Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Secularist Stupidity and Religious Wars

They're pissed!
Who'd a thunk that some stupid and childish cartoons, from the nowhere that is Denmark, would be the spark that lit a huge firestorm between Islam and the West? The whole European argument about "freedom of expression" is such BS, especially when you consider that a swastika or denial of the Holocaust can get you jail time in many parts of Europe, which I've been saying to anyone who'd listen for over a week now. Only just today do I see that Pat Buchanan has pointed this fact out in print. Thanks a heap Pat!

The following piece by Mr. Buchanan hits all the nails hard. I don't always agree with his views, but Pat's my kind of writer and a home boy too.

Secularist Stupidity and Religious Wars
by
Patrick J. Buchanan
That demagogues and agitators are exploiting those cartoons of Mohammed to advance a war of civilizations and expel Europeans from the Middle East seems undeniable.
But that does not excuse the paralyzing stupidity of that Danish paper in running those cartoons or the arrogant irresponsibility of European newspapers in plastering those cartoons all over their front pages.
The storm first broke last September, when Jyllands-Posten published 12 caricatures of Mohammed, including a lampoon of the Prophet with a terrorist bomb as a turban. In the Islamic faith, any depiction of the face of Mohammed is forbidden.
The Danish paper knew this. It published the cartoons to protest "the rejection of modern, secular society" by Muslims. The cartoons were thus a defiant provocation. And they succeeded.
The Middle East responded with a boycott of Danish foods and goods. But when, in the name of press solidarity, Le Soir and Le Monde in Paris, El Pais in Madrid and Die Welt in Berlin republished the cartoons on page one, Islam exploded. For this was an in-your-face declaration by the secularist media of the European Union that it will exercise its right to insult any God, any Prophet, any faith, whenever it so chooses.
"Enough lessons from these reactionary bigots," said Serge Faubert, editor of Le Soir. "Just because the Quran bans images of Mohammed doesn't mean non-Muslims have to submit to this."
Faubert, however, is not a Danish soldier in the Shi'ite sector of Iraq. Innocents will pay the price of his heroism.
The U.S. State Department seemed to empathize with Muslim rage, stating that "inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is unacceptable." But, within hours, State had retreated to neutral ground: "While we share the offense that Muslims have taken at these images, we at the same time vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view."
As of today the Danish consulate in Beirut has been burned, Danish embassies have been stormed, and Danes are fleeing the Middle East. Europeans are getting out of the West Bank, Gaza and Beirut, where mobs are attacking embassies and Christian churches.
Islamic countries have recalled ambassadors from Copenhagen. People have been injured and property destroyed in mob assaults as far away as Indonesia. Relations between the West and the Islamic world have been dealt another rupturing blow.
And for what? What was the purpose of this juvenile idiocy by the Europress? Is this what freedom of the press is all about the freedom to insult the faith of a billion people and start a religious war?
Can Europeans be that ignorant of the power of the press to inflame when Bismarck's editing of just a few words in the Ems telegram ignited the Franco-Prussian war? Did Europeans learn nothing from the Salman Rushdie episode? Or the firestorm that gripped the Islamic world when Christian ministers in the United States called Mohammed a "terrorist"?
European governments are wringing their hands over the rage and violence unleashed, but they seem paralyzed. What is the matter? Why cannot they denounce press irresponsibility while defending press freedom? Even friends of the West like Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey have denounced these cartoons as insults to Islamic values and deeply damaging to Western interests.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw deplored republication of the cartoons as "insensitive ... disrespectful ... wrong." But German Interior Minister Wolfgang Shauble haughtily dissented,
"Here, in Europe, governments have nothing to say about which publisher publishes what."
What hypocrisy. When it comes to what Germans are most sensitive about, Hitler and the Holocaust, they are ruthless censors. British historian David Irving has spent three months in a Viennese prison awaiting trial on Feb. 20 for speeches he made 15 years ago in Austria. Skeptics and deniers of the Holocaust are prosecuted, fined and imprisoned in Europe with the enthusiastic endorsement of the European press.
Nor are we all that different. Sen. Trent Lott was ousted as majority leader for a birthday-party compliment to 100-year-old Strom Thurmond. Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker was almost lynched for saying he considers New York a social pigsty. There were demands that Rocker undergo psychiatric counseling.
We have "speech codes" in colleges and "hate crimes" laws to protect minorities from abusive remarks. But newspapers that hail these codes throw a blanket of "artistic freedom" over scatological art that degrades religious symbols from putting a figure of Christ in a jar of urine to a "painting" of the Virgin Mary surrounded by female genitalia and elephant dung that hung in a Brooklyn museum.
What has happened in Europe is that the secular press, which loves to mock the beliefs and symbols of religious faith, has now insulted a deadly serious religion that answers insults with action.

8 comments:

Audie said...

I give as much of a shit about pissed off people in the Middle East (aren't they all?) as I do about Brad and Angie. {yawn}

The nightly news has not changed for a generation or two now. It's hard to care, isn't it? Or are other people out there still caring? More power to ya, I guess.

Personally, I thank God for our evil and hypocritical "secular press." {another yawn}

And I agree that Israel should fend for itself. What's been going on over there for decades now is what we have to look forward to in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (soon) Iran -- for decades to come. Billions and billions -- and billions OF billions -- or OUR money being spent on arms to kill people over there, and to try to prop up puppet governments, all so we can continue driving our Hummers and Suburbans and so that the Dickhead Cheneys of the world can get rich off their ownership of "defense" (read: "offense") companies.

Let me know when something changes.

In the meantime I'll skip the usual headlines and go straight for the stories bout people getting trampled to death in huge Latin American soccer stadiums, people finding human fingers in their fast-food chili, and entire families getting tied up and hacked to pieces in some lone farmhouse in the Midwest. Now THAT kind o' shit is still interesting!

beamis said...

"I give as much of a shit about pissed off people in the Middle East (aren't they all?) as I do about Brad and Angie. {yawn}"

They weren't so pissed off before the West came in and treated them like worthless redskins. I'd be pissed off too and hope the anger spreads some more. I'd love to go visit a Rome or Copenhagen full of mosques, with prayer blankets spread across the Appian Way, and those little dainty Muslim butts bent upward in the air, pointing their spiritual transmissions toward Allah central in the Arabian Peninsula. Beats the hell out of the myopic silliness that passes for civilization in socialist Europe today.

Who are Brad and Angie? Did they used to work at the Bit & Spur?

Devastatin' Dave said...

C'mon, Beamis! Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

beamis said...

Oh that Brad Pitt and who???? I'm sorry I don't follow celebrity very closely. Are they splitting up or sumpfin'?

Audie said...

Are Muslim butts dainty? They don't exactly wear designer jeans over there, at least from what I can tell from the few shots of them you see on TV, which is mostly of Muslim men since the women aren't allowed to do such things as, say, leave the house ever.

Probably one of the reasons Pat Buchanan loves the Muslim culture so much all of a sudden.

beamis said...

Keep bashing the same old straw men stump! I just think he was saying these people mean business. I don't think that he particularly likes that, but he knows a strirred up hornets nest when he sees one.

What Muslim women are allowed to do is none of my concern.

By the way, how warm are you keeping cuddling up to modern "liberated" women?

Monkey's Max said...

What Would Mohammed Do?

An interesting and worthwhile opinion piece in Thursday's LA Times.

http://tinyurl.com/8749b

The column offers an enlightened Muslim opinion of the whole cartoon debacle and calls for Muslims "to ignore these insignificant attacks".

Audie said...

Sorry, but I've no desire to cuddle up to a slave. Just personal preference.

My comments were mostly me being facetious. Didn't mean to press any hot buttons there.

stumpy