They Need Support!

Check those links and support prisoners of thought in Morocco:

> Prisoners of May the First who demanded constitutional reform in their country got harsh sentences and were fined heavily for daring to challenge the regime.

> Fouad Mourtada, who maybe stupidly usurped the identity of the Prince Rachid when he created a fake profile on FaceBook, but he received disproportionate sentences. I don't believe he would have been punished so harshly had the victim been an ordinary Moroccan.

The Good Arab Department

If you read papers like those of Oriana fallacci, Daniel Pipes, Alain Finkielkraut, Bat Ye'or and others about a so-called Arab/Muslim conspiracy to take over Europe, and some other complicated theories about a hypothetical European-Arab Axis (Eurabia) aimed at crushing... guess who... Israel (surprise! surprise!), you have the feeling that their arguments are so ludicrous that it is unlikely that their assumptions would ever caught fire.


The surprise comes when you talk with people whom you assume, are of higher education and distinctive intellect, reproducing and embracing the same moronic theories.

I was called a "Good Arab" and I barely retained my rage at the person who uttered the words and who probably acted more out of ignorance than out of any conscientious racism; albeit "positive". Adding insult to injury, the lady (a doctor) went on to explain that "most Arabs (she knew) were so attached to their cultures of origin that it makes them so inherently ineligible for integration into the western civilization," and she went on hinting at "a probable concerted attitude by the Muslims (she often switches inadvertently from Arab to Muslim) to re-establish their [incompatible] culture on European soil..."

...Gosh!

I was wordless. "now" I finally replied, "are you (meaning: you, white, Christian, catholic I guess) going to create a special set of characteristics to distinguish 'Good Arabs' like me from the other pesky folks?"

"Maybe you should park all of us in different departments" I added, "and also pin labels on our clothes so that we would be easily distinguishable... huh!"

"My word! what makes people like you any different from the Nazis?" At which point, to my greatest relief, we parted company.

I spent the last two or three weeks wandering around Morocco, enjoying my newly acquired status of a married man (which is the main reason that kept me away from blogging that long), but today I realize again how Europe despite all the advantages it unquestionably offered me, remains a mined field in spite of all the horrors of the past.