The Religious Policeman

OIC Calls for Emergency Meeting

The motorcades screech to a halt, lights flashing; burly bodyguards jump out and usher their charges into the conference hall. They have been summoned here from their palaces, their holiday villas, awakened from their beds, rushed here in their private jets. This is THE big meeting of the OIC, the Organization of the Islamic Conference. So are they finally going to resolve the Darfur conflict, the Brown-Muslim-on-Black-Muslim genocide that has already claimed an estimated 300,000 lives?

Well, actually, no.

Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, is contacting member states for an emergency meeting of their foreign ministers shortly to discuss major issues including the repercussions of the sacrilegious Danish cartoons.

Silly me, I should have realized. Cartoons are far more important than a "few dead darkies". We already learnt that after the 2006 Makkah Stampede.

Ihsanoglu has already spoken to Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubakar Al-Qurbi and Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar to fix a date for the meeting, press reports said yesterday quoting diplomatic sources....Professor Ihsanoglu has already informed Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief, that the 57-member OIC was seeking the EU’s cooperation to end the conflict as quickly as possible.

So the representatives of such enlightened and progressive governments as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Malaysia, are going to give advice to the Europeans on what laws they should pass in their own countries.

The OIC member states expect from the EU to identify Islamophobia as a dangerous phenomenon and to observe and combat it like in the cases of xenophobia and anti-Semitism, by creating suitable observance mechanisms and revising its legislation.

So the deal is that the Europe, which already bans incitement to, and practice of, race hatred, should now ban any criticism of others' religions as well. On the other hand, the Islamic countries, who have always criticized the other religions, will still continue to preach race hatred, especially towards the Jooos. Sounds fair enough to me.

Meanwhile, in a strange land far away, someone has had A GOOD IDEA.

The ******-based Foundation for Increasing Islamic Awareness Among Foreign Communities has announced that it will publish a book about the life of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in Danish and distribute it in Denmark and other European countries.

So what's going to happen is, that after boycotting their butter and Lego and so on, and trashing their embassies, and threatening their journalists with beheading, and generally lecturing them like naughty teenagers, we are going to send them a load of Mohammad biographies. Oh, how the simple citizens of Denmark will welcome such generosity! I can see them now, out on the streets, wiping the tears of gratitude from their eyes, as the lorries trundle into their town squares and deliver these little bundles of Islamic piety! How will they be able to contain their joy? It'll be the best thing that happened to them since Hitler came to town!

Why am I being so coy about the place that this GOOD IDEA came from? Well, let me give you a clue. I once described it thus.

Then there are the people from ******. ****** is described in Lonely Planet or the Rough Guide as the "most unfriendly place in Saudi Arabia". And then some. Remember those old movies about creepy New England towns called Spookyburg or Witchville, where some innocent guy wanders in by mistake, it's all knee deep in mist and the silent locals just stare and don't say anything, the guy ends up next morning as a puddle of ectoplasm on the ground? Well ******* makes those places look like New Orleans. In Mardi Gras.*

*(I wrote this before Katrina, of course)

(I once went there). Never again. Everyone seemed terminally depressed. Not really my sort of place. If I ever feel the need to be depressed, I can tune into Saudi TV.

Still not sure? Another clue. Where was the case of the Physics Teacher who was charged with Witchcraft?

He invented an instrument that produces a sound before the fall of rain. He put this machine at the school's gate to help students know if the rain was coming in order to avoid getting wet in their way home. this machine produces musical sound; so his fellow opponent teachers accused him of legalizing music, which is banned in the Wahhabi sect of Islam, and when Muhammed's case went to court, the judge accused him of using witchcraft to operate this instrument!

Still not sure? Dear me. Either you're a newbie here, or you're not yet wide awake. Here's a musical clue - "The Animals" - c. 1970?