Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald

September 20, 2009

Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: “Happy Eid-al-Fatir” – What your Sunday morning Page 1, above the fold headline means for America, the world, and the universe in this, the first year of the soon to be known as the Golden Age of Lord Barack the Beneficent and blessed be his name and perhaps it’s time to update and revise Gibbon.

Sirs,

Why do I just know that Happy Eid-al-Fatir doesn’t mean Happy Halloween, Good Shabos, or Have a Great Arbor Day?

It has something to do with Islam and Muslims.

The latter, true believers in the former, invaded Europe less than a century after their first Friday noon prayer service. Christianity was 1000 years old before we invaded the Middle East. We went, also on divine command [Deo vult] to secure our sacred shrines. They, having no footprint in Europe, were there to slaughter our forebears into submission and salvation.

I don’t imagine it means “Wait ‘til Next Year” when thinking of Tours, Lepanto, or Omdurman.

It probably doesn’t refer to the unasked question of what the peace loving Muslim were doing at the gates of Vienna when Bach was constructing his immortal offerings. Had they prevailed would we even know of Bach?

If it means that Islam and its Muslim adherents are now full participants in the irregularly shaped, part political, part cultural universe known as secular humanism can we not apply the same rules to them that we apply to other religions in America?

#1 – Tax payer funds have been used to publicize an artist’s [Robert Serra] offering called “Piss Christ”. It shows a crucifix suspended in a see-through vat filled with urine. Would not fairness, diversity, and the always desirable level playing field call for an offering suited to Muslim tastes? How about a Koran suspended in a see-through vat filled with piggy pee? It might be a signal that they have arrived. Why should Christians have all the fun?

#2 – Do you remember Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live? How about a character based on Imam Abdul Humpagoat? The CD would go Platinum and I smell Pulitzer.

#3 – If the Miami Herald can proclaim “Happy Eid-al-Fitr” on Page 1 perhaps you can tell me which Muslim controlled country has a newspaper that proclaims, also on Page 1, “Merry Christmas” or “Good Yunteff”? Take your time.

#4 – Does “Happy Eid-al-Fitr mean that you will be finally publishing the over the top, outrageously funny, God mocking cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed? It has been said that he favored bums, particularly on little boys. I can’t imagine why newspapers such as yours, once thought to be paradigmatic templates for free speech and how it makes us better and stronger people, have not published them yet. Silly me!

The possibility exists that Allah and his ass kissing “piss boy”, toad Mohammed, are only minor league deities. The Judeo-Christian God survived Dante’s La Commedia. A case can be made that it strengthened it. Since you had to have been dead by 1300 A.D. to get a mention in his book it signaled the beginning of the Renaissance. 14 centuries after Mohammed went to the mountain, said mountain having failed to come to him, we await anxiously a book, any book, from Islam that parallels the one that starts with “Half way through my journey I found myself in the dark wood of error”.

I run the risk of slip-sliding an argument based on “post hoc…” into this message. Since Logic does not exist in the Muslim-American world that would be taking unfair advantage

I suppose “Happy Eid-al-Fitr” doesn’t mean “Let’s Find a Muslim Swift” either.

Pity.





Kevin Smith



PS – How about a bumper sticker that says “Allah is not so Akbar”?