pull the chain

I admit that I take a perverse pleasure in watching fundamentalists of all sorts shrieking in tongues with foam-flecked beards. Religious charlatans of the sort common in America often jerk the chains of their simian pets by imagining some threat to their belief system (or con if you prefer) and they have only to announce, for instance, a war on Christmas or a movie that cleaves too close to history or scholarship for the good of their mythology (or con if you prefer) to cause a riot or a crusade or a jihad. It makes a wonderful cover or diversion when needed.

I think the Saudi Government, having failed again to control the situation at the annual Hajj needed just such a smokescreen and found some Danish cartoons that otherwise would without their efforts have been, if not unremarked upon, at best a minor provocation. The orchestrated outrage has worked wonders for Islamic solidarity and weak-kneed western governments have been forced to assert that of course they’re not bigots and of course freedom of speech is limited by the need to coddle believers in their faith.

“In other words, we use their sense of "fair play", "multiculturalism", "democratic values", and of course their guilt feelings, against them, so that they restrict their own freedom of action, but are very lax when dealing with the Muslim, for fear of offense or violent reaction. This of course confuses and demoralizes the ordinary person-in-the-street, and weakens their resistance to the onward march of the Ummah.” Says a cynical piece in The Religious Policeman. It’s just too impossible to be too cynical about it when Western religious leaders have to swallow their certainties and state that it’s wrong to contradict anyone’s faith a practice which is essential to all the religions in conflict here.

The Hajj , the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim is obliged to make at least once if at all possible, is a big deal. Somewhere around 200 pilgrims per year have died in various incidents and stampedes and the Saudis have long promised to do something about it. This year at least 360 people were killed. The Saudi’s collaboration with the West has long been a problem for them and of course it was the presence of Infidel troops on the Sacred Sands that is said to be the cause of Osama bin Laden’s outrage and the cornerstone of al Qaeda.

How convenient for them that some cartoons in a nowhere country can inflame the world.

Of course it doesn’t work nearly as well here, but it works. Whether it’s the attempt to get us riled up about Christmas or flag-burning or crime or political correctness or communism, our national monkey cage has been rattled to good effect by politicians for as long as I can remember.

Nothing can be done about it, of course. Not only do we and Chimps have a common ancestor, but we are as much an ape as any other and we are controlled by our ape genes and ape instincts. The more the fundies deny it, the more they prove it.