h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6769671.stm

Let's get something straight first of all: I am no particular fan of Salman Rushdie. I have only ever read one book of his, and that's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, but I tend to regard him as a man with an over-inflated sense of his own importance. Wasn't it he who stood up at a Booker Prize meeting and started declaiming that he deserved the prize more than the winner?

Anyway, what the Pakistani goverment needs to get into the thick skulls of its fundamentalist rump is that apostasy is not a crime in Britain. Our actions are sanctioned by the laws of the land, not by shariah. Moreover, Rushdie was awarded his knighthood (wrongly in my opinion, as he has done very little for anyone outside his sphere and rather rarefied audience) for services to literature. This includes a large body of work that has nothing to do with the Satanic Verses at all.

I imagine that a minor fraction of his output has anything to do with Islam yet this is how these people demand he should be judged. Well, I suggest that iof this is what concerns them most that they judge the Satanic Verses by their criteria, and we'll judge the rest of his work by ours.

I haven't read much of Salman Rushdie, but enjoyed a collection of his short stories once. He's not my favourite writer by a long chalk. I once tried to read Satanic Verses to see what all the fuss was about but didn't even manage to get halfway through it - it seemed like a lot of drivel and nonsense to me. That aside, if the Queen wants to give Mr Rushdie some gong or other, I have no objection, after all Ian Botham got one and he's a Yorkshireman.
Can I hope she gives one to Rowan Atkinson for playing the comedy character Mr. Bean?! Let's keep these trinkets in their proper perspective shall we. My goodness what will people be complaining about next! The mind boggles ... or at least what's left of it.

I did my PhD with a chap from Pakistan: a very nice and intelligent man who, like me, tried to get his hands on a copy of the book to see what the fuss was about. Back then, many of his friends were trying to do the same. The mood has changed a lot in Pakistan since then.

Britain is *not* and will never be (at least, if I have anything to do with it) an Islamic republic. The insistence of other countries that we should judge our cultural figures by their standards belies a fundamental lack of respect for cultural diversity and the individual at its centre. They can go and boil their heads.

Another thought: if they insist on applying their sensibilities to our culture, we'll do the same to theirs, judging its output by its objectivity, its respect for human rights, contribution to the material and intellectual well-being of its citizens, its overall contribution to the weight of human knowledge....

Yeah, but that's not the way it works. Islam claims that all people are subject to Islam because it is the ultimate truth. There is only room for one ultimate truth in the universe, so if two groups claim it, they are automatically hell bent on mutual destruction. No such thing as parity of esteem.

Nice system, in fact only one flaw.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6289110.stm

This git makes me sick with his finger-wagging. Who the hell does he think he is? Who does he think we are? Children, to be lectured on how to lead a pious and upstanding cultural life?

There aren't many circumstances under which I could feel true allegiance with Rushdie, but this is one of them.

Islam is the only way. I bought an English Koran to check out the facts and from what I've read in there the claim is that Islamists can have nothing to do with infidels (i.e. the rest of us) on pain of something worse than hell.
But the German Pope now tells us that the RCs are the top dogs and all other religions are inferior. Shades of Herrenvolk mentality there.

They can't both be right. But they can both be wrong.

They'd better be careful: we now have a secret weapon up our sleeve (or even down our trousers): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6295138.stm

They look so cute. Can I have one for a pet?

Looks can be deceptive: I looked these beasties up on Wikipedia and they have a completely foul temperament. I'm not surprised the Iraqis are sh*t scared of them.

"Several African tribes report that the honey badger attacks the scrotum of larger mammals if provoked and has even castrated humans.[citation needed] While these reports remain uncorroborated by firsthand evidence, there is some circumstantial evidence such as remains of castrated waterbuck and gnu found in Kruger National Park."

"The honey badger can eat dangerous venomous snakes, most often the puff adder. If bitten the honey badger will become severely swollen and paralysed, unable to move for two to three hours. After this period of time the honey badger will re-awaken and continue with its meal or continue its journey. Even more tenaciously, a honey badger will gladly steal a snake's kill, eat it for itself then continue to hunt the snake. "

"In one case, shown on an episode of Animal Planet, an old female honey badger that was nearly toothless and had one blind eye was attacked by a leopard. It took the leopard about one hour to try to kill the honey badger without success."


They sound very... British in temprament, don't they?

Reincarnated football hooligans, perhaps.

Well, I suppose we can draw comfort from the fact that in order to be re-incarnated, they had to die first.

Maybe these honey badgers are in fact the UFO space aliens that some farmers in the USA have claimed from time to time as being responsible for castrating their livestock in the night ...?