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Serious satire
"Humor is a funny way of being serious"
-Thomas Edison
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To have your emails deleted please write to me at renatoobeid@hotmail.com
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Copyright© 2001-2010, Renato Obeid
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"Top blog/Renato Obeid's World/Today's pick: This rambling weblog is worth reading not so much for its satirical posts but more for its insight into the minutiae of life in Lebanon, including the etiquette of road accidents and how to hire a taxi.”
-Jane Perrone, The Guardian
audio
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Monday, February 06, 2006
MUSLIM PROTESTERS SACK CHRISTIAN SUBURB OF BEIRUT OSTENSIBLY IN PROTEST AT DANISH NEWSPAPER CARTOON DEPICTIONS OF PROPHET MOHAMED
-individuals, churches and private property attacked as alleged target, Danish Embassy, is left untouched
You’re offended at pictures depicting your prophet as a terrorist, so what do you do? – You commit acts of terror in protest.
Your religion prohibits depictions of your prophet.
Here’s a novel idea – don’t depict your prophet, don’t publish pictures depicting your prophet and don’t look at pictures depicting your prophet.
Depicting the Prophet is forbidden in Islam but that is the beginning and end of it – it is obviously not forbidden in other religions.
And that is the exact problem most people have with the extraterritorial jurisdiction Muslims try to impose on the rest of us.
Let them prohibit depictions of the Prophet in Saudi Arabia and protest against any such depictions in Tripoli, Sidon and Yemen for that matter but they have no business protesting in Christian Achrafiyeh against something published in Christian Denmark (none of those places are Muslim thus do not concern them).
Moreover, in a sectarian powder keg such as Lebanon it is dangerous for Muslims to protest in a Christian area or vice versa for that matter.
But I suppose it is more practical for them to protest in a Christian area.
After all, how do you (further) trash a Muslim area – burn down a falafel stand?
Anyway, what ever damage they’d do would probably be an improvement.
While today’s protestors were a bunch of misfits, it is inaccurate to say that they don’t represent Islam.
They are the tip of the iceberg, the vocal minority who merely represent the silent majority.
For weeks Muslim political leaders, spiritual leaders and ordinary citizens have been whipping up this hysteria and now they have the nerve to turn around (a 180 degree turn) and condemn these protests after all their incitement and sedition.
They started the fire and now they turn around and pretend to want to put it out like those firemen who start fires only so they can put them out and appear like heroes.
Even their condemnation is half-hearted – Sheik Saad Hariri told a press conference in Paris that ‘’some of the protestors were honourable’’.
He would say that – his Future (sic) Movement were the main organizers of the event, advertising it on their rabble-rousing television station all day.
This is no curate’s egg*(or should that be the Sheik’s egg?) and should be condemned outright and unequivocally.
The protests shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place, particularly after similar scenes in Damascus yesterday.
There is no such thing as freedom of speech for people who don’t believe in freedom of speech for others and are in essence protesting against freedom of expression (the publishing of the cartoons).
Leaders should be responsible and should calm people down and set a better example rather than lead the baying pack.
There is not better example of this and no greater contrast than the way Christian leaders responded to the attacks on churches and Christians today – all Christian leaders urged their followers to show restraint and refused to drag their martyred people into this sectarian trap.
Christians have gathered to pray at the churches that were attacked.
Look at the contrast – Muslims go on a murderous rampage because someone squiggles a few lines on a piece of paper and the Christians who have been physically attacked pray.
As General Aoun said, there may have been Syrians, Palestinians, and Kurds etc amongst the protestors but the fact is that this happened on Lebanese soil and it is up to the Lebanese authorities and security forces to prevent this and promptly nip it in the bud when it occurs.
Yet they go around licensing these protestors and there were sheiks actually participating in the protests.
As I mentioned before, only a miniscule minority of Muslims are terrorists but they are sustained by the silent majority who either condone the sentiment behind the terrorism if not explicitly condoning the act of terrorism itself or are silent to it (thus indirectly complicit).
What happened today should be condemned outright and anybody who doesn’t condemn this is complicit.
NO BUTS ABOUT IT YOU’RE A TERRORIST
-my simple one-word terror test
This leads very nicely to my very own patented terrorism test – it’s quite simple and doesn’t need elaborate information, evidence etc, it just requires one three letter word and that word is ‘’but’’.
‘I.e. ‘’we condemn such and such an act but…’’
Stop right there – you’re a terrorist.
E.g. ‘’we condemn 9/11 but America’s role in Palestine, wherever is wrong.
When you condemn heinous acts you have to condemn them outright, unequivocally with no justification or rationalization.
Anyone who says ‘’but…’’ in that context is a terrorist.
Protestors also expressed their indignation about Wiley Coyote never catching the Roadrunner, Donald Duck not wearing pants, Porky Pig being unclean, Dexter being allowed to make weapons of mass destruction while they’re not and other cartoon outrages.
Art and artists should bring people together not drive them apart, so here’s my humble artistic contribution to easing tensions and hopefully bringing people together at this sensitive time.
‘’What if Allah was one of us
Just a suicide bomber on a bus’’
(apologies to Joan Osborne)
*n. esp Brit. a thing that is partly good and partly bad (originating in story of a meek curate who, given a stale egg when dining with the bishop, assures his host that ‘parts of it are excellent’) - OED
7:30 pm
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