Bookworm Room: Appeasement is not the answer

Proving himself yet again to be a masterful writer, Mark Steyn takes what other, equally astute, commentators have said about the "cartoon crisis" (that it was obviously manufactured, that it represents the worst kind of intimidation, etc), and says it with such elan, it's a pleasure to read:

[W]e 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.

Steyn also makes a point I've been trying to make, which is that this is, from the Islamofacist point of view, a wedge issue aimed at getting people used to living under the Caliphate's rules. We're being prepared for (and are complicit in) the final take over:

*** 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."

No doubt, when this furor has died down, and we've all been taught which iconography is appropriate and which is inappropriate, we're going to hear that Muslims worldwide are terribly offended by being forced to look at women's hair. It's insensitive, we'll learn, to subject them to the sight of those blatantly uncovered heads. Upon hearing those statements about offended Islamic sensitivities, someone will naturally point out that Western women don't cover their heads and that, if you live in a Western world, you put up with barehead women. That will be the signal for Muslims worldwide to engage in blood-and-fire riots protesting this double insult to their sensibilities -- both the bare heads and the suggestion that they should tolerate those bare heads. Within a matter of months, you and I, my dear women friends, and our daughters too, will find ourselves cozily wrapped in a hijab, with burkhas soon to follow. (This movement has already started in such places as Australia, Sweden and Denmark, where uncovered Western women are considered legitimate rape targets for Islamic men living in those women's Western countries.) The British used to say of the Germans (in a not very politically correct way, of course), that "the Hun is always at your throat or at your feet." That is, the Germans were a hierarchical culture and, both in personal and national relations, there was no room for egalitarian behavior and pluralism. The same is true for the Muslims. And until those Muslims are trained in the ways of tolerance and equality, I'd rather have them at my feet than at my throat. I'll give the last word to Mark Steyn:

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.