Part
Two:
Andy
Capp’s American cousins: “Do your share,Yank. Make Mohammed feel at home.”
Now that Andy Capp has been told he must do more to make Muslim immigrants feel at home in the UK, his American cousins thought they might pitch in and lend a hand. They had some ideas they thought Andy could use and they wanted to try some of them out. Knowing how much Andy enjoyed his suds some of them were sure to be right up his alley. They would try them and if they worked they would send them to Andy. Number one was simplicity itself. They would invite one of their Muslim neighbors down to Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club for a pint of ale. Better make that a pitcher—ordering beer by the pint would confuse old Lenny. Lenny is Joe’s bartender; he is easily confused; he hasn’t been the same since he took a hockey to the side of the head back in…what was it, ’61?
So they looked around for someone to invite and, lo and behold, they saw Ibrahim Hooper’s name in the newspaper. How about Ibrahim someone said? That sounded good; their first choice hadn’t worked out. Ibrahim was a big fish in the CAIR pool. They would have to be careful how they treated him. Humor was the best way to go so they sent him a cute message. “Come out from under that list of un-indicted co-conspirators, Ibrahim. We know you’re in there somewhere—we can hear Stephen Emerson talking in the background. But cheer up, buddy, you have been cordially invited—“ and on and on. They had wanted Nihad Awad.
Friday was Pin the Tail on the Donkey Night at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club. A committee of three would select the most obnoxiously ridiculous public figure of the past few days and they would pin a tail on the wretch—not on the actual person, one can get in trouble for doing that (and they have) but on his likeness, a picture of a donkey with the honoree’s head glued to the correct portion of the animal’s anatomy. The recipient was to be Robert Mueller of the FBI. The boys had invited Nihad Awad but when Izzy Goldstein said he would pin the tail on Nihad’s head instead of Mueller’s hind end if Nihad showed up, Joe cancelled the invitation and they invited Ibrahim. Everyone expected to have a great time.
Then, in a stroke of genius, one the boys suggested a
sing-along on the order of High School Musical!
It was a great idea but when Hannah Montana didn’t
return any of their 57 calls they gave up. They should have kept trying. The
idea was to put part of the Qur’an to music! As far as they knew it had never
been done before. Imagine—the Qur’an to music! Wow! It would have been
Shakespeare in suras—only better. One of the selections was from Muslim:
B1N142:
“’O womenfolk, you should ask forgiveness for I saw you in bulk amongst the dwellers of Hell. A wise lady said: ‘Why is it, Allah’s Apostle, that women comprise the bulk of the inhabitants of Hell? The Prophet observed: “You curse too much and are ungrateful to your spouses. You lack common sense, fail in religion and rob the wisdom of the wise.”
It was Hemingway unchained!
Well. Mr. Andy Capp felt he could do without that kind of help. “Blimey!’ he said. “Why don’t you chaps go to Jihad Watch, to the Religion of Peace, to Amil Amani, to the Gates of Vienna, to maxflack, to Islam Watch…go, go, go somewhere, but go.”
Well, it was better than being told to go to Hell. So Andy’s American cousins did as he suggested.
The first thing they saw was a Muslim bus driver stop his bus in the middle of London, order his passengers out, and then get down on his knees to pray. After a few minutes he got up, opened the door and invited the passengers back in. He had no takers. This was a head-scratcher. Was it an old episode of Seinfeld that had never been aired or had the driver gone off his rocker? And it didn’t get any better:
Police had reported that an Army cadet had been ‘racially abused’ (whatever that was) by three ‘Asians” (whoever they were) while collecting sponsorship money for a charity walkathon…A Muslim asylum seeker from Iran had received 25,000 pounds in welfare benefits even though he had a 500,000 pound bank account. He has also been working while on the dole…Jack Straw, Minister of Justice, had apologized to Muslim prisoners at Armley Jail. Yes! Apologized! What on earth for? They had been mistakenly offered ham sandwiches during a holiday festival! It was regrettable said Straw; the prison staff will be retrained! The ham sandwich had been one of three offerings. Three? They only get one offering in the US Marine Corps…A report said half of London’s clergymen had been attacked by Muslim youths during the preceding twelve months…British airmen at RAF Wittering were told not to wear their uniforms off base to avoid being verbally abused by civilians. Abused by civilians? What was this? Had Jane Fonda moved to England?
And there were ‘honor killings.’ A Saudi father shot and killed his daughter for chatting with a ‘man’ on an Internet Facebook; a Jordanian man shot and killed his 23-year-old sister and her boyfriend when he caught them ‘red-handed.’ Red-handed? Forensic tests proved she was still a virgin! There were 17 ‘honor killings’ in Jordan last year…The latest United Nations Human Rights report charged the Sudanese Army with direct involvement in recent mass rapes of women and girls in the Darfur region of Sudan. Someone remembered Aqsa Parvez…and Lee Boyd Malvo…and Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar.
And there were the threats. From Hezballah: “Let them be frightened and worried. Let them taste fear and fright. Israel can be eliminated.” From Abu Bakar Bashir of Indonesia: “The youth movement here must aspire to a martyrdom death.” Tourists are “worms, snakes, maggots—those are animals that crawl. Take a look at Bali…those infidel tourists. God willing, there are none here, if there were infidels here, beat them up. Do not tolerate them.” Infidels? Tourists? Bali?
And of course, there was Geert Wilders and Fitna…It was as if a million Godfathers had risen from the dead to put a hit on Mario Puzo. The boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille were stunned. Someone remembered Salman Rushdie…and the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons…and Theo van Gogh and Submission…and 9/11. They forgot cousin Andy. Inviting Ibrahim Hooper to the bar for a cold one wouldn’t have any more effect on the situation in England—or in America—than a raindrop in Hell. This was bigger than Joe’s Bar and Grille. They would need William Tecumseh Sherman and his the Army of the Tennessee and the 2nd Armored Division and that would only be a start.
What in the Hell had America’s politicians been doing the last twenty years? Bush and Clinton and Powell…Carter and Bonnier and McDermott…They now knew damn well what the last three had been doing.
And there…that sound coming from Florida…from the University of Miami…from the clock tower over the Richter Library…was that the Muslim call to prayer? Yes, it was!
Somebody remembered Robert Escamilla. The same people who would reprimand a teacher for bringing a Bible to a classroom were thrilled by the sound issuing from the tower over the library! What mad universe was this? Had the insanity made its way from England to the United States? Harvard was lining up behind the University of Miami; Dearborn, Michigan, was more like Cairo and Baqubah than Peoria; there were footbaths in airports, cab drivers refusing to transport passengers carrying spirits, Imams parading around landing strips, wearing their religion on their sleeves like Nazis brandishing armbands.
“Well, boys.” said Luke, “if we’re going to pin the tail on the donkey this week we’ll have to start calling it a jackass and pin it on ourselves.”
Was it a day on enlightenment? One hopes.