Vive la France!

Well, they're dead and I'm glad, but I have two regrets. One of course is that some Jewish hostages have been killed and the other that the murderers of God didn't have to endure an endlessly agonizing and humiliating death.  Jews and cartoonists. Just the sort of people Islamic leaders like to vilify and Islamic devotees like to kill.  God you see is very insecure and can't abide anyone doubting the words of the prophets as set down and interpreted by generations of Mullahs and Ayatollahs.  He also doesn't like Jews, or at least that's what his myriad mouthpieces say.

He has much in common with the American radical right who must feel frustrated that not everyone agrees just how dangerous those Jews are, how hated of God and how they control everything and oppose family values. Not that either of these tribes would admit their commonality, but both will be relieved that a few more of these evil Christ killers, stock market riggers, media propagandists and insulters of Allah are dead on a grocery store floor.

In Saudi Arabia, our moderate Islamic friends and members of the UN Human Rights Council, so intimate with our former president:  In Saudi Arabia where terrorists are doubtlessly protested against when I'm not looking, a blogger got a savage beating for insulting Islam. The Website Free Saudi Liberals, sounds just like the sort of place those locals with "I Am Not A Liberal"  and "Liberalism is a mental disease" bumper stickers would find repugnant too, if only they could read at an adequate level to peruse them.

50 lashes, in case you don't know, is a severe punishment, effectively removing your skin.  Not severe enough for our "moderate Muslim" friends pandered to by the US though, so he's going to get another one every week for 20 weeks.  That's a thousand! I doubt he will survive, but hey!  God will not be insulted.

But wait, there's more!  He gets to pay over a quarter million dollars in fines too, but they'd better get it up front.  As I said, I doubt he will survive.  Will there be a million protesters in the streets of Riad?  Of course not. Will the Saudi's rise up in arms and overthrow a murderous tyranny?  Will we rage against them at the UN? Am I asking rhetorical questions?  At best there will be some faint damnation somewhere and Americans will be too busy decrying Obama's tyranny to give a damn what goes on in the lives of a billion, two hundred million suffering human beings.  It's not good to criticize religion and next thing you know someone will be insulting Jesus  or religion in general and we can't allow that.  Religion doesn't kill people -- people kill people and since we're all people, who's to blame but us?

As liberals, we have to be tolerant of course and we always have to be conscious of how the guilt is really ours and no one else is really to blame but the actual perpetrators and even then, we have to remember they have issues and be sympathetic.  We can't assign any part in it to the preachers, the prelates, the prophets and all the people who assist, facilitate, coach, train, feed and comfort the murders of children. We can't blame those who look the other way, saying nothing, who hide fugitives, who make heroes of  suicide bombers and plane hijackers and gang rapists -- who slice up little girls and hang homosexuals and murder novelists and cartoonists in the name of God.

Sure, technically they could do something, but those silk robes stain so easily and why should we bother when after all the Christians sacked Jerusalem in 1099 and partitioned the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago. It's our own fault and it's natural to take it our on some grocery shopper in Paris.

Guilt and innocence -- do those words mean anything?  What after all is truth but what we're told to believe?  What is truth if it erodes our piety? Can there be guilt when someone has some grievance against someone else or against society or against infidels or Liberals or Jews?  How can we even accuse when it would make us a bigot, a racist, a heretic?

It's over so lets get back to the game or to the missing airplane or to making fun of Republicans or Democrats according to our habits.