burn down the Saudi embassy. In some other world, maybe; not this one.
In the Without a Clue category we have Tehran's Hamshahri newspaper, which is running a competition for the most offensive Holocaust cartoons. According to Farid Mortazavi, the paper's graphics editor,
The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let’s see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons
Aside from the hidden assumption behind his statement that the Evil Jews are behind the Danish cartoons, Mr. Mortazavi is missing an important point. Muslim newspapers are notorious for printing some of the most vile, racist anti-Semitic and anti-Christian cartoons imaginable on a daily basis, whereas in the West cartoonists have been terrorised into dhimmitude. The Western media running despicable pictures coming out of Dar al-Islam would be as newsworthy as reprinting Hamashari's weather column.
Newsworthy is the one thing that the BBC's John Simpson does not think the Cartoon War is. In this column he dismisses the whole thing as a tempest in a teapot; comparing it to the Salmon Rushdie affair with the conclusion that the latter didn't really amount to anything and the current controversy "has mostly been non-violent." That may be true on the Planet Zongo, but here on Earth we recognise that the fatwa against Mr. Rushdie is still in effect, that the reaction of the Western government and press to his death warrant was one of shameful silence, that the Rushdie affair was of a piece with the unrecognised war of Islamofascism that had been waged against civilisation since 1979 and have left thousands dead and cities in flames, and that most people would hardly call five or six dead over the weekend, blazing embassies, death threats against and arrests of editors, men in hiding for fear of their lives, and calls for a "real holocaust" in the streets of London scarcely qualifies as "non-violent." Simpson goes on to compare the demand that the West kowtow to the Islamists to the laws that some European countries have against virulent anti-Semitic literature and Holocaust denial. He neatly ignores that fact that only some countries have that prohibition, that it is a very controversial law that most Anglophone countries will have nothing to do with, that such laws are usually on the books in countries that either ran or shamefully collaborated with the Final Solution, and that if the shelves of Muslim book shops that stock The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are anything to go by, the enforcement is rather selective.
Perhaps it isn't surprising that the Man Who Liberated Kabul would say things like,
And when extremists march through the streets, applaud bloodthirsty crimes like the attacks of 11 September and 7 July, that is no less insulting than publishing unfunny and deliberately goading cartoons.
No, Mr. Simpson. That isn't an insult; it's a threat. Please learn the difference.
Meanwhile, back in Denmark, Copenhagen rues its lost tolerance as the multiculturalism train comes to a wheezing halt. Sometimes waking up to the fact that bending over backwards to please your enemy invites contempt rather than love is a hard thing to do. This dose of reality would be good news, but Theodore Dalrymple says at Cato Unbound that Old Europe is fighting against a massive loss of self-confidence induced by a smothering welfare state that may doom any attempt to raise a fight against the Islamofascists,
The miserabilist view of the European past, in which achievement on a truly stupendous scale is disregarded in favor of massacre, oppression and injustice, deprives the population of any sense of pride or tradition to which it might contribute or which might be worth preserving. This loss of cultural confidence is particularly important at a time of mass immigration from very alien cultures, an immigration that can be successfully negotiated (as it has been in the past, or in the United States up to the era of multiculturalism) only if the host nations believe themselves to be the bearers of cultures into which immigrants wish, or ought to wish, to integrate, assimilate, and make their own.
In the absence of any such belief, there is a risk that the only way in which people inhabiting a country will have anything in common is geographical; and civil conflict is the method in which they will resolve their very different and entrenched conceptions about the way life should be lived. This is particularly true when immigrants are in possession, as they believe, of a unique and universal truth, such as Islam in its various forms often claims to be. If the host nation is so lacking in cultural confidence that it does not even make familiarity with the national language a condition of citizenship (as has been until recently the case in Great Britain), it is hardly surprising that integration does not proceed very far.
What Mr. Dalrymple does not address is that some people have gone over to the other side. Over at Gateway Pundit there is a rundown of comments from the Angry Left, who have concluded that it's All Chimpy Bushitler's fault, but Slate isn't going to be outdone. In the spirit of lighting a candle rather than curse the darkness, Amanda Schaffer has a helpful, and dead serious, article telling Al Qaeda operatives how to avoid wiretaps.
And I thought that the cartoons were supposed to be the satire.
Wednesday
8 February 2006
The Cartoon War II
I've got a collection of
bizarre little items that I'd love to relate, but the Cartoon War is the
gift that just keeps on giving. Whether it peeters out or is the spark
that ignites the Terror War beyond the point where anyone can deny it is
still an open question. For now, let's have a rundown of what's
happening.
A Norwegian military base in Afghanistan was attacked by "demonstrators" with stones and hand grenades. British troops were called into the fire fight that ended with four protestors dead.
Another Norwegian, a student in Syria, got caught up in the anti-Western demonstrations there and thanks to a Syrian "friend" suddenly found himself the centre of attention,
Rydningen immediately found himself being lifted up on the shoulders of another Syrian man.
"It went quiet," he told Aftenposten.no. "The people had just been yelling 'Death to Norway.' Now I had to talk to them."
With just four months of language study under his belt, Rydningen greeted the crowd in traditional style in Arabic and told them that the conflict was based on misunderstandings. He tried to stress that both sides need to learn to show respect for each other, "and if we learn, we can live peacefully together, if Allah allows."
His impromptu speech won cheers, and he said many of the angry demonstrators started smiling and laughing.
But the outcome wasn't quite what the film version would have been,.
Unfortunately their improved humor didn't seem to last long. The next day, a furious crowd torched not only the Danish Embassy, but the Norwegian as well.
The protests have spread to Nigeria, where MPs took part in burning Danish flags and over in Dubai, Kofi Annan is saying that the Scandinavians should apologise for all the trouble they've caused. Tomorrow he's going to tell rape victims they should apologise for wearing short skirts.
In London, the "suicide bomb" protestor is back in prison. It seems that his little escapade violated his parole for drug dealing. The police have appointed a special squad to "look into" the London protests (I would have thought a list of addresses would suffice), but Simon Heffer wonders if this "softly, softly" approach is not the best or most honest,
The Metropolitan Police certainly seems selective in its "softly, softly" approach to dealing with protests. Only 17 months ago, before the rule of the present Commissioner, some of its officers zealously cracked the heads of protesters from the notoriously dangerous group of psychopaths otherwise known as the pro-foxhunting lobby.
The main offence perpetrated by these people appeared to be shouting, wearing tweeds in a public place, and waving placards saying that they didn't like Mr Blair or his Bill very much.
Maybe Sir Ian, now he is in charge, would have his officers be as mild towards them as they were towards those who openly incited murder on Friday, and who took an infant out on the protest with them wearing a hat inscribed with the entirely reasonable statement "I love al-Qaida".
On the swings and roundabouts front, 8,000 copies of a student newspaper at Cardiff University were seized after it ran the Danish cartoons, but in America the Philadelphia Inquirer has run them without apology.
Anthony Browne has a rundown on the diplomatic front and over at the Spiegel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch politician under a Muslim death threat, has an interview with some remarkably frank talk,
SPIEGEL: But Muslims, like any religious community, should also be able to protect themselves against slander and insult.
Hirsi Ali: That's exactly the reflex I was just talking about: offering the other cheek. Not a day passes, in Europe and elsewhere, when radical imams aren't preaching hatred in their mosques. They call Jews and Christians inferior, and we say they're just exercising their freedom of speech. When will the Europeans realize that the Islamists don't allow their critics the same right? After the West prostrates itself, they'll be more than happy to say that Allah has made the infidels spineless.
SPIEGEL: What will be the upshot of the storm of protests against the cartoons?
Hirsi Ali: We could see the same thing happening that has happened in the Netherlands, where writers, journalists and artists have felt intimidated ever since the van Gogh murder. Everyone is afraid to criticize Islam. Significantly, "Submission" still isn't being shown in theaters.
But at least the book-buying public isn't intimidated. Kåre Bluitgen's The Koran and the Life of the Prophet Muhammad, the children's book that started all this, is flying off the shelves.
Meanwhile, the BBC is building its bubble thicker and smaller, though not without its critics. Paul Reynolds has a piece that portrays those who demand a firm stand for free speech as "right wing," which is in Beebspeak means "beyond the pale." But the most interesting thing is how the BBC follows the conviction of "controversial" Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri for solicitation of murder. This conviction has taken years to move through the courts and has ended with a paltry seven-year sentence, which should be a major talking point if Britain expects the courts to act as the first line of defence against terrorists, but the BBC feels that it is much more important to find out the opinion of Muslims about the conviction and the doings down at Finsbury mosque. The idea of seeking the opinions of infidel Britons, the targets of Abu Hamza's murderous dreams, doesn't seem worth the effort. Abu Hamza is a purely Muslim matter and the conviction has nothing to do with the kaffirs, just as the Cartoon War has nothing to do with the larger Terror War.
Bias, blinkers, or cringing? Not that it matters. I mean, it's not like there are terrorist training camps in Britain, is it?
Question is, is this the opening salvo of a true clash of civilisations? I'll leave that to Lee Harris and David Pryce-Jones to discuss.
Thursday
9 February 2006
Cartoon Roundup
Six months ago that
headline would have been something to do with a kid's show, but in today's
insane world of the Terror War it's about an ongoing fight over free speech
in which
three more people have died trying to attack an American base in
Afghanistan, bringing the
death
toll to fourteen, or even the Grim Milestone™ of fifteen, if you count
that Catholic priest murdered in Turkey.
In
Tehran there was a twofer protest against both the Danish cartoons and
Britain helping to report Iran to the UN Security Council regarding Iran's
nuclear weapons power programme.
Protestors were in good voice as they pelted the British embassy with
stones,
They chanted "Death to Britain" and "We are willing to sacrifice our lives for the Prophet Muhammad"
Though we suspect that they'd settle for "sacrificing" the lives of a few British diplomats instead.
In other developments, the Cartoon War has spread into cyberspace. Muslim hackers launched a coordinated attack against one thousand Danish web sites, defacing their home pages with everything from calls to boycott Danish goods to, in the BBC's weasel words, "threats of violence."
Speaking of boycotts, has anyone realised that the Muslim boycott of Danish ham and bacon is a bit like a killer whale boycotting bananas?
And on Planet Zongo, the BBC continues to refer to the current events as a "row" despite the fact that your average "row" doesn't involve threats of beheadings and attacks on military bases and embassies.
Meanwhile, the real "Chirac Doctrine" has reasserted itself as the French President handed down this little gem of wisdom,
Anything that can hurt the convictions of another, particularly religious convictions, must be avoided.
M. Chirac now owes me a new laptop, as my old one is now soaking with sprayed tea and toast. For a man who leads an aggressively secularist nation and who has made his career out of pounding the convictions of others into the ground to say this is brass of the purest order.
It is even more appalling when a French satirical magazine that printed the cartoons was only able to do so after dodging a court injunction on a technicality.
In America, some journalists are actually showing some spine, such as at the alternative paper The New York Press, where the staff walked out after the publisher refused to run the cartoons. Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel issued this statement:
New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group—consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editor Jonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions.
We have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we'd criticized others for not running, cartoons that however absurdly have inspired arson, kidnapping and murder and forced cartoonists in at least two continents to go into hiding. Editors have already been forced to leave papers in Jordan and France for having run these cartoons. We have no illusions about the power of the Press (NY Press, we mean), but even on the far margins of the world-historical stage, we are not willing to side with the enemies of the values we hold dear, a free press not least among them.
This was not an easy decision. I've been reading the Press since 1988 and have dreamed of running it for nearly as long. The paper's editorial staff has worked impossibly hard hours and has come quite a ways in only a few months towards restoring the paper's tarnished editorial reputation and credibility. I'm proud of the work we've
done, and wish we'd had time to finish the job. I wish the Press all the best, and hope that under new ownership and leadership it can again be an invaluable read for all good Gothamites.
The New York Times, on the other hand, is deep in doublethink territory. It ran an editorial saying that it will not print the Danish cartoons because the Times refuses to indulge in "gratuitous assaults on religious symbols," and the next day it runs a picture of the Virgin Mary splattered with elephant dung. But that's just insulting Christians, so it doesn't count.
In Denmark, Danish Muslims are split over the Cartoon War with the more moderate elements saying,
Now, we have to demonstrate that we are proud of being Danish and that we are supporting Danish values.
Surprisingly, the most radical voices came from within the government's own integration think tank with Ahmad Akkari of the Islamic Faith Society handing down this veiled threat,
We want the newspaper to promise that this will never happen again or this will never stop.
And your female staff can collect their burqas at the door.
Back in Britain the They Just Don't Get It Award goes to the Muslim Action Committee, which met in Birmingham to demand that printing pictures of Mohammed should be made illegal.
Over at National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg discusses a major blind spot that the West has developed over the Cartoon War,
The quotation marks around the word "religious" should say it all. We're not talking about "religion." We're talking about a specific religion — Islam. Does anyone truly think that the burning of Danish embassies and calls for the "slaughter" of those responsible by Muslim protestors have really taught the BBC or the New York Times to be more polite to evangelical Christians or Orthodox Jews? Does anyone really think that Arabic newspapers — often state-owned — are going to stop recycling Nazi-era images of Jews as baby killers and hook-nosed conspirators because they've become enlightened to the notion that words can hurt? Considering that an Iranian newspaper just announced a contest for the best Holocaust cartoon, the odds seem slim. Besides, why belittle the Holocaust in response to something a Danish newspaper did? (Partial credit given for the answer: "It's always useful to pick on the Jews.")
Finally, according to satirical site The Chaser, even Homer Simpson has learned not to mess with Mohammed.
And this just in:
According to Michelle Malkin, Iran has decreed that henceforth Danish pastry will be called Mohammed pastry, which should go well with a report in the same post that a British school is banning hot cross buns as "religiously offensive."
I wonder how long it will be before the Faithful discover that the Croissant was allegedly invented to celebrate Budapest's victory over the Muslim Turks in 1686? After the Cartoon War will we have the Food Fight?
Friday
10 February 2006
Weekend Cartoon Update
The
Cartoon War seems to have entered a lull today. perhaps this means the
furore is dying down or perhaps it's the calm before the storm. I
suspect the latter, since the
Muslim Action Committee is planning a march of "100,000" Muslims in
London next weekend. The MAC claims that the demonstration will be
peaceful; that it will be "not a political one, but a religious one;" and
that only placards printed by the committee would be allowed.
Given that the MAC is the group that wants Britain to outlaw the publication of pictures of Mohammed, we're taking their pronouncements with a very large grain of salt.
Meanwhile, Samizdata reports on the effectiveness of the Buy Danish campaign with a translation from an article in Børsen,
Denmark is, as most people are aware, caught in the middle of a Middle Eastern sandwich, where the hateful reactions to the Prophet drawings have become so extreme that the crisis is going straight on to front pages in media around the world.
This releases a counter expression via buy Danish campaigns, where the customers are encouraged to buy Danish goods to support Denmark in the conflict. A simple search on Google gives more than 100.000 "buy Danish" pages."
Out East, Malaysia has demonstrated what is really at stake by suspending indefinitely the licence of the Sarawak Tribune for publishing the Danish cartoons.
In Norway, the What The ****? prize has been won by the Muslim Al-Jinnah Foundation, which has reported the Christian weekly Magazinet to the police on the grounds that the publication's decision to run the cartoons endangered Norwegian lives by enraging Muslims. No doubt we'll soon be seeing courts punishing rape victims. Oh, wait, they already do that.
But don't imagine for a moment that the EU is sleeping on the job. The European Commission has decided to take firm action in response to attacks on freedom of the press.
They plan to abolish it.
America isn't going to be forcing "press codes" on anyone at the moment, but from the small town of Stoughton, Mass we have a perfect examples of a legitimate objection and of craven dhimmitude. Town Manager Mark Stankiewicz was so moved by scenes of Muslim violence that he took it upon himself to fly a Danish flag beneath the US flag at the Stoughton town hall. A veteran objected on the legitimate grounds that the Danish flag was being improperly flown. However, the Stoughton No Place for Hate Committee objected much more strenuously out of fear that flying the Danish flag would cause adherents of the Religion of Peace to attack the town.
Motto of the SNPHC: Please don't hurt us! We won't do it again!
For an historical perspective, Wretchard at he Belmont Club points out that the offending cartoons were published last October in an Egyptian newspaper without any fuss. And Eve Garrard at Normblog examines the moral equivalence argument and why it doesn't fit here.
Richard Burton: Dead, Yet Still Working
There's no justice.
I've been hunting for a day job for two months with no success and here
comes an
actor who's been dead for twenty-two years and he lands a plum role in a
touring version of Jeff Wayne's
The War of the Worlds. Mr. Burton will be appearing on
stage as a 3D image, but I'll bet he still pulls better than Equity scale.
I See, Tell Me More
Ever feel
like you need a psychiatrist? Really need to talk to someone about
your troubles? Trouble is, you can't bear the thought of telling any
of your problems to a living person? Then why not jump over to
Eliza Redux, where you can book a live
online session with a real robot therapist.
Warning: The robot may be more screwed up than you are.
Hippocrates Spinning in His Grave
I sometimes wonder if
the medical profession has forgotten that its primary duty is to do no harm.
When I read stories
like
this, I'm certain of it.
Can't keep people from cutting themselves up for kicks? Then give them clean scalpels!
Swings and Roundabouts
Finland
has gone mad. That
is the only explanation I can find for the new Finnish insistence that
full-grown adults well into their 80s aren't active enough and that the
solution is that they should stop sitting on park benches are start fighting
with children for a spot in the sandbox.
I can't speak for the octogenarians, but as a fortysomething with a three-year old, I don't think the Finns understand what a parent's time is like at a playground. I always take along a flask of tea when I take my daughter for an afternoon on the swings in the deluded belief that I'm just going to sit on a wall relaxing while she burns off enough energy to crash the moment she gets home. In practice, I'm pushing her on the swings, hauling her up the boatswain chair ride, rescuing her from the precarious curvy ladder thingee, warning her not to go down the slide while three other little girls are having a conference at the bottom, being the second man on the seesaw, and generally making sure that we get through the afternoon with nothing being broken. The tea remains undrunk and when we get home it is Daddy who does the crashing.
Sitzplinker
Contrary
to popular myth, we truly live in a
leisure society where the biggest problem facing the population is
having way, way too much free time on their hands. This is not
opinion. This is objective fact.
How do I know this? Look here.
It's Alive!
The
reports of the death of SuitSat have been
greatly
exaggerated. Launched by kicking it from the ISS last week, the
second-hand Russian spacesuit equipped with an automatic radio transmitter
was declared dead shortly after, but since then
radio amateurs around the world have
been reporting contact.
Not bad for off the peg.
Why Trace When You Can Track?
The Los
Angeles police have just taken all the fun out of watching Starsky and Hutch
repeats by deploying a device which will
make car
chases a thing of the past. Instead of engaging in exciting
Bullett-type chases through the mean streets of LA, cops will now shoot a
gummy ball equipped with a GPS transmitter at the escaping vehicle so they
can track it by satellite and intercept at their leisure.
Spoil sports
Dim Bulb
I love fluorescent
light bulbs. They run cooler, give just as good light, last longer,
and use less electricity. Granted, they cost a bit more at the shops,
but the manufacturers are getting around that with special offers to get
people hooked on the new bulbs by selling them at a dollar a piece.
With these sort of advantages and clever marketing one would expect that the free market would soon work its way through and the incandescent bulb would go the way of the gas mantle. But that isn't good enough for some environmentalists who want people to buy fluorescents whether they want to or not by taxing regular bulbs. At least Matt Prescott is a more honest little totalitarian in that he wants incandescents to be banned outright.
Ah well, "That which is not forbidden is compulsory."
The Pink Paradox
It's amazing how
political movements can go full circle and end up praising the very thing
that they condemned not long ago. In 2000,
the Royal Navy was forced against its will to by the European Court of Human
Rights to accept
homosexuals into its ranks . This was naturally seen as a great
victory by the gay rights movement because,
A Navy spokesman said a person's sexuality was now viewed as a "private matter."
However, the Royal Navy is now embarked on a campaign to recruit more homosexuals into the service. This, too is seen as a great victory, but one with an obvious paradox that escapes the gay rights lot. Given that homosexuality is not something that is visible on the surface (even Quentin Crisp was celibate for the last thirty years of his life) the only sure way of finding out which team someone bats on is to ask him.
In other words, a person's sexual proclivity is a private matter that is not a private matter.
Sauerkraut: Is There Nothing It Can't Do?
Scientists
in South Korea have concluded that sauerkraut may be the
long-sought cure for the dreaded avian flu.
I enjoy a nice, big plate of bratwurst and sauerkraut washed down with a cold beer on occasion while most of my friends and family curl their noses at the very thought of it, so this has a certain tinge of ironic satisfaction for me.
Dinna Goo to th' Lochs!
We've already
mentioned the giant jellyfish invasion of
Japan and the giant crab invasion of Norway; now it's
Scotland turn to battle an invasion of
Chinese Mitten crabs that threaten to decimate the local salmon
populations.
These Celestial interlopers are a fearful lot. They are not only the size of a dinner plate, but each one comes equipped <gravely, ominous Scottish accent> w' a greet airy clawr. </gravely, ominous Scottish accent>.
Hammer House of Public Safety
Worried about the
kids being careless around water? Then try scaring the living crap out
of them by showing them this
public safety
video from 1973.
You won't be able to get them to take a bath, much less lark about on the canal banks.
Monday
13 February 2006
Monday Cartoon Update
I'm
surprised at the legs that this Cartoon War has grown. By this time
I'd expected it to have died down into a round robin of editorials, a series
of blogs that chewed over the minutiae of the subject until it had all the
flavour of week-old chewing gum, and the inevitable government inquiry
followed by a quick fade into whatever realm old stories go to die.
But this one just keeps chugging along with
Danish embassies being evacuated as
demonstrators in Malaysia march while chanting "Long live Islam.
Destroy Denmark. Destroy Israel. Destroy George Bush.
Destroy America"
Destroy, destroy, destroy; that's the way to prove to everyone that Islam is the Religion of Peace.
Still there was some humour to be found, such as this gem of a sign.
First they came for the strudels and I said nothing, then they came for the éclairs, and I said nothing...
Worse, what happens when the cartoon Jihadist notice this?
Fortunately, sharia has been denied as Danish schoolchildren in Copenhagen are now being served non-halal meat after years of dhimmitude, and the anti-boycott is ticking along nicely, as shown by this site, which lists recommended Danish products. I suggest the pork and beer, just to be doubly annoying.
And if you want to be REEEAAALLYY annoying, keep visiting the page that has been described as "like the hamster dance, but blasphemous."
In London, the march of 100,000 Muslims attracted only 5,000 and the organisers tried to so hard to make it a peaceful march that they printed a gross of the most anodyne placards imaginable; right down to using the blue and white colours associated with the "generic" brands of the 1970s. The whole "United Against Incitement and Islamophobia" theme seemed a dead cert to fit into the victimhood slot, but then it turned out that some people couldn't keep their mouths shut, such as Dr. Azam Tamimi, a senior figure in the Muslim Association of Britain, which staged the event, who said that unless the West toed the line there would be "fire throughout the world." Then the Daily Mail came out with a report that the Muslim Association of Britain had ties to terrorist groups.
It also didn't help when the imam at the mosque where the 7/7 bomber hung out had the bad timing to praise the terrorists and to call them "children of Al-Faisal;" a fellow cleric who is doing a stretch for incitement to murder and refers to non-Muslims as "cockroaches." With friends like these, etc.
Algeria ran true to form by "detaining" the editors of a weekly that published the Danish cartoons, and Sweden showed all the backbone of a sea slug by closing down a web site that ran a Draw Mohammed competition. But the BBC says that this was a "far-right" web site, so that's okay.
Try googling the BBC web site for "far-right" some time. You'll get 29,600 results. Then try "far-left." You'll get 494. Hmmmmm. Maybe that's part of the reason why John Simpson got such a fisking over at Rottweiler Puppy.
Der Spiegel gives some perspective with a rundown on anti-Semitic cartoons in the Middle East, and Mark Steyn comments on the latest target of Muslim outrage: a blowup male sex doll called Mustafa Shag. He also makes a very pertinent point about moderate Muslims who always seem strangely silent,
The issue is not "freedom of speech" or "the responsibilities of the press" or "sensitivity to certain cultures." The issue, as it has been in all these loony tune controversies going back to the Salman Rushdie fatwa, is the point at which a free society musters the will to stand up to thugs. British Muslims march through the streets waving placards reading "BEHEAD THE ENEMIES OF ISLAM." If they mean that, bring it on. As my columnar confrere John O'Sullivan argued, we might as well fight in the first ditch as the last.
But then it's patiently explained to us for the umpteenth time that they're not representative, that there are many many "moderate Muslims.''
I believe that. I've met plenty of "moderate Muslims" in Jordan and Iraq and the Gulf states. But, as a reader wrote to me a year or two back, in Europe and North America they aren't so much "moderate Muslims" as quiescent Muslims. The few who do speak out wind up living in hiding or under 24-hour armed guard, like Dutch MP Ayaab Hirsi Ali.
The moderate Muslims are where the pivot point in this war is going to rest. A recent opinion poll has shown that the British public is overwhelmingly against the vitriolic protest we've seen over the past weeks, but another poll by the BBC had the interesting result that the majority of Muslims in Britain want the country to remain Christian. No doubt they realise that enjoying the freedoms that they do means preserving the religion from which they sprang rather than the one that produced the society that the moderates escaped from.