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February 08, 2006

Rebutting the Ignorant One Man at a Time

The main reason I found this article so unpersuasive and just plain wrong in its factual assertions is contained in this little anecdote from Mr. Davies:

"Have you ever seen a Muslim smile, or heard one laugh? I've known so very few, that I'm not a good person to generalize, but I don't believe I ever have. The one I got to know best--a young gentleman and scholar, at Cambridge--was the antithesis of the rioting, rocket-toting, illiterate slogan-chanting fanatic portrayed on TV; a truly gentle person, firm and unshakeable in his religious beliefs but courteous to a fault. Even he, though, had no visible sense of humor that I recall. I dare say that, on the whole, they are a pretty humorless bunch."

To rebut this cluelessness:
Muslims and Arabs are great joke tellers and pranksters when and if you get to know them. Just because he doesn't know any proves nothing but how socially isolated Mr. Davies is. How many jokes do you see Christian, Jewish, Hindu or other religious fundys cracking? This is a problem with all the overzealous of whatever politics, philosophy, or sect.

WTF does a WWI sea battle have to do with any of this either? The paper that published the "cartoons" (drawings would be a better term actually) is printed there but so what? Calling them cartoons makes them seem more innocuous than they really are as well.

Posted by Ali Massoud at February 8, 2006 01:30 PM

Comments

Thanks for the feedback. However I thought that with "I've known so very few, that I'm not a good person to generalize..." I had pretty well admitted your point about social isolation. I hope you're right about humor. I still have no first-hand knowledge that you are. They do show up on TV fairly often, and I've never seen one of those crack a smile either; unlike other brigands such
as Bush and Cheney and even fundies like Falwell.

To answer your WTF: the general American reader, even of STR, is likely to be unable to find Jutland on the map. So my title and first sentence helped, I hope, to give a fix - anyone with a passing knowledge of WW-I history would at least have recalled the battle name. I had also hoped a *double entendre* might be obvious, in that a worldwide furor is now raging having begun there.

But maybe the mild humor was too subtle.

Jim

Posted by: Jim [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 8, 2006 04:59 PM

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