Pick a Tribe, Any Tribe
8th May 2010
Enter Islam, and everything changes. I cannot be the only person to have watched, during the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis, a certain type of surreal discussion on television current affairs programs, in which a defender of freedom of speech and some self-parody of a Muslim hypocrite would go back and forth on the subject of whether we should be allowed (in our own countries, no less) to ‘insult’ Islam or Muhammad. Can anyone watch any of these sickening infiltrators try to argue away our freedoms and still not comprehend what we are up against? Can anyone doubt that if such people were in a position of power, there would be no sitting around the table discussing human rights when Muhammad was drawn with a bomb in his turban?
If there is a mechanism whereby principle steps onto the battlefield, waves its magic wand, and resolves these conflicts prior to the intervention of tribally-motivated actors prepared to use large-scale violence to achieve their aims, I have yet to encounter it.