Friday, December 29, 2006

Behind the Wahhabis

Roger Simon has one of those illuminating moments which demonstrate that, no matter if across ethnic, religious or cultural barriers all people share so much, there are some tics that can only be picked up in particular places at particular times, some aberrations that are so irrational that future millennia will have to dig hard and deep to understand (let us hope).

In a taxi in Seattle, Simon got talking to the driver, a Somali, who with very little provocation launched into an impassioned attack on al-Queda. He called it "a danger to all mankind" and said it was backed by Saudi Wahhabi money.

He didn't just leave it there. He explained as well who was behind this violent takeover of his religion; ie who was behind Saudi Wahhabism.

Who? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? The Israelis. How did he know this?

The man replied by talking about his childhood, his Islamic education. He had learned about the Jews from the Koran. That was the truth, of course.
See my post on Ayaan Hirsi Ali's recent piece on the Holocaust and my exchange with Wodge in the comments.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If I had a quid for every hare brained or racist or bigoted idea I'd heard over the years from non-muslim cab drivers I'd be rich. So what?

Some muslims are antisemitic and some will even claim that it's justified by what's in the Koran. But muslim antisemitism has got nothing on European or Christian antisemitism has it? Unless of course you've heard some cabbie tell you that Hitler was a muslim.

NoolaBeulah said...

Anti-semitism is of European/Christian creation and the Europeans are historically top dogs in that field. No doubt about it.

But not the point. At the moment, there aren't any Europeans saying that they want to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth and trying to get a nuclear bomb with which to do it. European schoolbooks do not "teach the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact [and] discuss Jews in violent terms, blaming them for virtually all the “sedition” and wars of the modern world", as Saudi textbooks do. The Saudis, the ones who finance a great deal of Muslim education around the world, including the education received by Hirsi Ali. European newspapers are not full of virulent antisemitic cartoons.

So it would be nice if that Somali was just another racist cabbie, and it's possible. But unlikely.

Anyway, Hitler was a Jew.