It is all kicking off again. We have seen it before and before we saw it before, we saw it before that. It is becoming a prevalent theme in the world now, not just where there are large concentrations of Muslims but also where there are not. After all, people need to hate, they need to get their daily dose of two-minute hate as was described in 1984 by Orwell. The difference is of course that we are not seeing two minutes now, we are seeing a lot more, and far more violent and apparently because someone, somewhere, in some country, on the other side of the planet (relative to the middle east), had the audacity to post a video insulting Mohammed and thus Islam itself.
Lets do an experiment. I put into google the following phrase "mohammed pictures". Google gives me 46,200,000 results. Lets spell that out: forty-six million results. Now I do not have time to go through all the websites, but whilst we cannot make the assumption that all websites do harbour images of Mohammed, we can be quite sure that the number of images of Mohammed rank in the order of millions.
These have been around for years.
How come no one is getting upset about these images? Google, business savvy as they are, also exists in arabic form. Here is the really interesting thing. If we put in the same search term as above into the arabic Google then we suddenly have 105,000,000 results. That's twice as many as the English version. This is curious indeed. The results would suggest that to an arab speaking audience, there are more images of Mohammed available than there are to an English audience. Naturally we are only speculating as to the content of these 105 million websites, but statistically speaking it is not inconceivable to make such an extrapolation to further the argument.
We are thus in the curious position of exposing abject hypocrisy on the part of the minorities who insist on prevailing a culture of hatred towards, well, anything that in their minds insults Islam (but this, mind you, appears to be just about anything). Now, the western media has almost exclusively been focusing on the producer on the film which supposedly insulted the great swathes of Muslims down yonder (this is of course ignoring the 105 million search results...) - they are trying to figure who had the audacity to make a film criticising Mohammed. That clearly is what we should be focusing on, not that fact that hundreds of thousands of Muslims have gone completely ape-shit over a crappy 14-minute amateur film, exposing the views of one person. It is a bit like last week when we had two unfolding stories: first the tragic brutal slaying of two unarmed police officers in Manchester; the second about a Cabinet Minister who gave a police officer a gob-full out the front of 10 Downing Street. Hardly comparable events, yet a week on and one has overshadowed the other.
With Islam, should one so like to initiate debate one does have to tread carefully, granted, they are far more sensitive about anything regarding their religion than most other theisms.
What all great religions need to understand about the West, as they seem so potent to impress upon us; the sanctity of Mohammed/Islam, we value freedom of speech and freedom of expression just as highly as they value their religion. People dislike me for what I say on this blog, and I patronise most people who hold objectionable views to mine (because they are silly). But, and this is a big but, I do appreciate their criticism when I get it (and that is a lot). I value their opinions because it means I can improve mine - improve, but not change.
If someone insists upon complete and total absolution of their item of virtue, be it religion or e.g. democracy. They must also understand that the sword that they propose to wield in order to defend said institution, will be wielded tenfold by those who do not. The reason for this is simple; most people do not harbour under the illusion that theirs is something free of criticism.
