OPERA BOUFFE FROM BERLIN—HEADS WILL ROLL, BUT NOT MOHAMMED’S

Sure, hundreds of millions of Americans attend the opera—horse operas, tenpenny operas, Opera bouffes, the Grand Ole Opry. Americans know opera. Sure…really. Ask any American over forty years old who Mozart is. They know. Mozart played violin in the third row of the orchestra on the Ed Sullivan Show. He had long hair. Americans over sixty remember Mozart as the guy that wrote the chamber music they played in Painless Potter’s waiting room. Remember Painless Potter? He was even more famous than Mozart. He was a dentist. But ask somebody under thirty and most of them have never heard of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Dead white males have been out of style since the Sixties—live ones since the Seventies. But here is Mozart, big in the news in Germany these days, and Americans know less about him than they do about Garo Yepremian.

Mozart wrote a lot of operas. In 1790 he wrote Indomeneo. It was his first big hit. It was sort of like Blue Suede Shoes with a larger cast and expensive costumes. It was scheduled to open in Berlin but its proposed revival raised some eyebrows. Oh, yeah, after more than two Centuries of quiescence, Indomeneo is on the controversial list again—well, at least the first few minutes. You see, there’s this king of Crete, Indomeneo, he’s been off to the Trojan Wars; he’s supposed to be dead, lost at sea, but there he is, large as life, strutting onto the stage as the beginning of the opera. He has a bloody bag in his hands and it doesn’t look like its full of knockwurst picked up at a local deli. (Mozart is making a statement—about life, about religion, about himself. Let the experts figure out what it has to do with the rest of the opera. The sack is full of heads—and not just any heads. Let’s see, there’s Poseidon and Jesus and Buddha and who is that other guy? Why it’s Mohammed!

Say! Who wrote this opera—Mozart or Stephen King?

Indomeneo takes the heads from the sack and sets them on chairs—four heads; four chairs. Well, that would never do and it isn’t long before Mohammed’s head goes rolling across the floor! Sweet Jesus! It must have been kinetic energy. But after the great start, the opera fizzles. There’s not much there for Stephen King fans—endless arias, much gesticulating, some of Yogi Berra’s fat ladies, not a single dread silence. Sure, it’s got romance, some action, ransom notes and a happy ending. Fie! It could have been something—one pathetic monster, one miserable spook, a leering skull, a couple of hyperthyroid rats, could have saved it, but, no, it’s a fizzle. In the hands of an expert—a Sam Katzman or a Mel Brooks—Indomeneo could have been a hit. And what Stephen King could have done with those heads—

Ah, the heads— As previously mentioned, one of the heads was Mohammed’s. Apparently nobody at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper had thought of that. It would be one HECK of a way to open an opera! Gott und Himmel! Mohammed’s head rolling across the stage! Somebody had screwed up! Somebody should have read the script! Hans, why didn’t you read the script? There are people out there who could take the opening sequence the wrong way; people who could conceivably consider it an insult…yes, an insult to the Prophet… an insult to Islam… to Allah… to Germany’s three million Muslims! Theo van Gogh was killed for less than that! And there’s that horrible line by Indomeneo: “The Gods are dead.” We are dead! Berlin’s Deutsch Oper was dead!

Now if it were Jesus’ head or Buddha’s head, there would be no worry. Christians and Buddhists hardly ever complain. They suffer in silence. They have grown accustomed to being beat-up, kicked around, abused. It they blew up a nightclub or brought down an airliner occasionally they might get a little respect. Go ahead—use Buddha’s head for a bowling ball…see what happens. But Mohammed—

The furor over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons is still fresh in Europe’s memory. And one unfortunate quote from an old book by Pope Benedict XVI set relations between the Vatican and Islam back to the 7^th Century—almost a 150 years! So Deutsch Oper took council of their fears. They replaced Indomeneo with the more palatable The Marriage of Figaro and La Traviata. (“Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!”) Doesn’t that sound better than “Kill the infidels?” Deutsch Oper didn’t expect to sell many tickets to Germany’s three million Muslims; what worried them was the number of Muslims that might show up for the performance that wouldn’t have tickets. Yeah, that’s what worried them.

The police told Deutsch Oper the production could be inflammable. “It posed an incalculable security risk,” they explained. Nothing of the sort happen could have happened in Berlin when Hermann Goering was running things.

German chancellor Angela Merkel was dismayed. “I think the cancellation was a mistake,” she said. “I think self-censorship does not help us against people who want to produce violence in the name of Islam. It makes no sense to retreat. We must be careful that we do not increasingly shy away out of fear of violent radicals.”

As usual, once the show had been cancelled, Muslim leaders said they had no objections to it. Not only was Islam a religion of peace and tolerance, it was a religion of free speech.

Interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble met with various religious leaders. In spite of differences of opinion, he said, they were agreed that the show must go on. What brave troopers! “There is no concrete danger at the present time,” announced the gendarmerie. So, break a leg. Indemeneo has been rescheduled for December 18 and 29. Now all they have to do is get some poor sap willing to play Indomeneo. Tryouts will be held at the Theo Van Gogh Mausoleum and Recreation Center.

Hey! This would make a great Stephen King movie! There’s this actor…he gets a part in a play…he inadvertently insults the gods…it infuriates them…they send spooks after the wretch…specters…wraiths…heads that roll across the floor…

ISLAM MUST APOLOGIZE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER! NOW!

Hani Hanjour did not bring down the World Trade Center; Mohammed Atta did not bring down the World Trade Center; Marwan al-Shehhi and Abdul Aziz al-Omari did not bring down the World Trade Center; Osama bin Laden did not bring down the World Trade Center; Ward Churchill and Nicolas De Genova, no matter how much they might have approved, did not bring down the World Trade Center; American foreign policy did not bring down the World Trade Center; imperialism did not bring down the World Trade Center; Colonialism did not bring down the World Trade Center; poverty did not bring down the World Trade Center; the Ayatollah Khomeini did not bring down the World Trade Center; a hundred-thousand ranting Mad Mullahs did not bring down the World Trade Center; ten million cheering Muslims did not bring down the World Trade Center; Islam brought down the World Trade Center—ISLAM, ISLAM, ISLAM—and it must not be forgotten or allowed to go un-avenged.

The anger, the hatred, the unconscionable fanaticism necessary to carry out an act that could only have been conceived by the Devil could not have originated, been sustained and gloried-in by anything but Islam—not by fascism, not by communism, not by Klansmen, not by Skinheads, not by militias, not by readers of Mein Kampf, not by Attila the Hun, not by Alaric, not by Geiseric, not by Richard the Lion-Heart, not by Mao Ze Dung even with his Cultural Revolution, not by any of them or millions similar to them, but by the likes of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Caliph al-Mansur in 722AD; by Saladin; by Mehmet II, who destroyed Constantinople in 1453 in an incredible bloodbath, by Kara Mustafa at the gates of Vienna and tens of thousands of others, but most of all by the Prophet, by the Apostle, by Muhammad—he with the Jyllands-Posten bomb in his turban and the book in his hand; yes, the book, the book, the book!

The hatred, the anger, the indoctrination, the blind servitude inherent in the Qur’an gave these pathetic wretches—these devils without souls—the religious raison d’etre to commit their terrible deed—a deed that would have stunned the most dedicated of Hitler’s sturmbahnfuhrers and caused those with any pretense toward humanity to turn away in disgust and shame. The Islamic catechism for all time: kill the infidels, lop off their heads; they are pigs and dogs and those who believe in the Trinity will suffer a painful doom. Jihad in the morning, Jihad in the afternoon, Jihad in the evening; perpetual war against the non-believers; chop all their fingers from them; Paradise awaits…Allahu akbar!

Noble Qur’an 2:190 Footnote: “Jihad is holy fighting in Allah’s Cause with full force of numbers and weapons. It is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its pillars. By Jihad is established, Allah’s word is made superior (which means only Allah has the right to be worshipped), and Islam is propagated…Jihad is obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim. He who tries to escape from this duty, or does not fulfill this duty, dies a hypocrite.”

Qur’an 8:12 “I shall terrorize the infidels. So wound their bodies and incapacitate them because they oppose Allah and His Apostle.”

Terrorize and incapacitate? What makes those words so difficult for Americans and Europeans to understand? Islam is responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center, not the pathetic devil dogs who committed the act. It is Islam that must apologize, not America. Yet the mesmerizing process continues. Moonstruck politicians say incredibly stupid things—vacuous, inane stupid things. Forget them. Forget Tony Blair who praised Islam as a progressive religion; “So far as it can be translated from the original Arabic,” he said; the praise was unmerited, totally unmerited. Forget George W. Bush. The President said Islam had been hijacked by a handful of radical extremists; it was a religion of peace and toleration. It has not been hijacked and is no more peaceful or tolerant than a Brown Shirt rally in a Bavarian beer garden. Few Muslims, if any, have complained about Islam being hijacked.

Some of the things that have been said have gone beyond stupid. The late Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary said, “Islam laid the intellectual foundations for large portions of Western civilization” One does not want to speak ill of the dead but he is gone and good riddance. It was people like Cook that organized the surrender of Europe to Islam thirty years ago. It took Robert E. Lee one day to surrender at Appomattox Court House but he made a good fight while it lasted and did not disgrace himself. Europe has. It would have taken a hundred Benedict Arnolds a thousand years to achieve a more craven surrender.

Spineless, apathetic, fearful, Europe is sinking into a Hell worse than Dante’s Inferno. Doctor Faustus made a better deal with the Devil. The soulless, clueless and spineless Bonny Prince Charlie already has one foot in Mecca. George III was a man; no one will ever know what Prince Charley was. Europe is suffering its painful doom—Anglicans, Hindus, Catholics, atheists, agnostics, the long oblivion is sweeping over them This must not happen to America—it will not happen to America; it must not happen to America.

Crimes against humanity cannot go unpunished; they cannot be allowed to linger and fester, to attract the Devil’s larvae, the Chomskys, the Ward Churchills, the Michael Moores who do not take away but only add to the putrescence. It must be endlessly repeated: Islam is responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and it will be made to apologize. It will not be easy. Nothing is easy. Islam has committed more crimes than Hitler and Stalin and Mao combined and has never apologized for any of them, not for the slaughter of 150,000 Christians in Smyrna in 1922 while a flotilla of Allied warships in the harbor played loud music so their crews wouldn’t have to listen to the screams of the dying (an incredible display of early 20^th Century dhimmitude); not for the murder of two millions Christians and animists in Sudan in the ‘80s and ‘90s by Muslim theocrats; not for the selling of tens of thousands of Sudanese women and children by the same blood-soaked Muslim theocrats to be abused by as psychotic a pack of chauvinist pigs and child molester as ever existed in the mind of the Marquis de Sade; not for the routine murders and beheadings and bombings in Sulawesi, in Kashmir, in the Philippines, in India, in Thailand, in London, in Spain, in Pakistan and in cities like Yala, Darfur, Indergam, Khanpora, Pattani, Grozny and Karbala in just the last few days. The list is endless. If Dr. Frankenstein could apologize for the crimes of his monster, Islam can apologize for its crimes against humanity. It is not enough to say, “We are opposed to the killing of innocent men, women and children.” Hitler said the same thing and he didn’t mean it anymore than Ibrahim Hooper and Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations—and his crimes were no greater.

There will be no peace without an apology and there will be no peace with an apology, but, perhaps, a beginning toward ending Islam’s 1,400-year war against non-Muslims. If not—ten million dead Muslims won’t be too high a price to pay for freedom; and the figure could go higher. A one-in-a-million shot to begin with, freedom, once lost, will be next to impossible to regain.

JOHN KERRY’S RETREAT TO WHITEHOUSE LANDING!

(In 1862 General George B. McClellan, outflanked and outmaneuvered by Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, pulled the Army of the Potomac back from the gates of Richmond and retrograded to the James River. He sent an angry and insubordinate message to the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. It said in part, “If I save this army, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any other person in Washington (the President). You have done your best to sacrifice this Army.” (McClellan was a member of the Democratic Party and was the Party’s nominee for the Presidency in 1864)

In 2006 in another war, another Democrat was sacrificed—not to save an Army but to save his Party. The following is a reasonable facsimile of what took place behind the scenes.)

(Headquarters, Kerry’s Army of the North)

“General Heinz! General Heinz! The Republican Army has broken through on the right flank! Everything is lost! We must retrograde immediately…we must retreat to the James…we must pull back to Whitehouse Landing…withdraw from Danang and Khe Sanh! The road to the Pusan Perimeter is clogged with refugees…full of GIs who didn’t get a good education. Your most loyal troops…the Battered Beantowners of Bostogne are schwerpunkt! The Swift-Boat Vets are in our rear! Our line of communications with the New York Times and Whitehouse Landing has been cut! General Hillary has gone over to the enemy! The Secretary of Omniscience, Major General Howard Dean has not answered our call for reinforcements! The quagmire is up to our knees!’

“Requisition some waders, you fool! Do I have to do all the thinking? And don’t call me General Heinz. I’m Admiral Kerry…Kerry—and not that one-legged guy from Nebraska either. Got that?”

“There are no waders, sir! You voted against the military appropriations bill.”

“Well, don’t just stand there! I must be surrounded by a bunch of high school dropouts! Call Jimmy Carter! He’s an old Navy man! He’s been through this sort of thing! He’ll know what to do! Gott und Himmel…he introduced Hubert Horatio Humphrey to millions and millions of TV viewers as Hubert Horatio Hornblower!”

“You must be joking, sir…anyway Admiral Carter’s in Maharashtra with Brad Pitt building homes for poor Indians.”

“Poor Indians? What poor Indians? Those gambling casinos rake in billions of dollars every year. It must be the Apaches.”

(A commotion at the entrance to the bunker)

“More bad news, sir! Rommell and Rove and Rumsfeld are sending in reinforcements—massive reinforcements. They’re breaking through! There’s nothing we can do! We are lost! We must run for our lives!”

“Rommell? I had expected better of him.”

“Do you have any last orders, sir?”

“Yes. Send in the Custer Legion…Move the Audie Murphy Brigade from Shiloh to the Bataan Peninsula! Call up the Cump Sherman Reservists and the George S. Patton Militia! See if we can come to some sort of rapprochement with Bobby Lee.”

“Those units no longer exist, sir?”

“Not even the Custer Legion?”

“No, sir. Do you want me to ready your surfboat, sir? The wind is up.”

“No…leave me alone. I must write a letter to the commander.”

(The aide exits)

“Now I know how George McClellan felt on that retrograde from Richmond, but at least the poor fellow had the support of the Democratic Party.”

The crestfallen Admiral took up his pen and wrote the following: Dear Commander: I have been through a terrible battle. I have repelled several strong attacks. I am heavily outnumbered. If I had 20,000 or even 10,000 good smart high school graduates to use tomorrow I could take Richmond—I mean Washington by storm, though Richmond wouldn’t be bad. I lost this political battle because I did not have enough intelligent men. If you do not reinforce me the game is lost. If I save this Party in 2008, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any other person in the Democratic Party. You have done your best to sacrifice me—George B. Kerry.

(The aide has reappeared)

“Surf’s up, sir!”

House on fire! House on fire! The 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th Battles of Tours!

It started as a little bonfire about 30 years ago and nobody did anything about it and now France is burning and the firemen are on strike. Instead of being in the pump house where he belongs Fire Marshall Jacques Chirac was in China signing mega-deals. Eleven years ago when declared Fire Chief, Chirac had promised to repair France’s “social fractures,” to smother the smoldering unrest. So while he hobbed-and-nobbed with the heirs of Mouth-and-Tongue and Jaw-and Lie and bragged about lowering France’s unemployment rate to 8.8 percent, the arsonists were torching buses and police cars and shouting “Alllahu akbar!’ “The situation certainly remains very difficult,” he said.

That was the assessment of Napoleon III when he saw Bismarck’s armies closing in on Paris in 1871 and what French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud surmised when he telephoned Winston Churchill, May, 15, 1941, and said, “We have been defeated. We are beaten; we have lost the battle.” He didn’t say, “We have arsonists up the Yazoo.” (In France it would have been up the Seine) Of course, Napoleon III and Reynaud didn’t use words like arsonists, firebugs and incendiaries—they called their enemies Nazis, Krauts and Huns. The concatenation of events forced them to describe their foes accurately; it was far too late to invent cute names for them. In 21^st Century France, Chirac and his Assistant Fire Marshalls, Dominique de Villepin and Nicolas Sarkozy, use words like arsonists, firebugs, incendiaries, rampaging youth, Arab immigrants or unemployed young men of African descent to describe the enemy instead of Muslims, Moroccans and Algerians though the flames they face are every bit as intense as those that confronted Napoleon III and Reynaud and if not extinguished may well destroy France itself—there is no life after Islam.

The arsonists were ‘celebrating’ the deaths of two of their kind—accidentally electrocuted a year ago at a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois northwest of Paris while hiding from police. It was ghastly! Nothing like that could have happened in Iran or Pakistan where Muslims have rights. The arsonist commandeered buses and set them on fire; vehicles were torched. The French had another full scale intifada on their hands and lo’ these long years Charles Martel’s bones lie a-moldering in his grave.

The authorities assigned 500 extra firefighters to Clichy-sous-Bois. Assistant Fire Marshall de Villepin said, “The first response must be the systematic arrest of all those involved and their exemplary and speedy punishment…not only…those directly responsible…but also those who take part in or encourage them.”

Assistant Fire Chief Sarkozy said, “Some people have kept putting oil on the fire by talking about the commemoration of an anniversary that isn’t one. But contrary to their hopes, there’s no risk of contagion for the moment.”

“Allahu akbar” is a youthful sound bite; it’s just like "23 Skidoo" or "See you later, alligator" All the authorities need do is apply more Karl Marx fire retardant—more low-income housing projects, less talk about hijabs, increased funding for neighborhood associations, new enterprise zones, effective affirmative action programs and jobs, jobs, jobs—and, of course, an end to Islamophobia.

“Obviously, all the problems won’t be solved in a day,” said de Villepin. A wise assessment—one doesn’t extinguish forest fires with seltzer bottles full of hot air. And if the unemployed youth continue to scream “Allahu akbar” and kick the crap out of every Jew they come across no progress is going to take place…PERIOD!

Ah, if only France had followed the British example right from the beginning and placed the arsonists in positions of great political, educational and moral authority they wouldn’t be in this fix. A dozen Sir Iqbal Sacranie in the right place and a hundred Omar Bakri Muhammads ranting and raving on the banks of the Seine would have kept the arsonists under control. Think of the magic that could be worked by the moral rectitude of four-score-and-ten Inayat Bunglawalas explaining to France’s unemployed Muslim youth the necessity of fulfilling “their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere.” And a less negative attitude toward freedom fighters like Osama bin Laden, also urged by Bunglawala, would certainly ease tensions. And the non-Muslim French masses could contribute their share by electing politicians like George Galloway and Red Ken Livngstone and Pierre Lavel, all experts in the art of collaborating with hordes of invading arsonists. Say, isn’t Laval supposed to be dead? Yes, at least one would hope so, but France is notoriously full of outrageous imposters.

Taken together, these modest adjustments would usher in an era of peace and tolerance not seen in France since the Mademoiselle from Armentieres held hands with Sergeant York.

This program has worked miracles in England. One pathetic shoe-bomber and the July 7, 2005 attacks on London’s public transport system—52 dead—was a small price to pay for peace and tolerance. Look at America—3,000 dead on 9/11 alone! Disgusting! And poor France—21,000 cars torched since the first of the year and 2,882 attacks on firemen (police, firefighting and ambulance services) and no end in sight. “The real problem is unemployment,” says Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, French immigrations specialist, with a certainty that defies logic. “But there’s till racism in hiring and very little mobility for youth.”

Of course, Islam has nothing to do with the violence; nothing at all, it’s a religion. The problems are poverty and unemployment. That sounds reasonable but ‘See you later alligator’ sounds less threatening than “Allahu akbar.” Couldn’t they explain that to those ‘kids’ when they show up at the unemployment office? And that’s another problem.

“UNCOVERED MEAT” THE RAPE OF THE 21^ST CENTURY SABINE WOMEN!

There are times when you see one of these arrogant woman-hating Muslim Mullahs and you wish you had a horsewhip. Take Sheikh Taj el-Din Hilali. He’s one of Australia’s most prominent Muslim clerics. When he speaks, millions of Muslims listen—and millions of Aussies grind their teeth. He was appointed or elected or made himself Grand Mufti of Australia in 1988. He talks a lot. He does not think unkindly of suicide bombers and said the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 was “God’s work against oppressors.” In January of 2003 he was arrested and charged with assaulting police during a traffic stop. Certainly, it is a religion of peace and tolerance.

Hilali is a first-class anti-Zionist. He says the Jews are the “underlying cause of all wars,” and use “sex and abominable acts of buggery,” to “control the world.” Well, that rules out Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton. His pastime is rewriting history. He says the original settlers of Australia were Muslims and that the Aborigines were their descendants. This could be considered heretical. The Aborigines were spearing water toads long before Mohammed came along. Of course, what Hilali meant in his rewrite was that Australia belongs to Islam by right of prior occupation.

Hilali was born in Egypt. When he first arrived in the Land Down Under he was toting a tourist visa. The visa expired; Hilali remained. The Aussies have tried to deport him for inciting hatred. They haven’t been successful. It is difficult to kill Frankenstein monsters. A Caliphate would suit him just fine.

So how is he different from the ten thousand other obnoxious dhimmi-hating Imams, Muftis and Mullahs? He wears one of John Cooksey's diapers on his head; his beard is trimmed to the exact length prescribed by Sunnah (it must be no more than the width of a hand and is not to be shaven off); his robes are perfectly nondescript—they are not like anything that might be seen in Armani’s or Calvin Klein’s; his views on women make Archie Bunker sound like Gloria Steinem…

Whoa! Women? Gloria Steinem? Ah-hah! That’s it! That’s it! That’s what defines Hilali—what separates him from the run-of-mill Mullah. He’s more outspoken when it comes to boobs and butts than the average Muslim cleric.It takes some doing but he’s good at it. Plus he has a knack for putting his foot in his mouth. In his sermon winding up the holy month of Ramadan, he issued his latest epistle on the place of women in society. Women who displayed their charms, he said, were “uncovered meat.”

Uncovered meat? Outrageous! Sexist! He wouldn’t dare say that in front of Zsa Zsa Gabor—maybe in front of Karen Armstrong or Ingrid Mattson, but not in front of Zsa Zsa. He’s lucky he was in a mosque and not at a Teddy Kennedy fund-raiser—make that a Teddy Roosevelt fund-raiser.

But Hilali wasn’t done. “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park,” he said, his auditors hanging on his every word, “And the cats come and eat it…whose fault is it? The cats or the uncovered meat?”

Little Annie Fanny would have looked at him and said, “Leaping Lizards,” or words to that effect

In the minds of many Australians Hilali was using the sermon to defend the actions of Muslim men who have been raping the gals Down Under as if they were so many Sabine women awaiting their mythological fate. Shame, shame and shame again!

The Sheiks comments were “appalling and reprehensible,” said no less a worth than Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

“It is an incitement to crime,” said Pru Goward, Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner. “Young Muslim men who now rape women can site this in court.”

As was to be expected when faced with the incontrovertible, Hilali claimed he had been incorrectly translated and misunderstood. He condemned rape; Mohammed condemned rape; Allah condemned rape; all Islam condemns rape.

Qur’an 24-34: “Force not your slave-girls to whoredom (prostitution) if they desire chastity, that you may seek enjoyment of this life. But if anyone forces them, then after such compulsion, Allah is oft-forgiving.”

Don’t laugh—some liberal judge in New Hampshire or Ohio could have written the same thing in defense of a child molester.

Hilali said he respected the right of Australian women to dress as they saw fit. He also respects the Qur’an and the Prophet and the suras and the commentaries and the coming Caliphate, none of which respects the rights of any woman—including Mother Teresa—to dress as she sees fit.

Moderate Muslims were appalled, aghast, horrified, discombobulated, and dumbstruck. They always are when some Mullah correctly interprets the Qur’an. How could this be, they say. Islam is a religion of peace and toleration. Hilali does not represent true Islam. He is a hijacker. That’s what he is—a hijacker.

Well, they didn’t call him a hijacker or a fool and none of them apparently walked out of the mosque, but they had some harsh things to say earlier this year when Prime Minister Howard called on Muslim immigrants to make a better effort to integrate into Australian society, to learn English, to accept Western values, and treat women with greater respect. Muslim leaders were infuriated. Talk like that would radicalize Muslim immigrants and increase the dangers of race riots. So, in the end, nothing can be done—not today, not tomorrow, not the next day.

It’s High Noon in Australia and the train bearing Frank Miller is pulling into the station. No one would mistake John Howard for Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) but this is his chance. It’s where the horsewhip comes in. Forget the Frank Millers and concentrate on Hilali. It will be good exercise and the women of Australia will thank him. When the train pulls out Hilali should be on it. It doesn’t matter where he goes—to Iran, to Pakistan, to Saudi Barbaria—as long as he goes somewhere other than Australia. They could send him to Dogpatch where Mammy Yokum could teach him some manners.

But Howard will have to do it himself. He won’t get much help from moderate Muslims or their socialist and liberal allies. He will have to risk the radicalization and the race riots. One hates to say it but Islam is dominated by the most arrogant, the most sexist and the most chauvinist of its 1.3 billion devotees. It won’t be easy, but a start has to be made somewhere and sending Hilali to where the meat is always covered isn’t a bad idea.