Christopher Hitchens weighing in on the Koran riots:
How dispiriting to see, once again, the footage of theocratic rage in Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. The same old dreary formula: self-righteous frenzy married to a neurotic need to take offence; the easy resort to indiscriminate violence and cruelty; the promulgation of makeshift fatwas by mullahs on the make; those writhing mustaches framing crude slogans of piety and hatred, and yelling for death as if on first-name terms with the Almighty. The spilling of blood and the spoliation of property — all for nothing, and ostensibly “provoked” by the corny, brainless antics of a devout American non-entity, notice of whose mere existence is beneath the dignity of any thinking person.
2 comments:
Good catch.
This is why Hitch is my favorite infidel. He's sharper dying than most achieve at the tops of their forms.
The wonderful thing about the last two months had been precisely the absence of such sanguinary and theatrical nonsense. Large, orderly, humorous crowds formed in major Egyptian cities, all of them demanding the acceptance of civic responsibility not just by the organs of state, but by themselves. Immense care was taken to avoid breakage or looting or even littering, let alone bloodshed. All the emphasis was on dialogue and the civilized exchange of ideas, and though the word martyr was indeed used to describe those who laid down their lives in the struggle, the cult of human sacrifice for its own sake was not in evidence.
He doesn't say as much but I'm sure he's glad he lived to witness these historic events.
John,
I think you're right.
Michael
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