Iran, Iran, Behave Yourself
The Western world was taken aback, mystified, shocked and dare we even say, frightened by the display of outraged vitriol visited upon it with the publication in Denmark of a handful of cartoons chiding Muslims for their hypocrisy, through humour. How little do we know the Muslim mind, that incendiary mass of slight-prone, insult-averse, humour-lacking bundle of collective synapses reacting to the unmitigated gall of a Western press committing the highest order of inflammatory assault: depicting the form and visage of the Prophet Muhammad. Kill the infidel!Little did we know. Much did we pay.
Casual has no place in the world of orthodoxy in religion, in fundamentalist fervour, in the ardent worship of a deity and that great spirit's earthly guide to the perplexed.
People died. Buildings, as symbols of the West, were trashed and destroyed. Some countries' exports were slashed, causing their companies to face bankruptcy. Hitherto believed reasonably-adjusted members of the Muslim community residing in European and North American countries rallied and marched, holding proudly aloft banners exhorting the true believers to kill the defamers of Islam.
Lesson learned. Freedom of expression, so proudly proclaimed in Western countries, so staunchly defended, so valued as a symbol of the freedom of choice, of religion, of the press, was stilled. This, for a mild jab at the evident ability of a culture and a religion to blind itself to its own failings, continually finding fault in the values, traditions, religions and cultures prized and practised elsewhere.
Where were the Muslim voices when the Taliban blew up and destroyed ancient sacred symbols of another highly respected Eastern religion in Afghanistan? Does one suppose that this is just exactly what the Danish cartoonists were attempting to point out to their Muslim colleagues? That they decry the West's lack of interest in and respect for their particular religion, while denying the equal validity of other religious groups' cleaving to their own religions?
Iran, that great and glorious country exults in this kind of backlash against the West, and does its bitter best to encourage and foment it. The better to ensure support from among the vast empire of Islam in countries near and far. And, determined to go the West one better, has taken great care to assemble a number of cartoons selected from entries to Iran's "International Holocaust Cartoons Contest". How's that for a mouthful? And in any event, why target the Holocaust? Why not symbols of another religion?
Might it be because Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his ilk understand that in the West it's already been done and despite some protests from various church sources, people understood that there will always be topics of contention, rebuke and mirth-engendering in a culture and society which believes people have a right to express their opinions freely, with some notable constraints and exceptions. Any system of belief, a faith system whose origins, existence and efficacy upon the human condition cannot be proved is ripe for expressions of disbelief. Case closed.
Separate that from a historical fact, amply proven by evidence in abundance. Consider the historical fact that another rogue country with aspirations to empire and world domination worked a side issue into their universal campaign and in the process deliberately, with great planning, expertise and effectiveness, dabbled in genocide. It's a matter of history, a matter of fact, an accepted truth.
God exists or he does not. Prove it.
Millions of people were deliberately murdered by manaical, power-hungry psychopaths aided and assisted by ordinary, everyday citizens. It has been proved. It has been well documented.
In Tehran, Iran today over 200 entries of Holocaust-denial, U.S.-deriding, Western-values-debasing cartoons are displayed for the merriment of the righteously indignant over the perceived slights to Islam. Knowing what we do about fascist Islamists and their hatred of the West, why do we care? Why report on this travesty in our news? Who wants to read about it?
Masoud Shojai, head of the Cartoon House which helped the government of Iran and the country's Hamshari newspaper to organize the exhibition calls it: "...a test of the boundaries of free speech espoused by Western countries." It isn't, it is a test of the boundaries to which Iran and Islamists fall all over themselves to excel through excess in their hate cult.
Why do the State of Israel, the mayor of Paris, various Jewish groups even bother to condemn the exhibition? It is beneath their notice: not the dishonouring of the memory of millions of dead Jews, but the obvious lack of decency and humanity exhibited for all to see by the Iranian government and their supporters.
Iran is a mad dog of a country, headed by religious fanatics who see nothing amiss in training children to flood onto a battlefield, to helplessly give up their lives for Allah. A country which has trained an armed force from childhood to adulthood for the purpose of undying allegiance to Islam and the spread of a Persian empire throughout the Middle East. How respected can human beings be, when highly-placed clerics exhort their followers to go out and kill Sunni Muslims because they are not Shiites like themselves and therefore deserving of death.
Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who operates the Centre for the Defence of Human Rights, in the capital Tehran is facing the closure of her group and perhaps even personal imprisonment. This secretive, brutal theocracy posing as an Islamic democracy for the people, does not brook questioning of their operations, their record of human rights. Their prisons are full of dissidents, of Iranians who foresee a different future for their country than that which the current religious figures and their puppet president envisages.
Iran silences those of its citizens who question the validity of their iron theocratic rule. The killer of Canadian-Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi, arrested for questioning the regime will never be brought to justice. Iranian activists do not remain at large, they are imprisoned, brutally treated and often murdered while incarcerated.
Iran, the pariah, eager to obtain nuclear weaponry, upon which event it will no longer have to rely on rhetoric to rail against its enemies, perceived or real.
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, August 19, 2006
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