Another few dozen dead in Brussels, apparently the work of islamic suicide bombers. Almost customary news-of-the-day, followed by the customary heart-rending of politicians, eager to gain media-time for their own self-glorification. After ‘nous sommes Charlie’, we have ‘nous sommes Paris’ and now, predictably, ‘nous sommes Bruxelles’. Trite, self-serving and an utter waste of media bandwidth.<\/p>\n
The drivel served up to us, ad nauseum<\/em>, wallows between indignation and glib sound-bites about tolerance and the necessity of doing something for the down-trodden poor. These poor souls apparently are (almost) justified in resorting to violence because\u00a0they can’t find employment, whilst\u00a0clamouring for equal treatment despite the djellabas, thick beards and a thick\u00a0misogynistic streak that\u00a0doesn’t quite jig with our society.<\/p>\n Whether it was Voltaire or Rousseau who said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it<\/em>” makes no difference; you have the absolute right to worship who\/whatsoever you choose. However, your rights end where my rights start, and vice-versa. Having respected your right to worship, you have the logical obligation to respect my right to do something else.<\/p>\n The moderate, respectable muslim will object that the suicide bombers don’t represent his views. The problem is that the suicide bomber claims to represent islam. If\u00a0the moderate muslim doesn’t take steps to stop the suicide bombers, he shouldn’t be surprised to find himself bundled with them.<\/p>\n A\u00a0muslim, you have decided to come and live in Europe. You’re more than welcome, many of us came from elsewhere and we thrive on diversity. However, it’s not a one-way street; when we visit a mosque, I take off my shoes and my wife wears a veil; quaint to\u00a0our culture, but I respect yours. When you come to Europe, your daughter at school has the obligation to learn how to swim. We don’t do this to look at her breasts, we do it because in Europe there are many lakes and rivers and we don’t want our children to drown.<\/p>\n Is all this really so hard to understand? Or, as I suspect, are you doing it deliberately?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Another few dozen dead in Brussels, apparently the work of islamic suicide bombers. Almost customary news-of-the-day, followed by the customary heart-rending of politicians, eager to gain media-time for their own self-glorification. After ‘nous sommes Charlie’, we have ‘nous sommes Paris’ […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-8-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions\/832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calvert.ch\/maurice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}