'Sensitivity' can have brutal consequences
February 5, 2006
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

I long ago lost count of the number of times I've switched on the TV and seen crazy guys jumping up and down in the street, torching the Stars and Stripes and yelling ''Death to the Great Satan!'' Or torching the Union Jack and yelling ''Death to the Original If Now Somewhat Arthritic And Semi-Retired Satan!'' But I never thought I'd switch on the TV and see the excitable young lads jumping up and down in Jakarta, Lahore, Aden, Hebron, etc., etc., torching the flag of Denmark.

Denmark! Even if you were overcome with a sudden urge to burn the Danish flag, where do you get one in a hurry in Gaza? Well, OK, that's easy: the nearest European Union Humanitarian Aid and Intifada-Funding Branch Office. But where do you get one in an obscure town on the Punjabi plain on a Thursday afternoon? If I had a sudden yen to burn the Yemeni or Sudanese flag on my village green, I haven't a clue how I'd get hold of one in this part of New Hampshire. Say what you like about the Islamic world, but they show tremendous initiative and energy and inventiveness, at least when it comes to threatening death to the infidels every 48 hours for one perceived offense or another. If only it could be channeled into, say, a small software company, what an economy they'd have.

 
Meanwhile, back in Copenhagen, the Danes are a little bewildered to find that this time it's plucky little Denmark who's caught the eye of the nutters. Last year, a newspaper called Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, whose physical representation in art is forbidden by Islam. The cartoons aren't particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.

Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.
Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

Jyllands-Posten wasn't being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point -- or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of "self-censorship" -- i.e., a climate in which there's no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it's better not to.

That's the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.

 
One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they'll marvel at how easy it all was. You don't need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that's a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural "sensitivity," the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the "sensitivity" of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.

 
No doubt he's similarly impressed by the "sensitivity" of Anne Owers, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, for prohibiting the flying of the English national flag in English prisons on the grounds that it shows the cross of St. George, which was used by the Crusaders and thus is offensive to Muslims. And no doubt he's impressed by the "sensitivity" of Burger King, which withdrew its ice cream cones from its British menus because Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe complained that the creamy swirl shown on the lid looked like the word "Allah" in Arabic script. I don't know which sura in the Koran says don't forget, folks, it's not just physical representations of God or the Prophet but also chocolate ice cream squiggly representations of the name, but ixnay on both just to be "sensitive."

 
And doubtless the British foreign secretary also appreciates the "sensitivity" of the owner of France-Soir, who fired his editor for republishing the Danish cartoons. And the "sensitivity" of the Dutch film director Albert Ter Heerdt, who canceled the sequel to his hit multicultural comedy ''Shouf Shouf Habibi!'' on the grounds that "I don't want a knife in my chest" -- which is what happened to the last Dutch film director to make a movie about Islam: Theo van Gogh, on whose ''right to dissent'' all those Hollywood blowhards are strangely silent. Perhaps they're just being "sensitive,'' too.

And perhaps the British foreign secretary also admires the "sensitivity" of those Dutch public figures who once spoke out against the intimidatory aspects of Islam and have now opted for diplomatic silence and life under 24-hour armed guard. And maybe he even admires the "sensitivity" of the increasing numbers of Dutch people who dislike the pervasive fear and tension in certain parts of the Netherlands and so have emigrated to Canada and New Zealand.

Very few societies are genuinely multicultural. Most are bicultural: On the one hand, there are folks who are black, white, gay, straight, pre-op transsexual, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, worshippers of global-warming doom-mongers, and they rub along as best they can. And on the other hand are folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a "diverse" "tolerant" society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.

 
One day the British foreign secretary will wake up and discover that, in practice, there's very little difference between living under Exquisitely Refined Multicultural Sensitivity and Sharia. As a famously sensitive Dane once put it, "To be or not to be, that is the question."

Let's get this into perspective!!!!

      Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City
     killing over 3000 civilians.  No Muslim outrage.

     Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to
     escape a burning building because their faces were exposed.  No
     Muslim outrage.

     Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to
     school in Indonesia.  A Christian school.  No Muslim outrage.

     Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq.  No
     Muslim outrage.

     Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and
     hotels in Egypt.  No Muslim outrage.

     A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India.  Kills six.
     No Muslim outrage.

     Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan,
     Russia.  Muslims shoot children in the back.  No Muslim outrage.
     Let's go way back.  Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich
     Summer Olympics.  No Muslim outrage.

     Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children
     in Israel.  No Muslim outrage.

     Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways
     and busses.  Over 700 are injured.  No Muslim outrage.

     Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder.  No Muslim
     outrage.

     Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali.  No Muslim outrage.

     Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons.  No Muslim outrage.

     Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one
     of the 125+ shooting wars around the world.  No Muslim outrage.

     Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their
     shoes, then hang them from a bridge.  No Muslim outrage.

     Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed.
     Muslims are outraged.

Dead children.  Dead tourists.  Dead teachers.  Dead doctors and nurses.
Death, destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of Muslims ..
no Muslim outrage ... but publish a cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb
in his turban and all [Hades] breaks loose.

Bravo Australia

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA:
Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to
get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head
off potential terror attacks.

A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to
Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his
ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown.

Treasurer Peter Costello hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to
leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state
and its laws were made by parliament.

"If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law
or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national
television.

"I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws
governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the
Islamic law, that this is false.

If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy,
and would prefer Sharia law, and have the opportunity to go to another
country which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option,"
Costello said.

Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said
those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked move to another
country.

Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did
not want to accept local values should "clear off".

"Basically, people who don't want to be Australians, and they don't want to
live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically
clear off," he said.

Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying
he supported spies monitoring the nation's mosques.

No WONDER Muslims are DIEING to get into heaven.

Mohammed assured his followers of eternal life in paradise.

This paradise was no mean thing which he promised. The fifty-sixth sura contains this description of heaven.
Those persons who attain it are in "gardens of delight," with "inwrought couches" whereon they could recline as "aye (ever) blooming youths," and that "flowing wine" of the best celestial vintage would be brought to them. They would enjoy their "favorite fruits" and be able to eat whatever birds they long for. "Houris [i.e., prostitutes] with large dark eyes" who were "ever virgin," never growing old, would supply them with the pleasures of physical love (sex).

Is this where the 76 virgins came into play? or maybe they are running low?
 

According to one Iranian dissident, “being born female is both a capital crime and a death sentence.”

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece

TEHRAN - Iran's judiciary ordered a man to be released after he killed his unfaithful wife in the courtroom, because the woman's immediate forebears are not alive to claim retaliation, press reports said Thursday.
 
TEHRAN - In November of ’05, an 80-year-old husband clubbed his 50-year-old wife to death, “because he could not tolerate her wearing makeup outside the home”.

In Syria, there also seems to be a rise in the terrorism of women. There is a general fear among women in Syria about wearing short sleeve shirts and otherwise liberal clothing in Damascus. A women was stabbed by an Islamist recently as she exited a fancy sports club in Damascus wearing a comfy sports suit. The word is that the man called her a Kafra (infidel) before running off.