http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?table=§ion=&issue=2005-09-17&id=6618 Why do we tolerate intolerance? Rod Liddle Red Cross officials have been meeting in Switzerland to decide upon a new logo — and presumably, by implication, name — for their fine organisation. The logo in question is the red cross. And the problem with the cross is that it enrages Muslims. In the theatre of war, when most combatants see the red cross, they put their weapons down. Muslim combatants, though, have a tendency to pick theirs up and start shooting with even greater avidity. In recent years we have seen the emergence of the Red Crescent, which accords with Muslim sensibilities. We have also seen the Israeli equivalent, which is advertised by a red Star of David. Muslims shoot at that one, too, with unquenchable fervour. It is wholly understandable, given this profusion of competing icons, that the Red Cross, or whatever they will henceforth call themselves, should seek a symbol which is not immediately redolent of either an oppressive infidel religion or the Zionist cockroaches of Israel. They want a secular, neutral symbol and have hit upon the idea of a red ‘crystal’, or diamond. That shouldn’t offend anyone, should it? It’s what Jesus would have wanted. I have heard no reports of Christian or Jewish combatants firing on Red Crescent vehicles. Our loathing of whatever enemy we are up against, it seems to me, is less visceral and far less rooted in notions of certainty. We are rather less inclined, these days, to wish hell upon an entire people. The totalitarian flavour of Islam — the unshakeable belief in its own rectitude and a terrible paranoia directed towards serried ranks of enemies, real and imagined — makes the thought of firing on an ambulance carrying wounded infidel soldiers at least permissible and quite possibly, according to Islam’s more rigorous disciples, a beholden duty. And this is where I believe our Prime Minister has got it the wrong way around: it is the core ideology of Islam that is the problem, not a handful of incendiary preachers. But maybe he’s beginning to realise that right now. According to the Daily Telegraph, a Muslim barrister who ‘advises’ the Prime Minister has said that Mr Blair is the victim of a sinister conspiracy between the Freemasons and the Jews, who control him and took us to war in Iraq. Ahmad Thomson, from the Muslim Association of Lawyers, has previously denied that six million Jews died in the Holocaust: that’s a ‘big lie’, he avers. There are quite a few people who think along similar lines to Mr Thomson, particularly in the United States. Mr Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, was one such. These people call the US government ZOG — the Zionist Occupation Government — and they tend to have rather too many canisters of weedkiller in their basements. You might have heard similar sentiments from David Icke, too, although David believes that it is giant lizards rather than Jews pulling the strings. My point is that these people are usually lumped together under the generic heading of ‘nutters’. And sometimes ‘psychos,’ ‘weirdoes’, ‘loonies’, etc. But in Britain you can believe such paranoid, irrational gibberish and not merely be tolerated and excused the eponym ‘barking madman’ but actually be invited to divulge your stupidity to the Prime Minister personally. Because you are a Muslim and such poisonous paranoia is sort of expected from you, instead of being sectioned and maybe having a spot of ECT, you get to have your fantasies indulged. Meanwhile, according to the same newspaper, Mr Blair’s other Muslim advisers have reportedly told him to scrap the Holocaust Memorial Day because it is offensive to Muslims. But the Holocaust Memorial Day is offensive only if you really don’t like Jewish people. The advisers have couched their language in the usual New Labour doublespeak: Holocaust Memorial Day is not ‘inclusive’, they insist, because Muslims were not killed in the Holocaust — but they have been killed in other places and at other times. Well, indeed. And so too have Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and so on. And that’s rather the point. The memorial day was established for the rest of us, we gentiles, to remember and remember well a specific appalling crime committed against one race of people, primarily so that we may guard against such a thing happening again. It is a lesson entirely lost, though, upon our Muslim leaders, no matter how moderate they insist upon telling us they are. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, refused to attend the events organised for Holocaust Memorial Day, if you remember. It seems to be beyond his ken to grasp the damage his public boycott caused: he simply doesn’t get it. But as we have seen, his views are bang in line with those of almost all ‘moderate’ Muslim spokespeople. And again, rather than worry a little about Sacranie’s mental health when he boycotts the memorial day or speaks of Osama bin Laden as a respected ‘scholar’, we knight the bugger. These are strange and disquieting double standards. I can think of no male politician who has been more steadfast in his determination to uproot the ‘hate crime’ of homophobia than the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. And you can bet that if he espied evidence of such a crime in one or other of his colleagues, he would be trenchant and unforgiving in his denunciations. But he will share a platform with and offer kind words to a stone-age Muslim cleric who is comfortable with the notion of homosexuality being classed as a capital offence. Is it even conceivable that he would be so tolerant and forgiving were Mr al-Qaradawi an evangelical Christian or a humanist? Female Labour politicians who, on other occasions, would consider themselves the doughty heirs of Emmeline Pankhurst nonetheless queue up to support the wearing of the burka, even going so far as to kid themselves that such support is in accordance with radical feminism. Needless to say, if Nick Soames suggested such a thing under his breath during a House of Commons debate, there would be petitions to have him removed and he would be vilified in our national newspapers. When Islam appears on the agenda, the goalposts are moved: the normal rational thought processes are not applied. Suddenly those Left-liberal shibboleths are not very important: they can be forgotten. Append the description ‘Muslim’ to anyone and all bets are off; he or she can get away with pretty much anything, be it the execution of homosexuals or the idea that Jews and Freemasons are running the government. This springs from the misconception, widespread on the Left, that being anti-Islam is in some way ‘racist’. It is not. It has nothing to do with race — as I daresay Mr Ahmad Thomson, that lawyer I mentioned earlier, would confirm. One is not born believing that the world is a Zionist conspiracy any more than one is born believing that we are all the subjects of giant alien lizards.
This author finds it strange that Muslims would object to a red cross? How ignorant can one be? Let's start an organization with a schwazticka as our symbol that shouldn't offend anyone would it? The article goes on to lump ALL islam under one totalitarian moniker and makes no distinction between main stream islam and those who fire at an ambulance, despite recent fatwahs from Imams against such actions. Just look at the continued ignorance. Also the author would have us believe that Tony Blair is controlled by a sinister group of muslim advisors. I have yet to see any of them, or see any imprint of their advice on Blair's policy. He offers no proof of the supposed advice Blair gets from his Islamic council of advisors. This article is full of ignorance, and lacking in any credibility.
Yes since both were symbols of those who attempted genocide, I made the comparison, and stand by it. Do you need some books, and links to find out why it is a valid comparison?
Oh give me a break. Do you not agree that the cross has very positive connotations due to all the good things that Christians have done, whereas the swastika is only related to Nazi Germany and its atrocities? How long ago were the crusades, FB? Can you tell me? You've completely thrown the baby out with the bathwater and are blinded by your bias once again. I've noticed amongst the liberal crowd that it's now fashionable to bash Christians. You've stooped to new lows. Congrats....and you wonder why you lose every election.
"The swastika is a holy symbol in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. In the West, it is more widely known as the badge of the Nazi movement. The motif seems to have first been used by early inhabitants of Eurasia. However, it was also adopted in Native American cultures, seemingly independently. The swastika is now used universally in religious and civil ceremonies in India. Most Indian temples, wedding, festivals and celebrations are decorated with swastikas. By the early 20th century it was widely used worldwide, and was regarded as a symbol of good luck and auspiciousness. Since the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party, the swastika has been associated with fascism, racism, World War II, and the Holocaust in much of the western world. Before this, it was particularly well-recognized in Europe from the archaeological work of Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the symbol in the site of ancient Troy and who associated it with the ancient migrations of Indo-European ("Aryan") peoples.[1] Nazi use derived from earlier German völkisch movements, for which the swastika was a symbol of "Aryan" identity, a concept that came to be equated by theorists like Alfred Rosenberg with a Nordic master race originating in northern Europe. The swastika remains a core symbol of Neo-Nazi groups, and is also regularly used by activist groups to signify the supposed Nazi-like behaviour of organizations and individuals they oppose." "The discovery of the Indo-European language group in the 1790s led to a great effort by archaeologists to link the pre-history of European peoples to the ancient Aryans (Indo-Iranians). Following his discovery of objects bearing the swastika in the ruins of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann consulted two leading Sanskrit scholars of the day, Emile Burnouf and Max Müller. Schliemann concluded that the Swastika was a specifically Indo-European symbol. Later discoveries of the motif among the remains of the Hittites and of ancient Iran seemed to confirm this theory. This idea was taken up by many other writers, and the swastika quickly became popular in the West, appearing in many designs from the 1880s to the 1920s. The religious meanings of the symbol were subverted in the early twentieth century when it was adopted as the emblem of the National Socialist German Workers Party. This association occurred because Nazism stated that the historical Aryans were the forefathers of modern Germans and then proposed that, because of this, the subjugation of the world by Germany was desirable, and even predestined. The swastika was used as a convenient symbol to emphasize this mythical Aryan-German correspondence. Since World War II, some Westerners see the swastika as solely a Nazi symbol, leading to incorrect assumptions about its pre-Nazi use and confusion about its sacred religious status in Hinduism."
I'm not bashing Christians since I would be bashing myself. The cross is associated with different things in different cultures. It isn't just the cross though, it is the red cross in particular that was a symbol of the genocide and murder of people in the middle east. Just like the Jewish people should never forget what the Nazis did, folks in the middle east should never forget the horrors of the crusades. It is their history, and should be studied, examined and remembered forever, just as the Nazi holocaust should. Many parents in the middle east even to this day tell the stories of the horrible crusaders and the things they did. There are books with pictures of that red cross worn by the knights templar doing butchering middle easterners during the crusades. Children to this day have nightmares about it. It is a very real part of their history. I will happily provide you with book titles and will research some websites on the events and its lasting effect into current culture if you wish. Just say the word.
With over a billion muslims in the world, making some assumptions about the religion from the actions of a 90% arabic (very small percentage of the total muslim population) based group is silly. I do believe that there are incredible amounts of intolerance in the muslim world and that its their own jobs to police the extremists just as we must police our own extremists.
The liberal pile-on technique - truly a CC.net classic move. Listen people, if you're trying to tell me that the swastika (note the spelling, FB...) has more to do with Hindu and American Indian connotations, I have news for you. Everybody and their brother thinks "Nazi" when they see a swastika. I can't believe I have to explain that to you people as you hustle to google up some obscure technicalities to attempt to pile onto the conservative. Once again you're owned by the lone conservative in this argument. Enjoy your next 3 years of W. muahahahhahaha
Just a note for those who don't know the Red Cross has nothing directly to do with Christianity and unlike the Salvation Army the Red Cross isn't religiously affiliated. The Red Cross is the inverse of the Swiss flag since the Red Cross was founded by a Swiss. From my understanding the Red Crescent was started to placate Muslim sensibilities and Red Crescent societies are local in country chapters in predominately Muslim countries that cooperate with the ICRC.
my business partner's daugher made a little cross for him in a sunday school class. he tied it around his rear-view mirror in his car. later, he was helping out a family that escaped out of bosnia. our church provided a place for them to live and helped them find jobs. he invited them over one night for dinner at his house. he went by to pick them up...and the little girl wouldn't get in the car because she was so afraid of the cross. my partner quietly took it down and put it in the glove compartment. very sad.
Everybody and their brother <I>here</I> thinks Nazi. In other parts of the world, that's not the case. That's where your ignorance comes from. Similar to how the Red Cross might be viewed differently depending on your perspective. Saying no one should be offended by the Red Cross because YOU view it as good as someone from India saying you should have no problem with the swastika because THEY have no problem with it. Based on your posts, it's pretty clear your international background is limited, if existant at all.
except for the billions of indians and others part of the indian subcontinent. only the western world, and that too only the USA, and the europeans relate the swastika as being a nazi symbol. You have no idea what goes on outside of the borders of the usa. What gives you the right to judge what everyone and their brothers think when they see a particular symbol. I have a suggestion for you, get out of the hole you live in and explore other cultures and religions first hand. I studied in an Indian Embassy for about 5 years, and I swear, i didnt know what the Holocaust was till I was in 7th grade, and when I saw the swastika (albeit a backwards one) shown in class, i was like, Hitlers a hindu? and that proves my next point, he wasnt the one owned, it was you
