Meeting Of The Minds

The German government has met Muslim community leaders in Berlin amid a row over the cancellation of a Mozart opera deemed offensive to Muslims.
-BBC

You know, for a group of people that believes a man who lived 1400 years ago is beyond reproach, these overly sensitive Muslims seem to be playing a real sharp game of "double standard." They are offended by a Mozart opera because it contains a scene with "the severed heads of the Prophet Muhammad, Jesus Christ and Buddha." Not only are they upset, but they expect the rest of us to feel their pain. Some Germans, however, aren't so easily frightened or pained...

Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned "self-censorship out of fear. We must take care that we do not retreat out of a fear of potentially violent radicals," she said. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble also attacked the opera company's decision as "crazy".

The Germans are sounding more and more like the French every day. Earlier this year it was reported that a group tried to have the French town of Saint-Genis-Pouilly close down a theatre performing one of Voltaire's plays. (Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet -- a play, it should be noted, that was shut down by the Catholic Church after only 3 performances for being a too thinly veiled attack on Rome. "Its main theme is the use of religion to promote and mask political ambition," according to the article linked below.) "This play ... constitutes an insult to the entire Muslim community," said a letter to the mayor. His response?

Mayor Hubert Bertrand called in police reinforcements to protect the theater. On the night of the December reading, a small riot broke out involving several dozen people and youths who set fire to a car and garbage cans. It was "the most excitement we've ever had down here," says the socialist mayor.


So in other words:

pre-modern Islamic ideas, critiques, norms and literature good...
pre-modern non-Islamic ideas, critiques, norms and literature bad... very, very bad.

Give it a rest.