Civic limits
Taki
Iam personally in touch with British Muslim leaders and appealing to them to spare the life of my friend Claus von Bülow. For far too long, Claus has been mistaken for a Dane, but I am ready to bear witness to the fact that he’s a true blue German. My Cadogan Square flat is a stone’s throw from the Danish embassy, so I’ve hung a large picture of the Iranianborn socialite Mercedes Bass outside my window, hoping the rioters will mistake her for Abu Hamza and give my place a break.
The government tells us that crime is going down. But Jack Straw hit a new low last week when he yet again kowtowed to militant Islam and instead condemned freedom of the press. Charles (Dumbo ears) Clarke ditto. How wonderful to see life in Europe and the Middle East improving by the minute. Oh, yes, I almost forgot. The Jack Straw prize for bravery was won last week by the Egyptian Captain Sayyed Omar, who was the first off his sinking ship leaving hundreds of men, women and children to drown in the Red Sea disaster. It wouldn’t surprise me if Omar were soon posted over here as the Egyptian government’s naval attaché. He’d blend in perfectly with Straw on a sunny afternoon’s outing on the Serpentine.
But enough of my complaining. Hilaire Belloc believed that the only way the Muslims would unite would be under the restoration of the caliphate, but he was wrong. A few cartoons did the trick. What I don’t get is why Syrian rioters torched the embassies of Chile and Norway, along with that of Denmark. Are Chileans considered Scandinavians? Could Augusto Pinochet be related to Olaf Palme? Perhaps the EU should invest a few millions in Syrian geographical studies. And why hasn’t the Greek embassy been torched? What are we Greeks? (For Christ’s sake, please burn us down, otherwise we won’t be able to call ourselves Europeans.) But let me be serious for a minute. Although there are no legal limits to free speech — or so they tell me while my copy is spiked in order to protect me from Scotland Yard’s Diversity Division — there are civic limits. I’ve been screaming for years against the intrusive excesses of the Murdoch press, and now I find myself in cahoots with the Islamic group Hizb utTahrir, which called on the governments of the Muslim world to ‘completely sever contact with European governments until they controlled the media.’ I hate to admit it, but I’d love it if Hizb ut-Tahrir had its way. Either way it’s a victory for civilised living. Without Murdoch, Britain becomes sort of a pleasant land once again, and if the Muslims walk, well, you figure it out. It’s like being given the choice between Ashley Judd and Juliette Binoche. A greedy person would ask for both, but the poor little Greek boy is no pig. Either will do.
And, speaking of walking away, we Christians have been doing that for quite a while. Since 1150, when the Muslims decided to go after us for having had the impertinence to take back the once-Christian Middle East. Well, as we know, they almost made it but not quite. They failed in Malta in 1565, and got their arse handed to them by Duke John in Lepanto in 1571, and then Jean Sobieski kicked their butts outside Vienna in 1683. (Leave it to a Pole to win it for us, and with a painting of Our Lady of Czestochowa leading from the front.) We Greeks, needless to say, were badly beaten by the hated Turks on black Tuesday 1453, the emperor Constantine Paleologos dying while fighting at the walls of Constantinople. Incidentally, the soon-tobe-members-of-the-EU Turks celebrated the Danish cartoons by killing a Catholic priest in cold blood, but what’s a Christian priest shot dead nowadays? Compared with insulting an ethnic, a mere bagatelle. Charles Martel, Duke John, Jean Sobieski, come on back down here.
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