Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Forgiving, Accomodating, Capitulating, They are all Pepitas Now

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4 comments:

Arelcao Akleos said...

FOR THE BIRDS

An Australian reader wrote the other day to say he was beginning to feel as Robert Frost did in "A Minor Bird":

I have wished a bird would fly away
And not sing by my house all day.

My correspondent's incessantly cheeping bird is Islam. He's fed up waking every morning and reading of the latest offense taken by the more excitable Mohammedans. In the most recent case, it was a ruminative disquisition by the Pope on the relation between faith and reason, which needless to say the usual types took the wrong way. So, resentful at having allegedly been slandered as irrational and violent, they reacted by shooting a nun in the back. Her name was Sister Leonella and she had been working in Somalia since 2002. As she lay dying, she whispered, "I forgive, I forgive."

My reader was in a less forgiving mood, weary of a world in which if you go to Mass at Westminster Cathedral you have to run the gauntlet of an Islamist demonstration organized by Anjem Choudhary, who called for "capital punishment" for His Holiness: His line is that anyone who says Islam is violent should be beheaded. Quod erat demonstrandum. And in London, not Jalalabad. So his lads chanted "Pope Benedict, you will pay / The mujahedeen are coming your way" and brandished placards proclaiming "JESUS IS THE SLAVE OF ALLAH" and "ISLAM WILL CONQUER ROME."

Anyone care to join me for a reciprocal demo outside the Grand Mosque in Mecca?

Oh, but we wouldn't dream of it. Instead, as The New York Times and the BBC did, we wonder whether the Pope was unnecessarily "provocative." For as Robert Frost continued:

The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong In wanting to silence any song. But in this instance the folks wanting to silence others' songs would seem to be the Muslims -- or "radical Muslims," as we still say, more in hope than conviction. Another reader sent round a mocking e-mail -- "Are you man enough to shoot a nun in the back?" -- and was promptly rebuked by one of his female friends: "This is a one-off situation you describe and so you can't suddenly leap in to tar every Muslim with the same brush: It wasn't a response from the Muslim world, it was the reaction of one person."

Well, yes, time for the usual "of courses": There are a billion Muslims in the world -- or there were a year or two back; now the preferred round number seems to be "There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world," which, even given the conversion rates in Europe, seems something of a leap -- but, whatever the figure is, very few of them want to shoot nuns in the back. However, that's not the point, any more than it's relevant that, as a Canadian reader informed me, you've got more chance of being struck by lightning than of being killed by terrorists. No doubt you've also got more chance of being killed by the comprehensively updated edition of the tax code falling off your top shelf.

But it's not about the numbers, it's about which mode of behavior dominates. It's not about killing, it's about broader, more pervasive forms of intimidation. If, say, I were to shoot a staffer for The Nation in the back in the name of National Review, you would expect at the very minimum my bosses here to suspend the column at least until I'd been acquitted at trial. If, instead of that, Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne were marching through the streets chanting "Behead the enemies of National Review!" and William F. Buckley were to issue a statement offering the publishers of The Nation the choice between conversion to conservatism, paying a poll tax to him, or death, and if it were rumored that Rick Brookhiser, John Derbyshire, and dozens of other "moderate" NR writers strongly disagreed with my decision to shoot the Nation guy but didn't dare say anything, I think the reasonable person would conclude that the problem is more than just one fringe nutter.

When you see those Islamogangstas outside Westminster Cathedral in London shouting "Death to the Pope!" they're behaving, in effect, like the union enforcers in On the Waterfront. To be sure, the union did a lot of good things, and a lot of good men were members, but it was the heavies who made the running. In Islam, the heavies make the running, and they're demanding what comes very near to a closed shop in public discussion of their faith. So where is our Marlon Brando?

Step forward, Andrew Robb, parliamentary secretary to the Australian minister of immigration. Speaking to 100 A-list Aussie imams the other day, he told them to shove the victim mentality and quit trying to pass off all criticism as "Islamophobia": "We live in a world of terrorism where evil acts are being regularly perpetrated in the name of your faith," said Mr. Robb. "And because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem."

Perhaps The New York Times would think Mr. Robb's words as ill-advised as the Pope's. But the Times and others in the secular West cannot even find a working language for their much cherished "dialogue." One side seeks accommodation, the other seeks victory

10/18/2006 8:48 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...

That was Mark Steyn, Natch

10/18/2006 8:49 PM
Tecumseh said...

To put another way your title, AA, "Nous sommes tous des Francais, maintenant", yes?

10/19/2006 5:17 AM
Arelcao Akleos said...

Yes, AI, we have been Vichyfied

10/19/2006 10:55 AM

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