Monday, October 02, 2006
A GLOBAL KRISTALLNACHT IN OUR FUTURE?
My 17 year old son's current English assignment is an essay on the banning and burning of books. While this is a subject we mostly associate with frequent periods of religious, scientific, and cultural intolerance in the historical past, the backround material seems to focus on small, but sometimes influential, groups in the US who try to keep books objectional to their local mores out of school curriculums. The usual suspects are books on Evolution, Sex Education, those with sexual content, and anything protraying gays as anything but deviant. While still deplorable, the actions of these groups represent a community dynamic that has been going on forever (They burned Elvis records, for heavan's sake).
If they succeed in removing a book from a curriculum or reading list, the result is an infringement on freedom. But it is mitigated by the presence of public libraries in every town where students are free to read the so-called banned books. The real book-burners, the real purveyors of intolerence are, right now, mobilizing to rid our western culture of all they find offensive (which is just about everything). I'm, of course, speaking of the Islamo-fascists. They brook no dissent, no straying from the party line.
- The Pope has been apologizing for a week now, for an innocent, but accurate quote, made in a private setting.
- Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding for years when his novel The Satanic Verses (1988) led the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a Fatwa to demand his execution for defaming Islam.
- Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch film director, television producer, publicist and actor and descendant of the famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, angered by van Gogh's work. He was a well-known critic of Islam, especially after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and his assassin was goaded on by fire-brand Imams at local mosques in "enlightened" Amsterdam.
- Also in Holland, Somali-born female Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali is in hiding, traveling only under heavy guard becuase she speaks out about women's issues in Somalia and in rest of the Muslim world.
- Untold numbers of Muslim exiles fear for their lives on a daily basis.
- Untold numbers of Muslims and non-Muslims also face execution at any time because a fatwa has been issued against them for something as trivial as criticizing Islamic policies in a political cartoon.
- So far we have not even been able to come up with a satisfactory label for our enemy in the battle for the hearts and souls of the world's billions. "Militant Islam", "Islamic Radicals", "Muslim Fundamentalists" have all been rejected by the Muslim community as perjorative, insensitive, and insulting to the Muslim community as a whole. Recently, Islamo-Fascism has been used by the President and others, also to poor reviews. How ironic, it is the Muslim community itself that should slap a moniker on these murderers in order to distinguish themselves from the terrorists. Instead of taking offense, they should be rushing to declare themselves patriotic Americans and root the assassins from their midst.
- In the absence of the above, I vote for Islamo-Fascism. Despite Fascism being a borrowed term and despite being unkind to the "Fasci", the symbol of power of the Roman Empire, popular usage has made it appropriate for describing the undemocratic, dictatorial system they would like to install world-wide.
- It may even be appropriate to apply it to Islamists beyond those engaged strictly in terror. Don't forget the images from around the world on Sept. 11th of crowds smiling and cheering in celebration of the death and destruction wrought by the destruction of the towers. The radical Imams and the Madrasas have already had their intended effect of creating a populace so anti-American and anti-Western that they will believe anything their leaders, their press, their terrorist web sites tell them. In addition, their 10% tithes (religious contributions required of all Muslims) mostly go to shady charities that end up funding terrorist activities.
