From: GDHDTHSHS@SDSRSF.COM   
      
   We are falling under the imam's spell   
   By Mark Steyn   
   (Filed: 13/01/2004)   
      
      
   Let me see if I understand the BBC Rules of Engagement correctly: if you're   
   Robert Kilroy-Silk and you make some robust statements about the Arab   
   penchant for suicide bombing, amputations, repression of women and a   
   generally celebratory attitude to September 11 - none of which is factually   
   in dispute - the BBC will yank you off the air and the Commission for Racial   
   Equality will file a complaint to the police which could result in your   
   serving seven years in gaol. Message: this behaviour is unacceptable in   
   multicultural Britain.   
      
      
   But, if you're Tom Paulin and you incite murder, in a part of the world   
   where folks need little incitement to murder, as part of a non-factual   
   emotive rant about how "Brooklyn-born" Jewish settlers on the West Bank   
   "should be shot dead" because "they are Nazis" and "I feel nothing but   
   hatred for them", the BBC will keep you on the air, kibitzing (as the   
   Zionists would say) with the crème de la crème of London's cultural arbiters   
   each week. Message: this behaviour is completely acceptable.   
   So, while the BBC is "investigating" Kilroy, its only statement on Mr Paulin   
   was an oblique but curiously worded allusion to the non-controversy on the   
   Corporation website: "His polemical, knockabout style has ruffled feathers   
   in the US, where the Jewish question is notoriously sensitive." "The Jewish   
   question"? "Notoriously sensitive"? Is this really how they talk at the BBC?   
   Mr Paulin's style is only metaphorically knockabout. But, a few days after   
   his remarks were published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, some doughty   
   Palestinian "activists" rose to his challenge and knocked about some   
   settlers more literally, murdering among others five-year-old Danielle   
   Shefi. In a touch of symbolism the critic in Mr Paulin might have found a   
   wee bit obvious, they left her Mickey Mouse sheets soaked in blood.   
   Evidently Kilroy's "polemical, knockabout style" is far more problematic.   
   For what it's worth, I accept the BBC's right to axe his show. I haven't   
   seen it in a decade and I thought they should have axed it then. I myself   
   got fired by the BBC a while back and, although I had a couple of rough   
   years sleeping in a rotting boxcar at the back of the freight yards, I   
   crawled my way back to semi-insolvency. There's no doubt in my mind that,   
   when the CRE, the BBC, the Metropolitan Police and the Muslim Council of   
   Britain are through making an example of him, he'll still be able to find   
   gainful employment, if not in TV then certainly in casual construction work   
   or seasonal fruit-picking.   
   But it's not really about Kilroy or Paulin or Jews, or the Saudis beheading   
   men for (alleged) homosexuality, or the inability of the "moderate"   
   Jordanian parliament to ban honour killing, or the fact that (as Jonathan   
   Kay of Canada's National Post memorably put it) if Robert Mugabe walked into   
   an Arab League summit he'd be the most democratically legitimate leader in   
   the room. It's not about any of that: it's about the future of your   
   "multicultural" society.   
   One reason why the Arab world is in the state it's in is because one cannot   
   raise certain subjects without it impacting severely on one's wellbeing. And   
   if you can't discuss issues, they don't exist. According to Ibrahim Nawar of   
   Arab Press Freedom Watch, in the last two years seven Saudi editors have   
   been fired for criticising government policies. To fire a British talk-show   
   host for criticising Saudi policies is surely over-reaching even for the   
   notoriously super-sensitive Muslim lobby.   
   But apparently not. "What Robert could do," suggested the CRE's Trevor   
   Phillips helpfully, "is issue a proper apology, not for the fact that people   
   were offended, but for saying this stuff in the first place. Secondly he   
   could learn something about Muslims and Arabs - they gave us maths and   
   medicine - and thirdly he could use some of his vast earnings to support a   
   Muslim charity. Then I would say he has been properly contrite."   
   Extravagant public contrition. Re-education camp. "Voluntary" surrender of a   
   ssets. It's not unknown for officials at government agencies to lean on   
   troublemaking citizens in this way, but not usually in functioning   
   democracies.   
   When Catholic groups complain about things like Terrence McNally's Broadway   
   play Corpus Christi (in which a gay Jesus enjoys anal sex with Judas), the   
   arts crowd says a healthy society has to have "artists" with the "courage"   
   to "explore" "transgressive" "ideas", etc. But, when Cincinnati Muslims   
   complained about the local theatre's new play about a Palestinian suicide   
   bomber, the production was immediately cancelled: the courageous   
   transgressive arts guys folded like a Bedouin tent. The play was almost   
   laughably pro-Palestinian, but that wasn't the point: the Muslim community   
   leaders didn't care whether the play was pro- or anti-Islam: for them, Islam   
   was beyond discussion. End of subject. And so it was.   
   Fifteen years ago, when the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was declared and   
   both his defenders and detractors managed to miss what the business was   
   really about, the Times's Clifford Longley nailed it very well. Surveying   
   the threats from British Muslim groups, he wrote that certain Muslim beliefs   
   "are not compatible with a plural society: Islam does not know how to exist   
   as a minority culture. For it is not just a set of private individual   
   principles and beliefs. Islam is a social creed above all, a radically   
   different way of organising society as a whole."   
   Since then, societal organisation-wise, things seem to be going Islam's way   
   swimmingly - literally in the case of the French municipal pool which bowed   
   to Muslim requests to institute single-sex bathing, but also in more   
   important ways. Thus, I see the French interior minister flew to Egypt to   
   seek the blessing for his new religious legislation of the big-time imam at   
   the al-Azhar theological institute. Rather odd, don't you think? After all,   
   Egypt isn't in the French interior. But, if Egypt doesn't fall within the   
   interior minister's jurisdiction, France apparently falls within the imam's.   
   And so, when free speech, artistic expression, feminism and other totems of   
   western pluralism clash directly with the Islamic lobby, Islam more often   
   than not wins - and all the noisy types who run around crying "Censorship!"   
   if a Texas radio station refuses to play the Bush-bashing Dixie Chicks   
   suddenly fall silent. I don't know about you, but this "multicultural   
   Britain" business is beginning to feel like an interim phase.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)