The eternal flame of Muslim outrage
Every blogger worth his salt knows
“Islamic Rage Boy.” He represents the professional Muslim grievance-monger,
always at the ready to protest whatever manufactured insult could be exploited to curse the West. Christopher Hitchens
wrote on the futility of appeasing the worldwide Rage Boy mob — a theme I’ve struck here for years, which bears repeating as we prepare to mark the 9th anniversary of 9/11, and which I reiterate in my syndicated column today. We didn’t start the fire.
Just a few months ago in Kashmir, faithful Muslims rioted over what they thought was
a mosque depicted on underwear sold by street vendors. The mob shut down businesses and clashed with police over the blasphemous skivvies. But it turned out there was no need for Allah’s avengers to get their holy knickers in a bunch. The alleged mosque was actually a building resembling London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. A Kashmiri law enforcement official later concluded the protests were
“premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere.”
In 1994, Muslims threatened German supermodel Claudia Schiffer with death after she wore a
Karl Lagerfeld-designed dress printed with a saying from the Koran. In 1997, outraged Muslims forced Nike to recall 800,000 shoes because they claimed the company’s “Air” logo looked like the Arabic script for “Allah.”
That same year, Nigerian Muslims stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death 200 people in
protest of the Miss World beauty pageant — which they considered an affront to Allah. They shouted,
“Allahu Akbar!” And “Down with beauty!” And “Miss World is sin!” Contest organizers fled out of fear of inflaming further destruction. When Nigerian journalist
Isioma Daniel joked that Mohammed would have approved of the pageant and that “in all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them,” her newspaper rushed to print three retractions and apologies in a row. It didn’t stop Muslim vigilantes from torching the newspaper’s offices. A fatwa was issued on Daniel’s life by a Nigerian official in the sharia-ruled state of Zamfara, who declared that
“the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed. It is abiding on all Muslims wherever they are to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty.” Daniel fled to Norway.
In 2005, British Muslims got all hot and bothered over a
Burger King ice cream cone container whose swirly-texted label resembled, you guessed it, the Arabic script for “Allah.” The restaurant chain yanked the product in a panic and prostrated itself before the Muslim world. But the fast-food dessert had already become a handy radical Islamic recruiting tool. Rashad Akhtar, a young British Muslim, told Harper’s Magazine how the ice cream caper had inspired him: “Even though it means nothing to some people and may mean nothing to some Muslims in this country, this is my jihad. I’m not going to rest until I find the person who is responsible.
I’m going to bring this country down.”
