The fact that a minister of the French government has to fly to Cairo to talk with one of the religious heads in one of the mosques to get his approval for a ban on headscarves can be seen in two ways.

One, is how wonderfully culturally sensitive. The other, it seems to give an authority to a wholly unelected figure well outside Europe’s jurisdiction.

Here in America when that earthquake happened in Iran the reaction of everyone I knew was horror and dismay, the reaction of everyone when they heard that the old woman had been brought out alive long after they thought there was anyone there was absolute awe at the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to survive. Contrast that with people jumping up and down and clapping at the 9/11 disaster in certain countries.

goto the second page of the link above to find these and more remarks.

in his defense, there is an article by robert spencer here in front page magazine.

personally i think rhys-davies observations that you don’t see other cultures throwing bombs at each other all the time. “I do not see Buddhists throwing bombs into Christian churches, I do not see Christians blowing up Hindu temples, I do not see those sorts of challenges.” he is not entirely right, because fighting between religions continues in some places, but he is still mostly right.

i admire his bravery for saying his mind, but i do worry, as does he, that some idiots will take his comments out of context, manipulate them, and use them for their own very wrong ends. cultural racism is wrong, and despite the many races that subscribe to the will of allah, the more vocal parts of their societies are very anti-everyone-else.

the crusades ended a long time ago everyone. get over it.