Danish Cartoons, Islamic Rage, The West Squirms

Danish Cartoons, Islamic Rage, The West Squirms

Islam is rioting over a series of offensive cartoons and the West is squirming.

Islam does not recognize freedom of speech. That is because it is a totalitarian philosophy with a religion's patina. For the same reason Islam dictates everything from subordinate status for women to which way toilets may face (never towards Mecca).

It is official policy (though the dissenters have been getting louder) that there is no "clash of civilizations" with Islam, that the word as a unitary is a hateful caricature, that there are "good" Muslims and leaders and states.

To use Islam as a unitary is no more hateful than using Germany as a unitary during World war II was hateful. There were peaceful Germans then, there are peaceful Muslims now. We should not have slaughtered "innocent" German men, women and children then; we should not attack the Pakistani grocery store owner down the street now. We must not hate.

In both cases however, the masses adhere to a totalitarian philosophy and nowhere does Islam live in peace with its neighbors: Islam has bloody borders. We must not be blind.

According to CNN it wasn't just "bad" Muslims in "bad" countries that rioted either. "Rage...poured out across the Muslim world...with aggrieved believers calling for the execution of those involved."

It is dangerous hokum to insist on a fractured Islam with "good" and "bad" variants and nations when there were cheering street demonstrations on the West Bank and Gaza on September 11; when our "friend" Pakistan has its madrasahs inculcate her children in hatred of "infidels"; when our "friend" Saudi Arabia gives state support to one of the most intractable and violent strains of an already intractable, violent religion; when an influential cleric in that same Saudia Arabia recently gave Koranic blessing to the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. by al Qaeda, founded and led by one of her sons; when that same Saudi Arabia sent a delegation to a meeting with President Bush that included another cleric who proximately had called for the enslavement of Jewish women for the pleasure of Muslim men.

And those are our friends.

There is also Iran and Syria and Hamas, with its new democratic imprimatur. And so, today, Syrians overran the Danish embassy, by international law Danish soil. A high-ranking leader of Hamas--the chosen of the Palestinian people--opined that "we should have killed all those who offend the Prophet and instead here we are, protesting peacefully."

Other, nongovernmental, buildings were also stormed. Islam does not separate church and state. Islam is all, it is total. Islam does not distinguish between state and private acts; in fact that conjunction was one of the justifications for the attack on the innocents of 9/11.

And the West squirms. Governments, including the United States, have issued statements condemning the offensive cartoons, rather than acknowledge that the problem is with Islam, rather than tell Islam to grow up.

And the West appeases. The Vatican, its own totalitarianism gone half a millenium but still mourned, issued a statement calling the cartoons "unacceptable provocation," the consequence of a freedom that "cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."

The Vatican, and Old Europe. Morally exhausted worn-out collaborators and appeasers, then and now.

And the United States. President Bush, faineant, having exerted himself and gotten good grades in his first term, willing to coast now in his second, trying only to avoid flunking, keeping his head low and his mouth shut so that the professor doesn't call on him, refusing to grasp reality, refusing a grasp at greatness. The legacy's life.

A Danish newspaper published some offensive cartoons and Islam is in a rage. Meanwhile Muslim Iran continues to pursue a nuclear capability.

And the West squirms. This is Public Occurrences.