Making a pig's ear of defending democracy
By Mark Steyn
Telegraph
04/10/2005
[T]he United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.
Cllr Mahbubur Rahman is in favour of the blanket pig crackdown. "It is a good thing, it is a tolerance and acceptance of their beliefs and understanding," he said. That's all, folks, as Porky Pig used to stammer at the end of Looney Tunes. Just a little helpful proscription in the interests of tolerance and acceptance. And where's the harm in that? As Pastor Niemöller said, first they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character and, if I was, I'm more of an Eeyore.
And aren't we all? When the Queen knights a Muslim "community leader" whose line on the Rushdie fatwa was that "death is perhaps too easy", and when the Prime Minister has a Muslim "adviser" who is a Holocaust-denier and thinks the Iraq war was cooked up by a conspiracy of Freemasons and Jews, and when the Prime Minister's wife leads the legal battle for a Talibanesque dress code in British schools, you don't need a pig to know which side's bringing home the bacon.
...
Only the other day, Burger King withdrew its ice-cream cones from its British restaurants because Mr Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe, after a trip to the Park Royal branch, complained that the creamy swirl on the lid resembled the word "Allah" in Arabic script. It doesn't, not really, not except that in the sense any twirly motif looks vaguely Arabic. After all, Burger King isn't suicidal enough to launch Allah Ice-Cream. But, after Mr Akhtar urged Muslims to boycott the chain and claimed that "this is my jihad", Burger King yanked the ice-cream and announced that, design-wise, it was going back to the old drawing-board.
...
When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. In the long term, these trivial concessions are more significant victories than blowing up infidels on the Tube or in Bali beach restaurants. An act of murder demands at least the pretence of moral seriousness, even from the dopiest appeasers. But small acts of cultural vandalism corrode the fabric of freedom all but unseen.
Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens? If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh or the abstract swirl on a Burger King ice-cream, how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society?
...
By the way, isn't it grossly offensive to British Wahhabis to have a head of state who is female and uncovered?
14 comments:
Odd isn't no outcry against images of dogs, which are considered FAR more unclean than pigs by a factor of 7.
Oh yes the Union Jack needs to go too, in the latest news.
http://www.angelfire.com/ky/kentuckydan/CommitteesofCorrespondence/index.blog?entry_id=1095414
Muslims Offended by English Flag
Very good research, Wembley, most impressed.
However this cannot be dismissed as just a Torygraph issue. Not only does the Steyn article make no claim that the Telegraph *was* contacted (thus rendering Rahman's denial irrelevant), here's the same report in a local paper:
http://www.expressandstar.com/articles/news/es/article_81092.php
Toy pigs must go at council
Oct 1, 2005
In this article the allegation is that "workers in the council's benefits department have been told to remove or cover up all pig products", which is not the same as saying this is now official council policy. You are rightly sceptical of taking the Telegraph report at face value. We must not exclude the possibility that Rahman may be dissembling too.
I don't know a lot about how the local press operates (I have a good friend who works for a local paper, may well ask him his opinion), but I imagine the Express and Star, whose article contains a direct quote from Mike Williams, Chief Finance Officer of Dudley MBC, will be in quite some shit if they have made the whole story up and attributed untrue quotes to a high-ranking local council official. Of course shoddy journalism exists at all levels of the press, and may indeed be the explanation.
J
PS Dudley Council is indeed Tory.
Forgot to add this:
Rahman says:
I never instigated any thing to ban toys.
JP says:
There was no accusation that Rahman instigated anything.
Rahman says:
Toys are not an issue for me. It can not be a religious issue.
JP says:
bravo!
To summarise - the inaccuracies in the Telegraph article seem to be here:
Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. ... Cllr Mahbubur Rahman is in favour of the blanket pig crackdown.
The implication is that the ban is official council policy (thus presumably applying to *all* council departments), whereas in fact it applies to *one* council department. Rahman does indeed support the move, but only as applied to the one department. So the Telegraph error was the (certainly sloppy and perhaps malicious) omission of the phrase "in one department" from its rightful position after the words "will be banned", and the use of the word "blanket".
Agreed?
Further questions:
1. Do you have any quibbles with the story as reported in the local paper?
2. With the "one department" correction noted above, do you think this comment of Steyn's still applies?
Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens?
Sorry, where exactly does Steyn pretend to have spoken with Rahman?
Relevant in some way, I'm sure.
;-)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2818809.stm
School bans pigs stories
Tuesday, 4 March, 2003
A West Yorkshire head teacher has banned books containing stories about pigs from the classroom in case they offend Muslim children.
And surely The Sun wouldn't lie?
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005450600,00.html
Muslims win toy pigs ban
Thursday, October 6, 2005
Where would you stand on this, I wonder? More Torygraph hysteria, or reasonable point about the dangers of self-censorship in there somewhere?
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/09/09/do0901.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/09/09/ixopinion.html
This open university we're exporting to the Arabs is more of a closed one
Ferdinand Mount
Telegraph
09/09/2005
What the hell is a "pig-shaped stress reliever" anyway?
In case you want to check out those Allah-squiggles:
Burger King:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005430136,,00.html
Nike:
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/513
Back to the beginning of this thread and distortions in the Telegraph article. Excellent research by Wemb, btw. Anyway, the whole thing had a familiar ring to it - this is not a new thing:
The 'banning' of hot cross buns...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/03/16/nbuns16.xml
And a wemb-like rebuttal:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4630_132/ai_99380159
An update from the worthy Express And Star:
http://www.expressandstar.com/articles/news/es/article_81881.php
Toy pig ban climbdown
By John Brenan
Oct 19, 2005
Race equality rules are being reviewed at Dudley Council after workers were told to remove toy pigs from desks because they offended a Muslim staff member.
Council leaders say they will not accept "extreme forms of political correctness". Last month the Express & Star revealed how staff in the council's benefits department were told to remove a series of toy pigs sent as a promotion, as well as pig imagery, from their desks.
It came after a complaint from a Muslim worker who said she was offended by the items - the Koran forbids Muslims from eating and touching pork.
Councillor Pat Martin told a full council meeting: "I fully support the actions by management to respond to the concerns from colleagues following established and approved procedures.
"However I'm satisfied these procedures need to be reconsidered to make them compatible with the current law on what's deemed to be offensive in the workplace. Therefore I've ordered an urgent review of the procedures.
"In Dudley we rightly pride ourselves on being fair and reasonable employers but we will not accept extreme forms of political correctness."
After the meeting she said only the benefits department was affected by the request but admitted the policy was "very strict" and that officials would look if they were "too aggressive".
She said that under the current rules, staff could even be asked to remove a football scarf if colleagues claimed they were offended.
When the decision was taken, the council's head of finance Mike Williams said it "did not matter why it was considered offensive".
He acknowledged then that some members of the department saw it as "political correctness gone barmy".
The partner of one of the members of staff in the Ednam Road department, who did not want to be named, said it had "caused a bit of an atmosphere in the office" and that ornaments on desks for years had to be removed.
This discussion seems to have shifted to here:
http://impdec.blogspot.com/2005/11/iraq-battle-stress-worse-than-wwii.html
Dalrymple again. This time: Ramadam, multiculturalism and the NHS.
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001577.php
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