Caption contest

With thanks to Jihad Watch, Reuters and Michelle Malkin.

Is this a joke?

Alas, since the attitude of the BBC towards the Islamic ideology is invariably one of reverential deference, it is probably all too true. The BBC would never try to raise a laugh at Mahometan expense. Political correctness is a dour and irascible creed which knows nothing of humour.

Yes, yes, Melancholicus knows he has promised his readers to leave the saracens alone for a bit, but the attitude behind this story is so breathtakingly arrogant that he feels something ought to be said.

Muslim call to adopt Mecca time

By Magdi Abdelhadi
BBC Arab affairs analyst

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.

The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice.

One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.

Mecca watch

A prominent cleric, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawy, said modern science had at last provided evidence that Mecca was the true centre of the Earth; proof, he said, of the greatness of the Muslim "qibla" - the Arabic word for the direction Muslims turn to when they pray.

The meeting also reviewed what has been described as a Mecca watch, the brainchild of a French Muslim.

The watch is said to rotate anti-clockwise and is supposed to help Muslims determine the direction of Mecca from any point on Earth.

The meeting in Qatar is part of a popular trend in some Muslim societies of seeking to find Koranic precedents for modern science.

It is called "Ijaz al-Koran", which roughly translates as the "miraculous nature of the holy text".

The underlying belief is that scientific truths were also revealed in the Muslim holy book, and it is the work of scholars to unearth and publicise the textual evidence.

But the movement is not without its critics, who say that the notion that modern science was revealed in the Koran confuses spiritual truth, which is constant, and empirical truth, which depends on the state of science at any given point in time.

So what if Mecca happens to be “in perfect alignment” with magnetic north—which claim need not necessarily be true anyway—at this point in time? The magnetic poles wander constantly, which means that sooner or later Mecca will be out of alignment altogether. Moreover, the lines of latitude and longitude are fixed with respect to the geographical north and south poles; they are nothing to do with magnetic north, so the reference to longitude makes absolutely no sense.

However, while we might be inclined to a good hearty laugh at the dotty theories of these fanatics with respect to longitude and the alignment of the poles, one thing at least is certain. Given the relentless extension of their power in Europe generally and in Britain in particular, with the dhimmified natives falling over one another to appease them in the name of multiculturalism and political correctness, there is one aspect of this pseudo-science that might actually become reality.

I refer to the proposed abolition of Greenwich Mean Time and its replacement with some other chronological standard, based on local Saudi time—with the line of zero degrees running precisely through the middle of the Ka’ba in Mecca.

Who will claim that such a thing could never happen?

Good thing it was only a Bible and not a Qur'an

From Catholic World News:

Polish rock musician faces charges for Bible-burning

Warsaw, Apr. 22, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The head of Polish death-metal band Behemoth, Adam Darski, will face criminal charges for burning a Bible during a concert in Gdynia, Poland last year.

Darski claims that he did not want to offend any one and that his actions were only those of an artist engaged in self-expression. He has apologized for his actions. The head of Behemoth could be imprisoned for up to 2 years if convicted.

I think that by “head”, they mean frontman. Rock bands do not have “heads” as such. They are not hierarchical organisations.

In spite of the sacrilege committed by consigning the holy scriptures to the flames, Melancholicus cannot but feel somewhat sorry for this unfortunate benighted soul. Two years’ imprisonment seems a bit stiff for such an action, and if such a sentence were passed, it might only have the effect of hardening Mr. Darski in his rebellion against God rather than showing him the error of his ways.

In any case, it was a lucky thing that Mr. Darski burned a Bible and not a Qur’an. Melancholicus is unfamiliar with the extent to which the cancer of politcally-correct multiculturalist nonsense has made inroads in Poland, so he is unable to say whether igniting a Qur’an would have provoked a more or less horrified reaction than that which greeted his burning of the Bible. But the saracens would certainly be waving their scimitars and baying for his blood, even to the extent of crazed fanatics making trips to Poland in an attempt to assassinate him.

If the concert which landed him in such trouble had taken place in the UK rather than in Poland, nobody would have batted an eyelid. But if he had burned the Qur’an on a British stage, there is no way he would have avoided a prison sentence — that is, if he were lucky enough not to be killed on the spot.

Le Pen visit cancelled

Melancholicus feels vindicated. The authorities have acted in precisely the fashion he predicted they would.

So what is this about?

Remember, gentle reader, that back in October we were talking about the socialists having their little meet to venerate the memory of Saint Che, martyr?

At the time Melancholicus sourly complained about the fact that nobody seems to mind the socialists organising public meetings to eulogise mass murderers, so long as those murderers committed their crimes in the service of left-wing politics. Being on the left, it seems, is sufficient to render their atrocities palatable, at least socially if not quite morally.

Melancholicus then predicted what would happen if someone were to organise a public meeting venerating the legacies of right-wing murderers, such as Reinhard Heydrich or Adolf Eichmann.

Well, this has actually happened! And the predictions that Melancholicus made at the time have been fulfilled almost to the letter.

Well, not quite — but almost. A student society at the institution where Melancholicus earns his living has invited a prominent figure of the European right to participate in a debate on the Treaty of Lisbon. This person is not actually a Nazi (at least not in the same league as Heydrich or Eichmann), but he is viewed as such by the left and by their hangers-on in the media. He is Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front.

Now Monsieur Le Pen was not invited to this institiution to commemorate murderers of any stripe. The sole purpose of his being here was to debate the Lisbon Treaty. The visit was due to take place in March or April of this year, and Monsieur Le Pen was to be accompanied by his colleague, Bruno Gollnisch MEP. However, the visit was cancelled almost as soon as it was announced.

The hue and cry that erupted after Monsieur Le Pen’s proposed visit had become public knowledge was annoyingly predictable; people will get upset over a right-wing politician like Le Pen, but not over a left-wing murderous psychopath like Guevara. The same people who festooned the walls of the university with flyers celebrating Guevara’s bloodstained career as well as the excesses of the Russian revolution immediately flooded the halls with posters denouncing the visit of the fascist Le Pen. Fascist is a pejorative they love to throw around with alacrity. Anyone who disagrees with the politics of these people is in their eyes a counter-revolutionary and a capitalist; disagree with them strongly enough and you become a fascist.

The college authorities, sensing the danger and the possible political fallout from the proposed visit, immediately moved to quash the invitation, and so Monsieur Le Pen will not now be invited to visit these shores. Melancholicus is relieved at the outcome—not so much that the “fascist” has been banned, but that the university where he works will be spared the turbulence and upheaval of such an event; Melancholicus does not care for riots and student demonstrations and threats of violence and uncontrolled passions and anarchist thugs shouting and people’s cars being overturned and set on fire and barricades being erected and the presence of the police being required to restrain the mob in order that people might not be killed. The campus can do without these things, and on that account he is glad that Monsieur Le Pen will not be coming.

That Monsieur Le Pen should have been invited in the first place, and that by a student society is a source of wonderment to Melancholicus. Students are notorious the world over for their hard-left views.

But as for the socialists, let me see... they hold public meetings glorifying the careers of the dictatorial thug Hugo Chavez, as well as murderers like Ernesto Guevara, Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and at the same time they deny basic freedom of speech to Jean-Marie Le Pen, who never killed anyone.

Is there not a double standard in operation here?

Those pathetic loons.