Bespectacled beardies are not all baddies

By Rein F. Deer

Date: 16/02/06

The young French Muslims did not know about any insulting cartoons when they burned cars in the suburbs of Paris - rebels with or without a cause, depending on the mood.

Clumping cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper serve as an excuse for sly rebellious leaders to carry out their political agenda. Allah is great, so great he can defend himself and his prophet. But he can also be exploited.

The riots are essentially well-planned spontaneity organised by extreme leaders who happen to hate our Western way of life. The bespectacled beardies in turbans know perfectly well that they can expect enthusiastic backing from our own skinheads and assorted hotheads who enjoy similarly incendiary hurly-burly.

We up in the North do not particularly like the idea of small-scale halal abattoirs on our suburban balconies, but generally speaking we tolerate a lot from foreigners.

Our states give equal protection to all churches and religious opinions, even if Omar Marzouk, the pet Muslim comedian in Denmark, complains that dogs in his country have their own burial grounds, not the Muslims.

Corpulent smoking heterosexuals are constantly harassed in Scandinavia, but instead of giving them a hand, so to say, we defend gay rights. We also put up with the sheikhs and their sons who enjoy visiting our luxury hotels for drinking, doping and fornicating.

According to the Koran each of these sins would deserve at least a hundred stripes with a whip.

There seems to be only slight reciprocal tolerance when a Finnish nurse is flogged in Saudi Arabia for wearing bikini briefs in front of the natives. Finns, by contrast, seldom hustle somebody into a sauna against their will.

Our system may not be superior to other cultures, but where should we start to capitulate? On the death penalty? Polygamy? The caste system? Honour killings, ie murder?

The Six-Day War in 1967 showed that the Arabs are better demonstrators than warriors, but some have since become stout-hearted suicide bombers. What we are now afraid of is the remote possibility of Iran planning the greatest suicide bomb ever, one which would send all the Jews (and in effect half the Middle East) to Paradise in one big bang.

Bacon has never been an export item to Muslim countries and the rest of the Danish export casualty list we suffer gallantly. The Middle East can survive without Danish butter, but sacking journalists or cartoonists means accepting the self-censorship and we cannot live with that.

The moderate but unfortunately ever-silent Muslim majority in the world should not let us believe that all Muslims are fanatics. We are always ready to listen to, and discuss with, moderate Muslim leaders - even if they do not chew the same meat as us.

Comment feature on the dispute over caricatures of the prophet Mohammand, published in a Danish and other European newspapers.

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