December 04, 2003
MULLAH ENGLAND
When in the UK, don’t insult Osama:
A prison officer was sacked for making an allegedly insulting remark about Osama bin Laden two months after the September 11 attacks, an employment tribunal heard yesterday.
Colin Rose, 53, was told he had to go because, although he did not know it, three Muslim visitors could have heard his "insensitive" comment about the world's most reviled terrorist.
How is it even possible to make an insensitive comment about Osama bin Laden? You could work for days on the vilest slur imaginable and still remain well within the boundaries of “sensitive”. The camel-licking, cave-bound, maggot-feasting spawn of urine-soaked goats did, after all, murder 3,000 people. As usual, Melanie Phillips makes a good point:
What is really striking is the assumption, by these zealous prison authorities displaying such exemplary concern for the sensibilities of minorities, that Muslims would support Osama bin Laden, and would regard condemnation of him as insulting to them. Surely that really is offensive and cause for serious Muslim complaint?
You’d kind of think so, yes. Meanwhile Europe ignores more serious problems:
Surveys say anti-Jewish assaults and incidents in much of Europe are at their most frequent since Hitler's defeat.
This new mood taints even traditionally tolerant Britain, where the Conservative Party has just elected Michael Howard, son of a Romanian Jewish immigrant, as its leader.
"Why is the liberal left not sufficiently concerned about the growth of anti-Semitism?" the British Guardian newspaper asked in an editorial last month.
Give them time. They've got to finish firing all the anti-Osama prison guards first.
Posted by Tim Blair at December 4, 2003 10:29 PM"Why is the liberal left not sufficiently concerned about the growth of anti-Semitism?" the British Guardian newspaper asked in an editorial last month.
Ooh, that's rich, coming from a paper working on the unofficial title of Der Sturmer for the New Century. Hypocritical bastards!
Posted by: Will at December 5, 2003 at 03:41 AM"Why is the liberal left not sufficiently concerned about the growth of anti-Semitism?"
Because the left has, for decades, been a haven of anti-Semitism?
Posted by: R. C. Dean at December 5, 2003 at 05:47 AMThe real insult was on the part of the prision authorities towards the "two Asian women wearing headscarves and an Asian man [who] were at the window of the gatehouse".
What a set of lovely racist assumptions they made!
Just because you look as if you or your ancestors came from the Indian subcontinent it does not mean that you are Muslim (there are considerably more Hindus than Muslims in the old Indian Raj),
and it is even more insulting to assume that anyone who "looks like" a Muslim is a supporter of terrorism.
I wonder whether they would be careful about saying anything insulting about the IRA in case a Roman Catholic clergyman heard it?
Or even being careful about saying something about a Catholic clergyman for fear of offending an IRA murderer, because in the eyes of the liberal, who's the greater evil?