Friday, September 22, 2006

I am so glad that the "Day of Anger" against the Pope's speech that was announced by tele-Islamist demagogue, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, was a flop. His call was largely ignored, and the news of Hizbullah's rally in Beirut dominated the Arab and international media. Qaradawi is a man who was never angry at Arab or Muslim governments for abusing and offending their citizens. And this shows that Arab regimes (and Aljazeera and Alarabiya--those two rarely agree) all participated in the campaign to whip up anger at the speech of the Pope because this was a safe issue for them--just as safe as the Danish cartoons; safe because they don't require anger at the US or Israel. In the list of outrages for Arab and Muslim people, the Danish cartoons and the lousy speech by the Pope should not rank that high. There are more pressing outrages. Qaradawi can now go back to his weekly program of religious fulminations.