Sunday 19 February 2006

Quotes of the week

First prize for idiotic and impercipient quote of the week goes to Ishmaeel Haneef of the Muslim Action Committee. Referring to the Danish cartoons, he declared that the way to "get back to being a civilised world" was to "give the copyright over to the Muslim community"! I am being polite and giving Mr Haneef the benefit of the doubt when I refer to his statement as idiotic and impercipient. A less charitable person might describe his statement as blackmail.
Compare this nonsense with a wise comment from the Muslim community. Dr Guyasuddin Siddiqui of the lobby group Muslim Parliament of Britain is quoted by BBC News as saying unless we "carry the public opinion with us on whatever we stand for we are not going to achieve anything".
Bingo!

1 Comments:

At 6/3/06, Blogger Unknown said...

Coxsoft Art replies:
Dear Mr Haneef, thank you for correcting the spelling mistake I picked up from BBC News and for doing so in a civilized manner. I sympathize with your views on some aspects of the BBC's reporting. You may have noticed that Coxsoft Art has sent at least one metaphorical rocket in the BBC's direction, due to its biased reporting.
I didn't actually accuse you of blackmail, but suggested that a less charitable person might do so. I'm glad to allow you the opportunity to rebut this idea. Please put my remark - and your own - in the context of Muslim mayhem around the world. It seemed to me that you were saying you could stop the violence by forcing the publishers of those offensive cartoons to relinquish their copyright. I stand corrected. You were suggesting a means of resolving the dispute. Fair enough.
The situation has worsened since I wrote that blog. Muslims in Iraq are killing one another in their hundreds and desecrating historic mosques, and in Pakistan the cartoons are being used by extremists as an excuse to ferment uprising. I hope you agree with me that all this is a bloody mess. Less hopefuly, may I ask you to appreciate that so much pointless carnage, including the terrorist outrages in London and New York, makes it extremely difficult to persuade any infidel that your religion - merely one in 2,500 throughout history - is a civilizing influence?
I admire the best of Islamic architecture and have asked an award-winning Muslim artist from Iran to allow me to post one of his paintings on my blogsite, when his own website is completed. I have met and worked with many charming Muslim ladies. (During the Iraq War, I even had to reassure a worried Muslim boy that the Americans weren't going to bomb Mecca, which was the paranoia circulating in the mosque he attends!) And Muslims don't breed lager louts. But the positive things Islam offers pale into insignificance when compared with the savagery currently being inflicted on innocent people, including Muslims, by those embittered, hate-filled, psychopathic Fundamentalists.
I accept that you are deeply and sincerely offended by those tacky, racist, Danish cartoons, but it seems to me that by creating dispute over them you are playing into the hands of the Fundamentalists, rather than promoting the better side of Islam. I know little of the Koran, but I find it difficult to believe that the Prophet, whom so many millions of people hold in such reverence, would have wanted young men to blow themselves up and murder as many innocent people as they could in the process. Ironically, one of the cartons you are complaining about has the Prophet telling suicide bombers to "Stop!". If you believe that the Prophet would want to stop the suicides and the murders, why not forgive the alleged offence of idolatry and concentrate on saving lives?
Also, may I remind you that the British author Salman Rushdie is still under sentence of death for blasphemy and that this barbaric sentence was passed by an Islamic religious leader years before the cartoons row broke out? If you want to make one small step toward winning over British public opinion and helping infidels to view Islam in a more favourable light, I suggest you campaign to have that death sentence repealed. If this means updating Islamic Law, then campaign for that.
Yours most sincerely, Coxsoft Art

 

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