[lit-ideas] Stand Up for Denmark!
- From: Eric <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:41:00 -0500
Stand up for Denmark!
Why are we not defending our ally?
By Christopher Hitchens
full article at: http://www.slate.com/id/2136714/
The incredible thing about the ongoing
Kristallnacht against Denmark (and in some places,
against the embassies and citizens of any
Scandinavian or even European Union nation) is
that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the
religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but
increased respectability! A small democratic
country with an open society, a system of
confessional pluralism, and a free press has been
subjected to a fantastic, incredible, organized
campaign of lies and hatred and violence,
extending to one of the gravest imaginable
breaches of international law and civility: the
violation of diplomatic immunity. And nobody in
authority can be found to state the obvious and
the necessary—that we stand with the Danes against
this defamation and blackmail and sabotage.
Instead, all compassion and concern is apparently
to be expended upon those who lit the powder
trail, and who yell and scream for joy as the
embassies of democracies are put to the torch in
the capital cities of miserable, fly-blown
dictatorships. Let's be sure we haven't hurt the
vandals' feelings.
You wish to say that it was instead a small
newspaper in Copenhagen that lit the trail? What
abject masochism and nonsense. It was the arrogant
Danish mullahs who patiently hawked those cartoons
around the world (yes, don't worry, they are
allowed to exhibit them as much as they like)
until they finally provoked a vicious response
against the economy and society of their host
country. For good measure, they included a cartoon
that had never been published in Denmark or
anywhere else. It showed the Prophet Mohammed as a
pig, and may or may not have been sent to a Danish
mullah by an anonymous ill-wisher. The hypocrisy
here is shameful, nauseating, unpardonable. The
original proscription against any portrayal of the
prophet—not that this appears to be absolute—was
superficially praiseworthy because it was intended
as a safeguard against idolatry and the worship of
images. But now see how this principle is negated.
A rumor of a cartoon in a faraway country is
enough to turn the very name Mohammed into a
fetish-object and an excuse for barbaric conduct.
As I write this, the death toll is well over 30
and—guess what?—a mullah in Pakistan has offered
$1 million and a car as a bribe for the murder of
"the cartoonist." This incitement will go
unpunished and most probably unrebuked.
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] Stand Up for Denmark!