An All-American Muslim Story posted by Yoshie

Here's an All-American Muslim story. A group of Christians yell "Merry Christmas" to everyone on subway. In return, two young Jewish couples wish them a "Happy Chanukah." The Christians, enraged by the existence of religious diversity, attack the Jews:

One of the young men, who at one point displayed a tattoo of Jesus, shouted "Happy Chanukah?! That's when the Jews killed Jesus," said [attack victim Walter] Adler, who also heard shouts of "dirty Jews," "you f---ing Jews" and other slurs. (Doug Chandler, "Victims of Subway Assault Push for Hate-Crime Charges," Jewish Week, 12 December 2007)

(The Christian thugs are not only bigoted but also chronologically challenged.)

Only a young Muslim immigrant intervenes to protect the Jews from the Christians -- no one else on the train does. The Christians beat up the Muslim guy, though his intervention allows one of the Jewish victims to pull the emergency brake and call the police.

The Muslim hero, however, is unable to "go to the doctor because he's too busy working two waiter jobs and doesn't have the money for medical care" (Melissa Grace, "Muslim Hero Breaks Up Train Beating," New York Daily News, 12 December 2007) -- that's what makes this not just any old Muslim story but an All-American Muslim story.

Labels: angels in america, feel the hate, islam

Another missed appointment with his maker posted by Richard Seymour

Of all the things they could have put Blair to do after he was preemptively fired by his party, of all the deranged notions that were floated - Blair as a 'faith ambassador', please - they came up with and settled on this idiocy. Why stop there? Why not put a Klansman in charge of race relations, a paedophile at the head of the Boy Scouts, and set up a Melvyn Bragg School for Cultural Excellence while we're at it? They have selected Tony Blair, the executioner of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the co-sponsor of Israel's murderous attack on Lebanon, the arms dealer to the crooked Saudi dynasty, the detestable spear-carrier for the American Empire, and bag-carrier for Bush, to be the Quartet's envoy to the Middle East. The man is a disaster in general, and a catastrophe in specific. One strains to recount a single thing he has touched without debasing it or destroying it. Among his lesser victims was The Simpsons, but sure enough he fucked that up as well.

I don't doubt that it is a logical step for a body that has been casually starving the Palestinians into submission, or death, whichever comes first, while parts of it helped orchestrate a coup against their elected government (a policy known as 'democracy promotion'). Yet even they, I would have expected, must possess a sense of the inapt and the downright absurd. The only upside of this is that Blair isn't going to be a Member of Parliament any more. He thought, apparently, that he would try and find a niche where he is more popular than in the UK. The lousy bastard might have tried hell - they like his sort there.

Labels: blair, feel the hate