Posted on 12/30/2007 10:32:11 PM PST by mojito
The deeply English, deeply Christian city of Oxford, one of the homes of free thought, is now being asked to accept the Islamic call to prayer wafting from mosque loudspeakers over its spires and domes.
If that is not a threat to our "way of life", then I don't know what is. Allowing the regular electronic proclamation of Allah's supremacy in a British city is not tolerance, but a surrender of the sky to a wholly different culture. Just you wait and see what opponents of this scheme are accused of.
What about the nonsensical, illogical frenzy among our rulers to snoop on us, docket us, lock us up without trial and make us undress at airports? That's a pretty major assault on our "way of life", as I recall it being until very recently.
And of course it is accompanied by the laxest border controls you can imagine for those coming in, and the zealous dismantling of what remains of our Christian culture in schools, public ceremonies and everything else.
And now we're talking to the Taliban, one of the twin bogeymen with which the Government has sought to frighten us into acceptance of an entanglement of 'security' measures which have yet to prevent a single outrage.
No doubt we would talk to 'al Qaeda' too, if such an organisation existed, but - as all intelligence men know - it is a vague collection of rival factions, lumped together to scare the ill-informed into surrendering their liberties.
So much for the Great War on Terror, which has neither saved our way of life nor defeated Islamist extremism. What did you expect from the very same people who surrendered to the IRA, a genuine threat that really did exist (and still does) and which we could have beaten? What a lot of hogwash we are fed. The murder of Benazir Bhutto is a disgusting crime, but people really should grow up a bit about Pakistan.
This is a country that still has feudal landlords and slavery, which is utterly ethnically divided, speaking at least nine languages.
It is deeply economically sick, corrupt as a corpse, and haunted by the sinister ISI intelligence agency. Fewer than half its people, and only 36 per cent of its women, can even read.
It has no heroes, or heroines for that matter. Miss Bhutto was a pretty terrible prime minister when in office, and at one time a chum of the Taliban.
If we have learned nothing else from the Iraq adventure, surely it is time we grasped that other countries are the business of the people who live in them. We have quite enough to worry about at home without trying to impose our own wobbly political system on a nation where it couldn't work for five minutes (does it work here, actually?).
Yes, our way of life does need saving, but mainly from our own Government.
So I read about a lot of things he’s against, what’s he for?
Which leaders were those, pal, the ones you elected?
Family gatherings at the Hitchens household must be very interesting. Do Chris and Peter speak to each other?
Tolerance of anything and everything means that those who have the most violent ideology will win out in the end.
It's a shame so many would destroy a fine culture and let it be supplanted just so no one has to get their feelings hurt.
Amen! That 'disease' is highly contagious! Our 'leader's caught it too.
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