For any budding entrepreneur armed with miles of coloured material (particularly red, white & blue)and a sewing machine, there is a market in the Middle East and Indian sub continent just ripe for the plucking.
Whoever has the contract for making and distributing the UK flag in Asia must be making Rupee & Iranian Rial over fist because once again the Union Jack and a naked flame are coming together in an orgy of chanting.
The reason that our national flag is being consumed in fire this time is the knighthood of author and long time fatwa recipient, Salmon Rushdie.
His 1988 book, The Satanic Verses, saw the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini urge fellow
Muslims to kill the writer for insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad and send Rushdie scuttling away into hiding.
Having never read anything written by Rushdie, whether he deserves the Knighthood or not is not something i can comment on, but as i can lay my hands on miles of Union Jack bunting left over from the Queens Golden Jubilee, i am hoping to knock it out to Tehran for a small fortune next time the masses congregate to denounce us.
8 comments:
It's amazing that anyone even takes Knighthood seriously since "Sir Mick Jagger" hit the streets.
Two points here:
1. Rushdie is an astounding writer, and he uses the English language possibly more playfully and expertly than almost any other living wordsmith. Both Satanic Verses and Moor's Last Sigh were fantastic. I can see where the more fundamentalist muslims are upset (Rushdie takes a very cavalier attitude toward the sanctity of the religion and the depiction of Muhammad), but there is simply no excuse for their behavior at all. I mean, any time disagreement degenerates into threats of physical violence of any kind it is simply the sign of a small mind and shallow character.
2. Salmon is a fish. Salman is a person :)
Ook ook
I did wonder if anybody would spot my spelling of Salman and think it a bit fishy. Couldn't resist tinkering with his name.
Poor Jack, if he is not being burnt he is being used by the National Front so that any sense of patriotism leaves a nasty taste in our mouths... leave him alone I say!
The reason that our national flag is being consumed in fire this time is the knighthood of author and long time fatwa recipient, Salmon Rushdie.
Another reason is that so many attach quasi-religious significance to a piece of cloth. There's little difference, if you think about it, between x group of people getting upset because someone burns a flag, and y group of people getting upset because some author writes about fictional events in a work of fiction that they deem to be blasphemy against their religion. Both groups are equally irrational.
So my advice to the British is to respond to the flag-burners in Iran with an almighty shrug of the shoulders. Leave flag-worship and religious superstition to the infantile. ;)
Or, as George Carlin put it, "to the symbol-minded."
That's an excellent point, AV. It's going in my quiver.
I find the whole fatwa crap sickening. Ordering someone's death because of words that were written on paper, is the height of stupidity and barbarism. I do hate intolerant theocracies.
I know some people get their knickers in a twist over seeing their flag being burned, i don't really get that moved by it.
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