More Mr. Steyn

I am going to keep beating up on the Islamic Sharia freaks. From Mark Steyn:

Even if you were overcome with a sudden urge to burn the Danish flag, where do you get one in a hurry in Gaza? Well, OK, that's easy: the nearest European Union Humanitarian Aid and Intifada-Funding Branch Office. But where do you get one in an obscure town on the Punjabi plain on a Thursday afternoon? If I had a sudden yen to burn the Yemeni or Sudanese flag on my village green, I haven't a clue how I'd get hold of one in this part of New Hampshire. Say what you like about the Islamic world, but they show tremendous initiative and energy and inventiveness, at least when it comes to threatening death to the infidels every 48 hours for one perceived offense or another. If only it could be channeled into, say, a small software company, what an economy they'd have.

Genius. Hat tip to Prof. Rappaport.

And from Prof. Smith (uber wit, as always):

When this started, I was inclined to think, well, you can't blame people for being upset when their religion is insulted. I didn't like "Piss Christ" or the BVM with elephant excrement on her either. I thought it was just dandy that Mayor Guiliani made life a little difficult for the Brooklyn Museum. But that was before crazed mobs started burning embassies and calling for murder of anyone who dares insult them. If there were a very large segment of Roman Catholicism that wanted to take over a large bit of the world, make all women dress like nuns, eat fish on Friday, never miss Mass, and punish heretics by burning them at the stake, and had been busy murdering innocent people by the thousands in order to bring the neo-Medieval world about, I would not be too shocked if somebody published an editorial cartoon criticizing it. If it showed the baby Jesus as a ticking time bomb, I would think, well, that's what I get for burning people alive. But then, maybe I lack the spirit of the true fanatic.

I agree. And another thing. This whole fandango has me dwelling a bit on the fashionable concept of "multi-culturalism" that tends to frequent the manifestos of haughty sociology professors and the hipp’er pages of Harpers. Central to the thesis is the strict relativistic view of the world that places all cultures and values on an even-keel, substantively and morally. The import of such a view is the assertion that western society's "liberal" adherence to such novelties as due process of law and universal suffrage is no more valid than, say, the Mutawwa'in belief that young girls should be left to burn to death if they fail to wear proper attire... Please. This is crap. And anyone who refuses to accept this as fact should spend a day walking around Tehran wearing a Brokeback Mountain t-shirt. Feel that sting? It's a rock being hurled by your average follower of Mohammed. Say what you will about Mr. Falwell's condemnations, he does not throw stones. I acknowledge that the world is less black and white (in the objective sense) than Ayn Rand would have us believe, but I am quite certain that the system of governance under which we live and our ostensible devotion to liberty (which directly translates into the basic tolerance of others and the personal rejection of violence and coercion) is infinitely superior to that of the fanatical pilgrims for Sharia. Deal with it.