Dave Smith wrote:

>Old Mother Ashby wrote:
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>>Quite so. Where has there been the most violent reaction? Iran, a
>>country where you can be imprisoned for merely expressing an opinion
>>that is not government approved. You can find loutish young men willing
>>to riot anywhere, but normally the authorities don't encourage them,
>>they jail them (after the police have given them a kicking). The Iranian
>>government has something to gain from all the fuss, don't they?
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>I am not sure that Iran is the worst. It's bad, but so is Saudi Arabia. The
>thing is that this particular culture thrives on censorship and physical
>intimidation. IMO these riots are designed to intimidate the west not to dare
>to portray Islam as practised for what it is and I am glad that places like
>Denmark will take a stand against it by refusing to censor their press. Today
>it's images of the Prophet. Tomorrow it could be daring to speak out against
>female genital mutilation.
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You do realise that female genital mutilation is a cultural, not a
religious practice? It is common in parts of Africa where people may be
Christian or Moslem or some tribal religion predating both.

>>Indonesia is the largest Moslem nation on earth, but there have been no
>>reports of any trouble at all. Indonesia has been through unsettling
>>times since Soeharto was deposed, and there has been a growth of Saudi
>>funded religious extremist groups who have committed some terrible
>>atrocities.
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>Like 9/11? That is where most of the 9/11 terrorists came from. That is where
>most of the Taliban came from.
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Actually I was thinking of the nastiness in the Moluccas, and of course
the Bali bombings. You must have heard of them? The people who
perpetrate these outrages are Indonesians (though I think the recently
deceased expert on bombs whose name escapes me might have been Malay),
but they are supported and funded by Saudis. It's a bit like all those
American fundamentalist missionaries infesting South East Asia; they
offer schools and new mosques (built to Arab designs, not in the
traditional Indonesian style) and assistance to the poor, but of course
the alien ideology comes as part of the package.

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>>The Indonesian government has no interest in fomenting
>>unrest, neither do the Malaysians, a thoroughly authoritarian lot. Many
>>of their citizens may be offended by the idea of the cartoons, but
>>that's as far as it goes.
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>Hopefully, they would be content to rest assured that Allah will deal with the
>infidels on his own in the afterlife. I would grant them the right to be that
>smug. To react by committing acts of violence and arson is totally
>unacceptable.
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I'm not sure that smug is quite the word I would use. They're probably
ropeable, but as you point out, violence is as unacceptable in Indonesia
as here and in fact it's unthinkable for the average person. Idle young
men are another matter. We had a spot of violence in Cronulla recently,
you know - the jury is still out on whether it was a genuine race riot,
but you had a mob of drunken yobbos (some of them draped in the national
flag, if you please), stirred up by the Sydney shock jocks, who had a
whale of a time beating up anybody who they thought might be Lebanese or
the like. All to do with longstanding resentment about who owns the
beach, one of those Sydney things. And of course the next week there
were the payback bashings. It's all settled down apparently, but the
powers that be have had to think about some of the mixed messages
they've been sending.

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>>Nobody has mentioned the worst part of the Iranian reaction to the
>>cartoons. One of their newspapers has announced a retaliatory
>>competition for cartoons about - wait for it - the Holocaust. So, upset
>>by the officially Lutheran Danes, the Iranians decide to go in for a
>>spot of anti-semitism. You know what they say: if something is wrong,
>>it's the fault of either the cyclists or the Jews.
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>What do you expect from a who react to a depiction of them as violent by
>committing acts of violence?
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I expect them to direct the violence, not to mention the insulting
cartoons, at the people who have offended them, not to go vilifying
people who are not involved, but that's not what it's really about,
which is the point I'm making.

Christine
Who would rather talk about food

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