Author Topic: "If it's not the Crusades, it's the cartoons."  (Read 1301 times)

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Offline megimoo

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"If it's not the Crusades, it's the cartoons."
« on: May 05, 2008, 07:39:17 AM »
Chirpiness that'll be the death of us
If you no longer know what you stand for, how can you know what you stand against?
A couple of years ago, an Australian reader wrote to say he was beginning to feel as Robert Frost did in "A Minor Bird":
I have wished a bird would fly away
And not sing by my house all day.
My correspondent's unceasingly cheeping bird was Islam. He was fed up waking every morning and reading of the latest offence taken by the more excitable Muhammadans. If memory serves, this exhaustion was prompted by a Muslim protest outside Westminster Cathedral demanding the execution of the Pope. It was organized by a fellow called Anjem Choudhary, who argued that "whoever insults the message of Muhammad is going to be subject to capital punishment." But then again it might have been some other provocation entirely — say, the chocolate swirl on the top of a Burger King dessert carton that an aggrieved customer complained bore too close a resemblance to the Arabic script for "Allah" (the offending menu item was subsequently withdrawn). If you're that eager to take offence, it's not difficult to find it. Or as President Bush said to me around the same time: "If it's not the Crusades, it's the cartoons."

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