Ace links to an article by Stephen Pollard from last Monday:
Later this month it's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It's one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar, so I'd be obliged, please, if you'd all stay at home, turn off the TV and refrain from your usual activities. Ten days after that it's Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when Jews fast and spend the day in synagogue. So I've also asked my Times colleagues not to work then. And I will be mightily offended if I learn afterwards that any of them have been eating.
You might not think I am being serious. But if I was Head of Democratic Services at Tower Hamlets Council in East London, I would be. Last week John Williams e-mailed each of the borough's 51 councillors with a similar instruction.
For the duration of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, they are, he told them - every one of them, Muslim, Catholic, Jew or atheist - to behave during council meetings as strict Muslims. They are not to eat or drink; they are to break for Muslim prayers; they are to do as they are ordered by the Muslim religion....
This is, let me remind you, happening not on Karachi borough council but in Tower Hamlets in London. As far as I am aware, the United Kingdom has not yet been absorbed into the Caliphate. The last time I checked, we allow citizens to practise all religions and none. If I wish to stuff my face with chocolate during the fasting hours of Ramadan, I will. And if you wish to go out for a slap-up lunch on Yom Kippur, you can feel free.
Yet Mr Williams - he's the man with the “democratic services” label, a title so Orwellian that his existence simply had to involve promoting the opposite of democracy and service - appears to have concluded that Islamic practices must take precedence over any other practices. Instead of individual councillors being allowed to decide for themselves how they wish to behave during Ramadan, he is deciding for them.
It should come as no surprise that it is not the borough's Muslim councillors who are demanding that their non-Muslim colleagues obey Islam. As almost always, it is a caricature liberal-left non-Muslim idiot who thinks he is being racially aware who does the real harm to race relations. Respect for religious practice can only be given voluntarily. Mr Williams's prescription leads only to anger.
Sometime back, Anne Applebaum posed a pertinent question about "the veil" issue, which cuts to the heart of leftist multicultural hypocrisy like that described above:
...at a much simpler level, surely it is also true that the full-faced veil -- the niqab, burqa or chador -- causes such deep reactions in the West not so much because of its political or religious symbolism but because it is extremely impolite. Just as it is considered rude to enter a Balinese temple wearing shorts, so, too, is it considered rude, in a Western country, to hide one's face. We wear masks when we want to frighten, when we are in mourning or when we want to conceal our identities. To a Western child -- or even an adult -- a woman clad from head to toe in black looks like a ghost. Thieves and actors hide their faces in the West; honest people look you straight in the eye.
Given that polite behavior is required in other facets of their jobs, it doesn't seem to me in the least offensive to require schoolteachers or civil servants to show their faces when dealing with children or the public. If Western tourists can wear sarongs in Balinese temples to show respect for the locals, so too can religious Muslim women show respect for the children they teach and the customers they serve by leaving their head scarves on, but removing their full-faced veils.
In other words, it is incredibly rude for anyone to insist that their right to practice religion is more important than anyone else's right.
As Applebaum notes, Orthodox Jews do not demand the "right" to work in a restaurant only open on Saturdays; nor does a Quaker have the right to join the military and then refuse to fight. Nor, as the first piece suggests, does Islam--or the political left, for that matter-- have the "right" to impose their religious observances on others. Those who feel it necessary to practice their religion to such an extent have no absolute right whatsoever to make the rest of the world adapt to their practices.
They are free to stay home and wear whatever they choose; eat whatever they want to eat or refrain from eating; but they are not free to demand that others must respect their choices by doing likewise.
All too often, the behavior and attitude we witness today from the practitioners of Islam--in Britain, France and most of Europe; as well as in the Middle East--has gone way beyond "rude" or "impolite", however; and more clearly belongs in the realm of "borderline" and "narcissistic" psychopathology. And the behavior of subservient leftists to Islam has gone way beyond "pandering", "appeasing", or "enabling", and belongs in the realm of active submission.
The inaptly named "Religion of Peace" (RoP) has all the hallmarks of a "Religion of Malignant Narcissism" (RoMN). Some of the more radical practitioners of this religion seem to think that it is their divine right (also called having a "sense of entitlement") to demand the world accede to their wishes at all times:
Patients with this type of attitude always want more. Whatever you do is never good enough for them, and they also generally show no gratitute or express any thanks--even when someone goes out of their way for them. Like the most spoiled of royalty, they merely expect that they should be the center of your world at all times.
This attitude is normally seen in toddlers, who want what they want and they want it now. Every parent has had to deal with this kind of whining. When you see this attitude repeatedly in an adult, then you know you are dealing with psychopathology. Many adults whimper at the slightest inconvenience, delay, or restriction. Why? Because, like toddlers, they are convinced they deserve what they want when they want it. They are "entitled" to it.
The examples of this attitude of Islamic narcissistic entitlement are all around us these days. They demand "respect" for their religion, even as their religion dismisses and denigrates others; they demand that you draw only cartoons they they approve of (even as their own "humor" in cartoons passes the bounds of civilized behavior in terms of sadism and offense). They immigrate to countries that are polite enough to let them in and allow them to practice their religion in peace; and then they threaten violence unless those countries are willing to alter their own traditions and subvert their own values in adopting the Islamic perspective.
As Ace notes, "The United Kingdom has not yet been absorbed into the Caliphate" --but the useful idiots of the left are actively trying to make that happen there, as elsewhere.
Let's face some reality. These Islamic narcissists don't want to be tolerated by the society they live in; they don't want to be simply free to practice their religion even in the most multiculturally sensitive nations; they want the society or nation they live in to completely submit to their values and religious practices and to acknowledge their obvious superiority--or else.
The mere existence of of other cultures and religions is far too threatening to their cultural and religious self-esteem, based as it is on nothing of substance.
Like most borderline personalities, is it any wonder that Islam's relationships with other cultures are unstable and characterized by intense mood reactivity such as dysphoria, irritability, anxiety, anger and rage? Or that they have a markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self that expresses narcissistic rage at the slightest hint of an insult? Or that they constantly express intense anger or difficulty controlling anger, characterized by frequent displays of temper, constant recurrent physical aggression and fighting?
Not to mention the recurrent and chronic suicidal and homicidal impulses that are nurtured and given religious sanction.
This is all descriptive of a very very sick religion--they are dying, in fact, but like a rabid dog, they can only inflict death to everyone and everything that comes within biting range. Fearful of change which might be the antidote to their illness, they march ever more rigidly into the past--but unfortunately armed with extraordinarily lethal modern weapons and the technology that produces them.
I am not talking here only about the "extremists", since many of these attitudes are apparently shared by even the so-called "moderates" of the religion; who, while they might eschew the more violent acting out, still arrogantly express the sense of entitlement and display not the slightest insight into their own intolerance and phobias regarding other cultures.
There is no appeasing borderlines. Giving into their sense of entitlement only leads to more and more demands for attention and acknowledgement of their narcissistic superiority. They will never express gratitude or thanks, and always view you as mere extensions of their own damaged self.
The only way to deal with such borderline behavior is to clearly set limits and expectations-- and then stick to them. Tolerating the unceasingly intolerable behavior and demands that modern Islam exhibits will only reinforce the underlying psychopathology and accentuate the bottomless narcissistic entitlement.
No matter what the compassionate, multicultural and politically correct fools of the left say.
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