Friday, February 10, 2006
IRIS Nails It
As seen on the IRIS Blog:
Here is a must-read by Charles Krauthammer that misses an important point:(some emphasis added)What passes for moderation in the Islamic community -- "I share your rage but don't torch that embassy" -- is nothing of the sort. It is simply a cynical way to endorse the goals of the mob without endorsing its means. It is fraudulent because, while pretending to uphold the principle of religious sensitivity, it is interested only in this instance of religious insensitivity.This controversy has nothing to do with fairness or sensitivity. It has to do with the insistence of Islamists on the principle of the primacy of Islam, and a second-class status (dhimmi) for others. We do not understand this because the West cannot conceive that anyone could openly espouse inequality as a principle.
Have any of these "moderates" ever protested the grotesque caricatures of Christians and, most especially, Jews that are broadcast throughout the Middle East on a daily basis? The sermons on Palestinian TV that refer to Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys? The Syrian prime-time TV series that shows rabbis slaughtering a gentile boy to ritually consume his blood? The 41-part (!) series on Egyptian TV based on that anti-Semitic czarist forgery (and inspiration of the Nazis), "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," showing the Jews to be engaged in a century-old conspiracy to control the world?
Many commentators have pointed out the "hypocrisy" of this protest. The best of the "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" observations has been this one by Tom Gross: Drawing a Line Under Hypocrisy. Unfortunately, it is wrong. Hypocrisy means to espouse a principle and then not follow it. We are just not listening to the demands. Islamists do not seek religious sensitivity; they demand the primacy of Islam.
Muslim cartoon protestors are not hypocritical, hypersensitive or ignorant, as is nearly universally believed in the West. If it were, the solution would be to act with extra sensitivity and also publicize Western tolerance of Islam. Enormous numbers of apologies have been proferred so far, including a new one from a Norwegian newspaper. The greatest example of this approach so far was the Danish cartoonist who donated money from the sale of his cartoon to Muslims as a way of proving he means them no harm.
Here is a piece that makes this case explicitly:Threats to kidnap European diplomats and the armed takeover of the EU offices in Gaza are foolish and self-defeating. Those EU offices have disbursed over $3 billion to the Palestinians, and are one of the few life-support systems they have. If a poll were taken among Europeans today, there would probably be a considerable majority for leaving the empty offices to the gunmen and keeping the money for deserving causes in Europe.Westerners do not get it. Islamists do not care about what Westerners see as "appalling taste." Such an "education campaign" would have no effect. What is needed is a paradigm shift.
One alternative use for those EU funds would be an education campaign to explain carefully to newspapers in the Arab world why their vicious cartoon depictions of Jews, and their now hackneyed way of depicting Ariel Sharon as Adolf Hitler, is in appalling taste.
By all means, please read the whole thing. Even if you disagree with it, I hope you'll think about it.
For, as unpleasant as it may be to contemplate a global Islamo-Fascist movement that couldn't care less about accomodating us, it is nonetheless an explanation that works uncommonly well.
Remember Occam's Razor. When looking for an explanation, pick the simplest one that covers all the facts. (Or, as computer scientists like to say, don't add unnecessary variables.)
Yes, we can explain current events by saying that Muslims are sensitive to perceived attacks on their Prophet and their Koran (but are nonetheless the world's worst perpetrators of far worse attacks against other groups); that apologizing to them and appeasing them will calm them down (although it never has before); that it is the West that has provoked them to violence (although Islamists were violent long before 9/11, and indeed, Muslim terrorism long predates even the founding of Israel). We can twist ourselves into pretzels to accomodate them with our logic.
But if you assume instead that the Islamofascists live up to that name; that they long for a totally Islamic world, and care not at all for other cultures in their way; that any temporary quiet from them is just that, a pause for them to gather strength for the next battle -- well, that's a very simple, extremely unpleasant picture. But it describes the world we live in all too well.
Islamofascists have said repeatedly that there are three options: (a) they will convert us, (b) if they cannot convert us, they will destroy us, and (c) if they cannot do either (a) or (b), they will wait until they can.
I, for one, prefer to take them at their word.
By the way, IRIS also reprints today's Cox & Forkum cartoon, titled "If Only", which drives home an extremely important point:
Why have we never seen this?
UPDATE: Clifford D. May's opinion piece today at Townhall.com expresses many similar sentiments. Please go have a look.
UPDATE II: Slightly off-topic, on the subject of not giving in to Islamofascism, there's this, courtesy of Michelle Malkin:
Students in the Copenhagen council schools shall no longer be denied the choice of pork when they buy their daily hot lunch in the school’s canteen.To which I can only say: bravo!
Out of consideration to pupils with a moslem background there is presently only halal-butchered meat - and no pork at all - in the daily hot meals which are offered at a price of 15 kroner (appr. 2,35 US $) in the canteens of the 49 schools run by the council of Copenhagen.
A political majority in the council’s committee for children and youngsters now demand that porkchops and meatballs be introduced on the menu.
“We need to see more freedom of choice in the canteens. It’s fine with me that the ethnic minorities can have halal-meat but those who want pork should find it available. When it comes to food there are many minorities and they should all be accomodated”, says Jan Andreasen, spokesman on educational issues for the [ruling] Social Democrats.
Mind you, the original article makes no connection between this and the ongoing controversy over Danish cartoons. Nonetheless, if this is not in response to the Muslim uproar over those cartoons, why do you suppose this decision was taken now?
(The decision to only serve halal meat was made in 2001, by the way. Coincidence? You decide.)
