Some vignettes of something or other.

I'm not seeing it.

First, a guy called Theo van Gogh makes a movie about Islam. That's his right. It may even have been a good film — I wouldn't know, not having seen it.
He involves a local refugee called Hirsan Ali to assist him in this endeavour. By all accounts she had an absolutely shitful childhood, having been genitally mutilated and arranged-married according to tribal custom. (Not Islamic custom, mind, but it is easy to see where she would particularly care about such particulars.) So she is coming at the project with a certain chip against Islam. Which is still her right.

Some people got upset, mistaking an attack on certain practices with an attack on them and all they believe in. This is a common thread in the last, oh, ten thousand years of human history, give or take a month.

One of them went and stabbed Theo van Gogh to death in the street. A horrendous crime, for which the perpetrator has been arrested, and for which he will probably die in prison. For some reason, this man's crime was extrapolated to reflect on each and every Muslim, not just in that country, but in the Western world. You know: precisely the same conceptual fuckup that got us in this mess to begin with. Some people said some things. Some people said that Something Must Be Done. People like Pym Fortyne ran for parliament on the basis that these Muslims were filth, who were undermining society, and that none of them could be trusted, and that they made pesach matzah from the blood of children.

Hirsan Ali continued in her consistent, and not irrational, dislike of Islam. She ran for parliament on this position, and won. She started attacking people who were in many respects just like her.

It was discovered that she had lied to gain her refugee status.

It turned out that, as bad as her childhood had been, it wasn't quite as bad as she had claimed. She probably would have gotten refugee status in any case, but the fact remained that she had lied. People have been thrown out of countries for less (Kevin Andrew, Amanda Vanstone, I'm looking at you). She resigned from parliament, but kept her 24hour armed guard. She moved to America, where she already had a fan following because she hated towel-heads almost as much as the Fox network. Now it seems that she is applying for refugee status in the US, and that somehow this makes Holland just like Nazi Germany or something. Not because she's Muslim (lapsed or otherwise), or because she's black, but because she's anti-Muslim.

Yes, it seems that Muslims can be subject to the same rhetoric as was applied to Jews in the 1930s, and just like the Nazis, forcibly expelling and frightening away all opposition. Neat trick, that.


In the meantime, a guy in Belgium goes and murders a two-year-old girl and her nanny, because the nanny was from Mali, and tried to kill a nearby woman of Turkish origin. Now, he is also going to prison for the rest of his life. and deservedly so. He didn't even have the dubious excuse of having had his faith insulted: he just wanted to kill dark-skinned people.

But why is he not being held up as an example of a wider trend through thte community, why is he not being displayed as a warning that the Extremist Right is starting progroms, even if there is somewhat more evidence for this proposition that for the thesis that European Muslims are, as a fungible block, planning the Caliphate of Eurabia. (A concept with about as much chance of happening, and from precisely the same rhetorical place as the Global Jewish Conspiracy.)

My name is Catsidhe, and I am an introvert.

If you want to understand me, go and read this.

When you've finished, read this.

Now finish up with this.

Congratulations, you now understand me a great deal better than you did before you read this post.

Thank you.