Imaginary Courage
Standing up to Islam, or more precisely the strain of Islam that traffics in burqas, honor killings, and compulsory marriage of teenagers, is a messy fight. It’s a fight where the opponent sometimes swings back, occasionally with deadly accuracy. No, better to combat battles like segregation and apartheid; injustices like making black musicians stay in a different hotel than their white bandleader; or disgraceful bans on inter-racial marriage.
Except — and here’s the bitter pill for all my leftist friends to swallow — those fights have ended. Sorry you were too young at the time. I know the movies and documentaries make it all look pretty exciting, but it’s over.
Of course there are groups in the world that still segregate and discriminate on the basis of gender, religion and nationality. They say things like, “Israel is a one bomb state”, or “Behead those who defame the prophet!” They terrorize Jewish students at public schools in Paris, they throw deadly riots on the basis of satirical cartoons, they even go so far as to summarily execute innocent people and publicize the event on the Internet.
How’s that for an enemy of tolerance? How’s that for a fight worth fighting? How’s that for a stand that takes some guts and moral courage?
But in the end these questions are drowned out in a wall of dance music and the good feeling that comes from taking an irrelevant stand against something that virtually everyone already condemns.
In reality, what the Left defines as discrimination is largely extinct and what constitutes real discrimination today is - thanks to their morally relative worldview - is off limits to even discuss.
Meanwhile, back on the sidewalks of Vienna, ladies in burqas walk obediently behind their husbands, sweating in the warm summer sun, thankful for the fact that everyone is so “tolerant” of their unique cultural heritage.