Individualism, And The Dog (Satire)

Individualism,and The Dog

The liberality of the American public in bestowing pecuniary favours on the animals in a Kabul zoo betrays the preference for animals over humans in western civilisation. This satire takes a look at the western obsession with animals. 

Excerpt:

"Now for the political reason, and this is closely tied to the historical. Animals, we have noted, are all of a piece, and so are birds: a myna is a myna is a myna. Association with the dog began just before the imperial expansions – before the ‘discovery’ and destruction of the ‘Red’ Indians, for instance. By identifying with a lesser creature – the dog – the European was able to assuage his guilt at the torment of an equal – the human being in North America or Africa. By being kind to the former, he could be savage with the latter. Notice the case of the Afghans: people are individuals, and that’s a fact that Americans did not wish to take into account. Animals are uniform: they are the same in every hemisphere. Marjan could equally have been an American lion. Not so the Afghan – heaven forbid! She is Muslim, veiled, says her prayers five times a day, wears her hair long, and has never seen the inside of a Wal-Mart store."

Muslim Amnesia

"When the streets of Damascus were lined with lamps, London was a village."

- Peter O' Toole in Lawrence of Arabia

I was chatting with a devout Turkish girl. She had resisted her family since the age of eighteen, and worn a headscarf. I thought she must truly be a Muslim. I was wrong.

We got on the subject of dictators, as the Arabs were trying to topple them. She asked me if I liked dictators. I said I loved them. She did a double take. She couldn't believe how I could love dictators. Incidentally, she said that probably I knew more about her ancestors than she did.

It seems that was correct.

I know that under the Sultans, Muslim civilisation made room for diverse religions and created one of the long-lasting civilizations of the world.

And all this was achieved under dictators, autocrats, despots....

The tragic thing about Muslims is their loss of memory. They have lost all sense of time. They don't realise that 1,400 years of Muslim history - a glorious, benign and noble history - have passed. They are either fundamentalists, or 'modern' Muslims like the Turkish girl. The latter group look to Europe and America for inspiration.

When I said that she was hopelessly westernised, she reacted quickly. "Hey," she said, "I am not westernised." Yet, unbeknownst to her, she was.

Why are Muslims so servile?

The encounter with the west has so knocked the stuffing out of us that we have lost all self-respect. We have become thoroughly defensive. We have forgotten that Hazrat Uthman liberated thousands of slaves, and that the west was based on slavery. Ours, and the Chinese civilization, were benign. In this, lies our greatness.

tragedies and statistics

STALIN: The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million men is a statistic.

COROLLARY 1: Jihadis are only capable of tragedies; Americans and Europeans are only capable of statistic.


"Health Ministry Statistics say that the incidence of abnormal births has increased 400-fold since 1991. The Iraqis also say that, all told, 1.7m children have died because of the various effects of UN sanctions."

The Economist, September 14th 2002

COROLLARY 2: Therefore, Americans and Europeans are admired; jihadis are not.

COROLLARY 3: Only if (and when) jihadis are capable of statistics will they be respected.