Politics: Urban Beach Week Meet Sharia Law
If you take their money then you dance with the devil.
“The stimulus is working” if macroeconometric forecasting modalities, general-equilibrium models and direct extrapolations can be trusted—what’d we say?, what’d we say?—but the dismal zero-sum growth of shovel-ready, summer of recovery jobs, especially on Labor Day, continues the downward spiral of an administration still reeling from last year’s mid-term elections roundly refuting its policies. (Wait—pumping trillions of dollars into the federal government’s hands produced little result except more bureaucratic bilge? Who could’ve reckoned on that?) It seems where lofty puffery meets political praxis reality comes a-crashing. Maybe those “sons of bitches,” “terrorists” and “barbarians” are to blame!
Where’s that new civility when we need it?
But some things are weirder even than the government right now. Take, for instance, the debate over Urban Beach Week—aka Memorial Day Weekend—that’s happening here. And while it rages (when it seems that the ghetto moves to the Beach) between warring factions of ultras who think 100,000 plus of anybody should mean making a killing, and contras fed up with all of the killing, make no mistake: with manifestos already flying, neighborhoods in near revolt, and the tocsin clanging loudly to rally the troops, this issue is the Miami Beach equivalent of the Parisian mob storming the Bastille.
So important is it, in fact, that political careers hang in the balance. Good thing we don’t have a guillotine erected in Soundscape Park where the beheadings could be simulcast up on the Big Screen too!
It’s such a hot issue we’re not even prepared to step into that bog. Yet.
But here’s the thing. In what could be the biggest imposture since Nim Chimpsky, an alternative proposed for Urban Beach Week features a Memorial Day event funded by Saudi Arabian money to honor returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, meaning that the same folks behind a little thing called ‘9/11’ who also fund the jihadists so determined to kill all our soldiers would now fund an event to “honor” the very troops the fanatics are trying to kill!
You can’t make this stuff up.
Does anyone down at City Hall do their homework? A little digging by the 17th Street Irregulars (our shock troop of Janissaries, Praetorian Guards and Delta-force Navy Seals that storm the halls of power) found that Verdant Capitol Group, the venture capitalists behind this event, are also in thick with the Saudis.
In case you’ve been on Mars, Saudi Arabia practices Wahhabism, a particularly virulent form of Islamism. Austere and very strict, it bases life on a literalist reading of the Koran, with adherents believing non-followers as “enemy heathen”. Atavism like this breeds extremists the caliber of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, birds of a fundamentalist feather. And the Saudis continue to use oil money—that’s the money you pay for their gas, Gertrude—to fund extremist madrassas (schools) and mosques worldwide that preach hate and violence toward “infidel pigs and monkeys”, including here in the United States.
Now, letting Moslems and other cults practice voluntary ecclesiastical law within their communities is one thing. But what the Mohammedans want is shariah law that’s based on the Koran and not codified by civil authority as the only law of the land. State governments, wizening up, are enacting statutes to prevent misguided courts from forcing sharia onto American citizens. We don’t allow courts to adjudicate on the basis of the Talmud or Bible; why would we? Last time we checked, this was a secular nation. Or should we just hand over the keys to the States to the Middle East?
First, a little background on the Religion of Perpetual Outrage, maestro:
- “The faithful” in Kashmir recently noticed what they claimed was a picture of “a mosque” appearing on underwear sold by street vendors and rioted, tearing up the businesses and fighting with police over the “blasphemous” boxers. (We saw what looked like a picture of Jesus’ face on a tree in Hialeah once, but don’t recall anybody getting upset.)
- In 1994 Moslems threatened to kill German model Claudia Schiffer when she wore a designer print dress with a saying from the Koran. (A supermodel? And all they saw was a saying?)
- In 1998, Unilever’s ice cream logo upset Moslems because it looked like “Allah” if read upside-down. (Let’s hope they don’t listen to Heavy Metal music backwards.)
- In 2002, an al-Qaida cell plotted to blow up the Italian Church of San Petronio because a 15th century fresco showed Mohammed being tormented in the ninth circle of Hell. (Wonder what they would’ve said if the old reprobate was depicted cavorting with his 72 virgins in Heaven?)
- Moslems burned and bludgeoned hundreds to death to protest the Miss World beauty pageant held in Nigeria, which they found was an affront to guess who? When a local journalist joked that Mohammed would probably “have chosen a wife from among them,” a fatwa was issued against her life declaring “her blood can be shed as it is abiding on all Moslems wherever they are to consider the killing a religious duty.” (Never heard of freedom of speech, have you?)
- In 2006 “Danish cartoon” hysteria resulted in global riots that killed hundreds in protecting Mohammed from Western slights; journalists who scoffed were marked for death. (Care to take a fatwa out on us?)
- In 2007, Allah’s avengers struck again: this time a Sudanese “infidel” nursery school teacher innocently named a cuddly classroom teddy bear “Mohammed” and sent a mob shouting, “Kill her, kill her!”. Arrest and the threat of 40 lashes for “blasphemy” followed, before she was freed after eight days captivity.
- Most recently, a US cartoonist posting online “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day!” went into hiding at the FBI’s behest after being targeted by a radical Moslem cleric claiming that her “proper abode is hellfire.” (Unfortunately we just missed this imam with a drone-launched “hellfire” missile.)
And this is their affable side. What’s lost in the hysteria and rush to accommodate is these premeditated and organized “explosions” are meant to intimidate.
Fanatics must suffer from mental confusion. Do they really count on sensitivity to make us kowtow to seventh century theocracy? Suffering these fools means to disallow protesting the Ground Zero mosque or burning a Koran because that will “inflame” tensions, “imperil” the troops and—horrors!—cause the “Moslem world” to explode. Heaven’s to Betsy!
Do we care if people that already despise us hate us even more? And when is the Moslem world not ready to explode?
Welcome to the crazy world of sharia law.
Still, this would stop Urban Beach Week because participants would suddenly be too busy putting burkhas on those large women in thongs, prostrating themselves five times a day toward Mecca, remembering they can no longer drink alcohol, and dodging the Moslem morals police that would have them dragged off and stoned (with rocks, we mean) for any backsliding—but do we really want fanatics like that funding our events?
Would it surprise you to know that we very nearly had? At the recent Town Hall Meeting calling for citizen input (which the Irregulars report as being more presentation requiring pre-written submitted questions than group democracy), an alternative Memorial Day event was offered that looked good on paper but, behind the scenes, was riddled with more irony than you could shake a suicide-vest at.
While the concept of an alternative event, especially one celebrating the troops, is admirable it also pays to know with whom you deal.
For instance, Verdant Capitol Group put forth the idea of “Miami Fest”, a marketing event focused on exposing returning vets and their families to businesses invested in by Verdant Capitol—a most clever initiative of equal parts welcome-home wagon and family-fun weekend that features a gated beach festival and performing stages to showcase local music talent by day and A-list all-stars by night—that also taps some serious Saudi money.
Not so bad, so far. But not so fast.
Because, as the Bard says, therein lies the rub. For Verdant Capitol is so deep into Saudi Arabian dinars that they’ve become financially “sharia-compliant”, meaning if they take Saudi money then they play by Saudi rules. And remember, Wahhabism is the severest form of Mohammedanism, whose raison d’être is that “others” be hated, persecuted and killed and could very well mean holding the event to sharia standards which, in the event, is no fun at all.
Because what we think is “fun” is to them sinful, shameful and criminal.
But who knows? Maybe the Saudis would insist on sending along the “mutawa,” the religious police, to keep an eye out for rule-breakers. They probably wouldn’t find too much wrong with Miami Fest—no doubt returning vets would have no trouble observing the strict segregation of the sexes, an absolute prohibition on the sale and consumption of alcohol or the ban on women driving—but as for Urban Beach Week, if it were here, well, that’s another story. The ulema would severely frown on those goings-on and feel impelled to impose order. Good Ford!—oopsie—we mean, in the name of Allah! (may peace be upon him), there’d be the death penalty to pay for adultery, blasphemy and homosexuality, stoning and amputation for theft, fornication, pimping or rape, and flogging by “one hundred stripes” for robbery and violence or using intoxicants like alcohol or weed. (Say, by the sound of it this would become Urban Beach Day.) But hey, consider the upside: if you’re not allowed swine, at least you can devour all the locusts you want. And better keep that burkha handy, just in case the headscarf doesn’t cut it.
So, do we call this capitalism… or bizarre?
