Fun for all the family in the Faroes, where one of the finest traditions of Viking civilization is still being upheld down to the present day under the auspices of the Danish Crown.
This week's Slate finds Hitch defending the descendants of the Vikings yet again from the decedents of Issau who also double up the followers of the Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon Him. The current attack shows signs of shaping up into a shakedown of the Danish press their role in "defaming" the Prophet, and the technique obviously has our Popinjay flustered. To wit, to woo:
I have just finished reading one of the most astoundingly stupid and nasty documents ever to have landed on my desk. It consists of a letter from a law firm in Saudi Arabia, run by a man named Ahmed Zaki Yamani, to a group of newspapers in Scandinavia.
Nasty? Yes. Stupid? Don't you believe it! The Muslim Mafia behind this potentially juicy scam have learned a thing or two from the ambulance chasers, the sexual/racial/ableist harassment and repressed false memory syndrome accusation human rights grievance merchants, the lady who sued McDonald's because her coffee was too hot, and, most of all, those princes of defamation in the guise of anti-defamation at the Kosher Nostra, who have successfully extorted treasure from governments and institutions throughout European Christendom on a variety of pretexts over several decades and accomplished the remarkable feat actually bringing Swiss bankers to tears in the course of their gymnastic legal shenanigans. Success on this scale is bound to be emulated, and so in today's climate of specious political correctness as ultimate morality, it was only a matter of time before smart Arab lawyers decided they would have a go at putting the Danish press through an olive press to see how much extra virgin they could extract.
The Danes entered European historical consciousness not long after the time of the Prophet by their practice of raiding the coasts of places farther west and south, raping and pillaging as they went, leading to the practice of the English and French paying them Danegeld (literally "Dane's gold") as a means of avoiding any unpleasantness. Also, the mass media have done their bit in building a public consensus in favor of just the sort of legal/moral framework in which spurious grievance claims can make it into court. So the case Hitch highlights, if it were to result in successful extortion, would be replete with ironies. And Hitch claims to be be a connoisseur of that sort of thing.
While you have to admire our Contrarian's mettle in consistently defending his Danish comrades, it has to be noted that some of his arguments are inappropriate nitpicks that only weaken his case. For instance, this one.
Yamani: In our view, all religious icons of all religions, such as the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, Moses, and (not to be compared to prophets and messengers) others who are non-religious icons but have contributed to humanity like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, and others such as Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haitham and Albert Einstein all deserve respect and protection from ridicule and defamation.
Hitchens: Cretinism on this historic level is comparatively rare. Apparently, Yamani thinks that Mahatma is a first name rather than a Hindu religious honorific and that the words "Dalai Lama" are a secular title. Moreover (and you have to admit that tossing in a Jewish name is a nice touch), he would protect the stern Spinozist Einstein from being lampooned for the many wrong surmises he made about the Big Bang and quantum theory.
Spewing out irrelevant nonsense on the scale Hitchens has mastered is is a rare talent. "Mahatma" (translated as "great soul") is how Mohandas K. Gandhi is known to the masses, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama is known and revered on account of his official religious position rather than as a secular individual. How many readers would recognize the name Tenzin Gyatso if they read it in a legal document? So Yamani's use of these "names" cannot be criticized as unsuitable, let alone as cretinism, any more than can referring to Usāmah bin Muḥammad bin `Awaḍ bin Lādin as "Bin Laden", as if that were his surname. Hitchens does this all the time. It is ignorant. It is inaccurate. But it isn't cretinism. But then again, Hitchens is ignorant and inaccurate although not cretinous. So it is only natural that he makes ignorant and inaccurate statements as a matter of course. Also, in what sense could Uncle Albert be described as"stern", and what the expletive does Hitchens know about the Big Bang and quantum theory that allows him to claim that Einstein was wrong about them? There is probably a parallel universe somewhere in which there is a Christopher Hitchens who isn't a total scientific ignoramous, but it isn't the universe we inhabit. Still, it's paragraphs like the above that send out the meta-message that Hitchens and his backers are seriously worried about this potential legal action against the Scandinavian press.
For myself, I would not lift a finger to help the Danes in this battle. It wouldn't bother me one iota if the armies of the New Khanate of the Golden Horde watered their camels in Copenhagen. Because as a dedicated opponent of cruelty to animals, I have a higher loyalty. The Danes are in the premier league of European offenders in terms of not treating their pigs properly in intensive farms, as this CIWF Report attests. And moreover, the Danish state supports the people of the Faroe Islands, and the people of the Faroe Islands regularly butcher pilot whales in one of the bloodiest spectacles still celebrated as a cultural tradition anywhere on earth.
Our Hitch can wax poetic about protecting civilization from the barbarians (as in his recent Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture), but when it comes to barbarism one picture is worth a thousand words. So while you wave the Dannebrog and stock up on Lurpak in defense of Denmark, spare a shudder for all those millions of factory-farmed porkers reared in sardine-can-like conditions and for those poor cetaceans whose slaughter represents the Faroese equivalent of Jeux San Frontieres. A nation that allows such barbarities does not deserve the support of civilized people anywhere.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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