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JulesRants
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They are just cartoons!!
Muslims:
For heaven's sake - they're ONLY CARTOONS! They aren't even very good
ones. Do you REALLY think that the Prophet would pay any attention to
some badly-executed scrawlings in a third-rate paper in Denmark? Come
ON! And you do realise, don't you, that all this talk of "the West
hates us" and "this is all part of a Zionist conspiracy", the wearing
of mock-suicide bomber costumes outside Danish embassies, the burnings
and the beheading threats...
All of these things just makes you look - and by extention, makes the Prophet you take as your inspiration look - exactly like these ignorant and offensive characatures make Him, and you, look.
You keep saying that the West doesn't understand or respect you? Ok.
That may even be true. Assuming it is, respect and understanding is not
something you can demand or take by force. All you get by trying is
fear and hate. If you WANT to be feared and hated, fine, you're going
the right way about it by not standing up for yourselves in a dignified
and non-aggressive way. Where's the Muslim equivalent of Ghandi?
Where's the Muslim Martin Luther King? Even (truly) Muslim Malcolm X
might be more productive than billions watching in silent disapproval
while a few thousand worldwide shout and burn and bomb.
If you think that such people can beat the West into submission, then
you have made a critical error of understanding. If you can provoke he
West, and Europe in particular, into to the sort of battle your (and
their) extremists want, there will be one loser and one winner, and -
no matter how profound or correct your faith - that loser will be the
Muslim world.
Think about it. For something like 2,000, white Europeans were the
source of most of the bloodshed and terror on this world, and have been
the only people to ever industrialise it. All the weapons of mass
destruction the world now condemns were invented and/or perfected by
people of white European descent. Sure, for 60 years or so we've
avoided killing one another in great numbers, and have mostly withdrawn
our Imperial reach so that we don't really kill anyone else in great
numbers either. (Nowadays we prefer to let other people do it to one
another and make money from selling them the weapons to do it.)
By comparison, Islam ruled the roost in a relatively small part of the
world - never gaining any significant foothold in the Americas, for
example - for maybe six or seven centuries. You're never going to get
Spain back, for example. Get over it.
And in case you hadn't noticed, France and Germany were some of the few
friends you had in the West. Why pick a fight with them? Are you
stupid, or do you just think you don't need any friends?
The thing that worries me most at the moment is that the West, despite
our aspirations to tolerance and freedom and fair dealing, (no, we
don't always live up to them, but they are noble enough aspirations)
has not forgotten the intolerance, brutality and bloodshed that was the
hallmark of our civilisations for at least a millennium before 1945. If
you think our tolerance of your constant demands for your beliefs to
have precedence over ours is infinite, you'll be cruelly disappointed.
I don't say this as any kind of threat - I think that the peace and
tolerance we (largely) enjoy is something precious, but fragile. It's
something I don't want to see hurt, and if it breaks in a backlash
against the flouting by Mulsims of the peace and tolerance Islam claims
as its own (but so rarely practises) it will be the West that breaks
it's own precious achievements. We all choose how we react to
provocation - Muslims as much as anyone else.
Here's an idea - next time you want to protest some perceive insult or
outrage, gather in numbers outside the target of your protest (an
Embassy or whatever) and stay completely silent and completely still. Don't burn anything. Don't throw anything. If anyone asks you what you're doing, quietly and calmly explain.
I guarantee that the shock of such a new tactic by "Muslim fanatics"
will get you, and your greivances, far more serious attention than any
amount of flag burnings, IEDs or beheadings, because those just live up
to the Western stereotypes of wild-eyed murderous Islamic extremism.
I've
tried to speak in defence of some of your greivances both in real life and on debate boards (if not of the
actions Muslims have taken because they're usually violent and always
ineffective) and I'm getting tired of doing so when every opportunity
world Islam gets to raise it's game is squandered in bloodshed,
anti-Semitism or just incoherent anger. Usually because the 'silent majority' of Muslims stay silent.
The West is
prejudiced against Islam. We think you're uncivilised bloodthirsty
maniacs and terrorists, or apologists for them (you don't approve of
violence, but you're glad this film-maker, that politician, or that
adulterous or raped wife or daughter, is dead). For the last 30 years
or more, every move world Islam has made has been to reinforce that
perception.
Muslims claim that perception is wrong. I'm willing to believe it is
(but I'm mostly operating on the basis of giving you the benefit of the
doubt, and every beheading and honour killing and suicide bombing and fatwa makes that doubt smaller).
Prove the West wrong. Prove us wrong. Prove you are as cilivised and
peaceful and tolerant as you say you are TODAY (harking back to how
Jews and Christians were tolerated under the ummah of 900 or 400 years ago proves nothing at all).
Non-Muslims: Freedom of speech does have limits, and it cuts both ways.
Muslims are entitled to do anything and everything under the law (the
law of the land, not sharia
law), including asking for the law to be changed, in protest against
something that offends their sensibilities. (They are not entitled to
threaten lives and get away with it; if they do, it's our laws that are
the problem and not their breaking of them.)
Freedom of speech requires
that sometimes we'll hear, see or read things we don't like. That
applies to images of Muslim Prophets. It also applies to angry Muslims
- or anyone else - demanding apologies for saying, showing or printing
such things that outrage them. You cannot
have one without the other. And protests that happen elsewhere in the
world can be condemned, but that's all - we can't do anything about
them. If Danes find that they can't visit the Middle East any more,
tough. If they don't want you there, you can't go - you have no more
right to travel without let or hindrance in someone else's country than
you do in their house.
Such things are commonplace, anyway. Cubans can't easily and freely
travel in the USA, nor Americans in Cuba. Cuba doesn't really mind, but
the USA takes a stand against it for ideological reasons. That's their
loss, but it's their choice, also.
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7.2.06 14:31
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Man the barricades, your Highness!
Prince Charles sees himself as a "dissident"
So,
His Royal Highness (he's my height, the cheeky git) Prince Charles, the
Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and all his other offical titles
sees himself as a "dissident" working "against political opinion".
Really?
When did this begin, your Royal Smugness? Have you always pronounced
against the prevailing political culture as a kind of Royal Loyal
Opposition? Or only since Labour came into power, you jug-eared old
Tory twat? I didn't see you on
anti-Poll Tax demos (course, not; that would have saved you money on
your colossal land holdings, wouldn't it), anti-Thatcher marches,
miners' picketlines and the like when the prevailing political culture
was Tory?
For those eighteen years, the most public condemnation of the political culture we could get out of you was strained whining about ugly extensions to lilbraries and art galleries.
So don't pretend to get around the Constitutional laws that prevent you
from espousing political opinions by painting yourself as some kind of
anti-establishment gadfly - the irony of the heir to the throne
pretending to be anti-establishment is thick enough as it is. Or
worse, by sending one of your multifarious flunkies and hangers-on out to do it for you in the public courts.
I've thought this for some time, but if you want your private comings,
gogings and correspondences kept completely quiet, you might like to
start looking after yourself. You could start by learning to hold your
own bottle when you have to give a urine sample, you lazy, spoiled
fool.
If you WANT to become the unofficial spokesperson for the traditional
landowning Tory party thats being dropped like a hot turd by the
Cameroonians, I have a suggestion:
- campaign for the abolition of the monarchy and the egregious concept of British "subjects"
- pay your full tax obligations under the same regimen as the rest of
the country (instead of deigning to "voluntarily" hand over the
equivalent of standard tax rates on only certain parts of your income)
- and then stand for election to political office. (Maybe you could
even stand for elected president under a new constitution that
explicitly excludes anyone who has ever been a member of a political
party, thus sparing us from the nightmare scenario of "President Blair"
- Hell, I'd even vote for that myself!)
Sir, you are popular, though often in spite of yourself; and many people do
agree with you (but judging by your and their opinons on subject like
alternative medicine, this just proves that ignorance and gullibility
are universal failings)
But as long as your official position rests entirely on who your mummy
and daddy were and not to any extent on the considered voting opinions
of the British public to whom you will swear your loyalty at your
coronation, either stick it to the Tories as well, or shut the fuck up!!
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21.2.06 18:40
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JulesRants
