Recall your last visit to the doctor in which he hit your knee with a rubber hammer and your leg kicked. Apparently those trying to engineer a Mid-East conflict know they can count on that old reflex in Moslems to accomplish their purposes. A fact confirmed by the neat, new Danish flags that miraculously appeared wherever there were major disturbances.
After the recent Mohammed cartoons scandal, I heard much resentment against Christians voiced by radical Islamic spokespersons. But to be honest, most European countries are POST-CHRISTIAN, with homosexuality, usury, abortion, pornography, drunkenness and other vices openly promoted and protected. The very same enemies of God that currently have Islam on the dinner plate destroyed Christianity in these countries. (I recommend Nesta Webster’s "Secret Societies and Subversive Movements" for a complete history of the war on both Christianity and Islam). They would like nothing better than to see both sides destroyed.
Beyond the hotheads, I hear advice from Moslem scholars like Shiekh Youssef al-Qaradawi of the U.S.-protectorate in Qatar. Don’t bomb embassies, he counseled, boycott the offending countries. Al-Qaradawi is only partially right. Moslems should boycott–”but only the products of companies that run advertisements or in any way support the publications running such cartoons–which are incitement rather than free speech. One could also boycott suppliers of the newspapers (newsprint), insurers of the newspapers (libel & Slander insurance), etc., while making clear to Europeans that this is not an action against them in general but against those specifically vilifying Islam.
Here’s my reasoning. Just a week earlier the "boycott Israel" movement had achieved such success in Scandinavia that it was necessary for both Condi Rice and George W. Bush to openly threaten Norway and force it to, once again, "buy Israeli". Scandinavian consumers, however, were apparently irritated and Israeli goods probably wouldn’t have been in much demand. Informally, many other Europeans have been steering clear of the blue and white.
Economic pressure is about the only way to get the Israelis to restrain themselves in the treatment of the Palestinians, and might have been one of the things keeping them from expelling Palestinians across the "wall of separation" built by Ariel Sharon. With attacks on European interests, public resistance to Israeli goods certainly can’t be counted on now in the event of an attack or mass expulsion. Scandinavian consumers and consumers across Europe, cognizant of boycotts against them, may even switch to Israeli products as a form of protest.
Islam survived more than a thousand years of vilification and can certainly survive this crisis.
