Muslims burned the flag of St George and called for the Queen to 'Go to Hell' in a furious rally held in London over Salman Rushdie's knighthood. Angry Muslim extremists rallying at Regents Park Mosque said that anger over the award could match the fierce reaction to publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark in 2006. Organisers of a protest outside the mosque claimed several hundred demonstrators were denouncing the decision to reward Rushdie, whose novel "The Satanic Verses" led to a death threat from Iran in 1989.
Apparently 24 protesters constitute a furious mob. For once I think the BBC are right not to cover it.
I liked the caption on the picture though :
"The Rushdie row shows no signs of abating as the bounty on his head continues to rise"
I know he's short, but the bounty's not actually on his head. And that's quite a scar on her right arm. Not bionic is she ?
21 comments:
Isn't the lovely Padma Lakshmi's scar actually some sort of henna tattoo thingamy?
I think the Stepford control unit is inside it. Hence Mr Rushdie's smug expresssion.
Pounce writes;
The scar is from a car crash she was in.
I think Angry Muslim Extremists may have a small future as a rock group. I'll give it three weeks.
The 24 don't worry me overmuch. The ones that worry me are the ones:
a) agreeing with the 24
b) planning their own little 'protest'
c) keeping shtum because they are too scared of a & b
We don't have exact figures for these groups....
I'd like to see 24 furious Brits domenstrating publicly agaist muslim extremists.....in fact 1 would be a start!
You should also not get terribly excited about this because Rushdie is no friend of the British, and no worthy cause to risk terror attacks over. In the 80s, when he was being protected from Islamic attacks by HRM's gov't, he made a habit of castigating the British for our racism and free-marketeering. I for one would shed no tears if our good Pakistani friends targetted him instead of us.
Rushdie is no friend of the British, and no worthy cause to risk terror attacks over. In the 80s, when he was being protected from Islamic attacks by HRM's gov't, he made a habit of castigating the British for our racism and free-marketeering.
The fact that we protected him supports the idea that we weren't racist, doesn't it.
There are two issues here:
1. Should we invite people who despise our society to join us?
2. Should we protect our citizens when they incur the wrath of other countries?
Alex, you might have a case for saying that Rushdie should never have become a citizen, but you have no case whatsoever for saying that we shouldn't protect our citizens.
To Alex Zeka:
1. We have no "good Pakistani friends". That priviledge is limited to AlQaeda.
2. The jihad will always seek the easiest target. That isn't Rushdie, it is us and our old folk and children.
3. I don't care much for Rushdie either, but I respect him in his role as the canary in this coal mine.
4. When folk are openly calling for random massacre and butchery, in your own homeland, you should always get "excited" about it. Because random means you and me.
And 24 folk doing this synchronised seething in the open, are backed up by thousands of doctrinal supporters.
Rushdie is a pretext, not a reason. If they can't use him, they will find another pretext, going back to the Crusades if they have to.
And what's all this about us being castigated for our "racism"? Seems to me the BBC, the Police Force, the Churches, the Schools, the Local Authorities, and even the Probation Service have been preaching this at us for donkeys years. They still get their gongs.
Sheesh, I'm sorry to be harsh, but you come across like a comatose bloke sleepwalking to the medicine cupboard to get a tranquilizer.
Monty
Anonymous aka Monty - Agree with every word.
These are proxy seethers, each one representing thousands, if not tens of thousands. As we allow seething against our royalty in this country, we shouldn't do anything about it, but should take note.
You are right. Rushdie is a pretext. They are not "deeply hurt" by some imaginary insults to their mohammad or allah or whoever. It is a chance to inch forward. Anything a muslim says, always think of one word: taqqya.
I have been immensely heartened by the Minneapolis airport authorities. The story, mysteriously, has not been running in Britain, but it's big in America.
Little by little, inch by inch, as is their wont, muslims (somalis) have been the major airport taxi licensees.
A few months ago, they began to refuse to accept passengers from the airport if they suspected them of carrying liquor. Yes! Passengers into the Twin Cities are supposed to follow the koran As the Pakistanis have arrogated unto themselves the decision as to what can be published in Britain, the Somalis in Minneapolis are deciding on who can get a taxi from the Minneapolis airport! Oh, and they won't take blind people either, because they have seeing eye dogs. mohammad has a thing about dogs. Which shouldn't surprise us. He certainly had a thing about little girls.
Anyway, being American, the Americans took action against this impertinence. To the surprise of the islamic, the taxi authority made a new rule. Any driver who refused to take a passenger did not retain his place at the head of the queue. He had to drive round the airport to the back of the taxi queue.
"Waaaahhh! But it's our religion! It's our religious freedom [which we don't grant other religions in our own countries]. Anyway, the airport toughened up still further. Any driver refusing to take a passenger has his license to ply suspended for three months. Second offence, licence revoked.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how to deal with islam.
Slightly off topic, here is a joke I heard.
Define irony: Salman gets a knighthood and Bernard Manning dies.
In January 1989 the Home Secretary Douglas Hurd had that same attitude to book-burning in Bradford.......the Public Order Acts apparently were not known to West Yorkshire Police until Nick Griffin held a private meeting in a Keighley pub.
I am afraid this little group in London has succeeded in bringing to attention why Rushdie's book is called The Satanic Verses
The Satanic Verses in Qur'an
Sura an-Najm (Star) 53:19-22
Now tell me about Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat,
The third one, another goddess.
What! For you the males and for him the females!
That indeed is an unfair division.
أَفَرَأَيْتُمُ اللَّاتَ وَالْعُزَّى
وَمَنَاةَ الثَّالِثَةَ الْأُخْرَى
أَلَكُمُ الذَّكَرُ وَلَهُ الْأُنثَى
تِلْكَ إِذًا قِسْمَةٌ ضِيزَى. سورة النجم - سورة ٥٣: ١٩-٢٢
http://muhammadanism.org/Quran/SatanicVerses.htm
Koran
off topic but still relevant to this blog I think.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?
xml=/news/2007/06/22/nsarwar122.xml
The muslims should look round the world and figure out who is successful - i.e., the West, SE Asia, India, China, Japan, S Korea. None of them mired in muslim Dark Ages desert bigotry and fascist crap.
Now let's look at the unsuccessful nations. Well, Somalia and all of islamic Africa, the Magreb,all the islamic nations in the ME except those lucky enough to have oil that Westerners figured out how to refine and use - so in effect, they are nevertheless passengers on our success.
If they could get their heads off the ground and their arses out of the air five times a day, they might be able to draw some conclusions.
It never ceases to amaze me how much you have to spell out on blogs. I *know* the fact we protected him proves we aren't racist, that was suppossed to be a demonstration of Rushdie's hypocritical posturing at our expense. I also *know* we have no Paki friends, that was a phrase along the lines of "our good friends, the Saudis".
Now that my ideological distance from anti-"racist" and pro-Paki circles has been made clear (I'm sure Laban and a few others will find this funny), I'd like to get down to this "we must protect our citizens" business.
Well, dear chums, citizenship is - apart from being non-existent for such subjects of the Queen as Rushdie - a privelege. It is a privelege earned by extending a similar privelege to others.
Now, the privelege of citizenship is to have one's life, liberty and property protected by other citizens of the same state. Of course, we only have such rights while we extend them to others - nobody is going to argue that a murderer has "a right to liberty".
What of traitors, however? Surely if somebody refuses to stand up and be counted in the protection of his fellow citizens' rights, he too is violating the social contract. In other words, he is free-riding on the protection agency that is a state.
But what of a man who not only free-rides without himself assisting others in protecting themselves, but actively works to undermine the morale of a society? Surely that is even worse than free-riding, surely that is treason on all fours with the actions of Lord Haw-Haw and co.
Rushdie, in calling the Brits racist and selfish, undermined the morale of our society. He gave aid and comfort to the enemy. That we had given him citizenship already is as irrelevant as the fact that Lord Haw-Haw was a Brit. Both were traitors, both through this broke the social contract.
He isn't worth risking a single Brits life over. He doesn't, based on his published statements, much like us. We should reciprocate and send him on his merry way.
the fact that Lord Haw-Haw was a Brit.
Debatable. Some think he was a US Citizen....and he did have German Citienship and The British Government passed the Treason Act 1945 the day before Joyce was flown back to Britain.............. he was charged with treason from 3 September 1939 to 2 July 1940, the date his British passport ran out
Good point about the social contract Alex.
Thanks for the correction, observer. A better example would be "Hiss was still a traitor, even though he was an American citizen". The point is that loyalty to our fellow citizens is conditional on their loyalty to our state/nation.
All of the above said, I'm not averse on using Rushdie as a weather vane, on the "first they came for the..." basis. If islamists are plotting to blow up Rushdie, they aren't plotting to blow up London. Al-Qaeda can waste their energy on him til the cows come home for all any of us should care.
"If islamists are plotting to blow up Rushdie, they aren't plotting to blow up London. Al-Qaeda can waste their energy on him til the cows come home for all any of us should care."
I care. Now, what's that hoary old parable of Churchill's ....? Ah, yes:
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last."
Good luck being last on the menu....
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