Congratulations!
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- Reality Bites
- Here’s one thing that bloggers can do every bit as well as the mainstream media: embarrass themselves spectacularly. Jim Henley of the blog Unqualified Offerings had a post last week attacking Mark Steyn, author of “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It”:
- The excerpt . . . that ran in Maclean’s last year is far more blatantly racist than I figured it would be when I began reading it. I knew Steyn was a bigot, with a 1920s obsession with demographic decline. . . . But I imagined Steyn was more adroit in his use of code words and deniability feints. No! “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes” is merely the most spectacular example of–not code words. I’m not completely shocked that Steyn would write with such frank bigotry, or that Regnery would publish it. I’m somewhat surprised that an establishment organ like Maclean’s would run it.
- Here’s the actual quote from the Steyn excerpt:
- “We’re the ones who will change you,” the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.”
- Realizing his mistake, Henley updated his post, applying the “strikethrough” HTML tag to the erroneous quote and directing his readers to a new, naval-gazing post in which he puzzles over just why Mullah Krekar would say such a thing:
- Krekar can’t have meant, when he compared Muslim birth rates to “mosquitoes,” to liken his fellow Muslims to vermin. Krekar in fact did this, and if I were a European Muslim, I’d be [angry or irritated] at the [offensive or disagreeable person]. Since Krekar didn’t mean the mosquito metaphor to suggest that Muslims were like insects, parsimony demands that I not assume Steyn quoted Krekar because he wanted to liken Muslims to insects. Had Steyn said what Krekar said, as I incorrectly implied that he did, it would be a fair inference. Steyn didn’t say this, so it’s an unfair one.
- So what did Krekar mean? It seems to us that the comment that sparked the whole kerfuffle probably wasn’t invidious at all. If we’re not mistaken,mosquito is merely the Spanish diminutive for mosque.
 Still haven’t been called a homophobic onion bulb, though.
Yet, Dan. Yet. I am still waiting for the homophobic, racist AND sexist onion bulb bomb. That one would be crushing.
Remember kiddies, as you feel the blade rake over your throat: Your executioner isn’t racist. What a relief.
Henley’s head is not all the way out of his ass yet. That paragraph about vermin and crap. WTF was that? He’s still desperately spinning. With those multi-culti blinders on he sees no potential issues with sharia creep.
First rule of holes, and all that.
Slarti – I think another good rule would be that if you find Michelle and Mona defending you, then you out to re-evaluate your position.
Unless the Imam is Spanish I doubt he meant little mosques. Why try to read in stuff that isn’t there? The guy was talking about reproduction and picked an example of something that reproduces quickly.
Stopped clocks, and all that. I don’t think being defended by Mona would lead me to conclude that I’m wrong, but it might give me incentive to reconsider carefully.
Which was probably your point.
Slarti – That was exactly my point. I would have to seriously step back and make sure I had not made some mistake in my thought process if I found Mona and Michelle defending me.
> If we’re not mistaken,mosquito is merely the Spanish
> diminutive for mosque.
Heh. Good one… except that Spanish for mosque is (la) mesquita, already an apparent diminutive. I would note that “una mosquita muerta”, literally “a dead (female) mosquito”, is used to declare someone a hypocrite – but dictionaries tend to be weak on slang, so YMMV.
“. . . where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosques.”
“. . . where the number of Muslims is expanding like little mosques.”
Neither make much sense.
“The guy was talking about reproduction and picked an example of something that reproduces quickly.”
I think that is the answer “parsimony demands”.