Men, Mosques And Mad Muslims At The Mountains Of Madness

"Such is our condition that we are not permitted to arrive all at once at something reasonable no matter what it is. Before that it is necessary that we go astray for a long time, that we pass by all sorts of errors and degrees of impertinence."
- Fontenelle

"And we came at last to those ivory hills that are named the Mountains of Madness."
- " A Dreamer's Tales" by Lord Dunsany

By Charley Brady

Up until now, this column has only ever reached the foothills of the Mountains of Madness; but now, with this news of what is planned for Ground Zero, I think that we may have reached the pinnacles...

I've got a great idea! It's sure to be a money-earner, so you can't go wrong. Invest now! My email address is below.

Let's try to make everybody "inclusive" - that's the buzz word today, isn't it? - in atrocity and human tragedy by building a Walt Disney theme park right next to the site of Auschwitz Holiday Camp. I think it could work. We could put up signs that say: "Get in here and play your violin because Work Shall Make You Free".

We could have a fun roller coaster ride over what used to be the gas ovens. Hell, let's go the whole way and have those chimneys smoking again!

What was that I heard you saying? This is in the past? Exactly!

Nobody cares about ancient history anymore, do they? So a few Jews died horrible deaths, well, screw them. They're dead, what the hell do they have to worry about?

Come again? They have relatives who to this day suffer mentally for what was done to their grandparents? What was done to an entire race of people? Screw them, too. Life goes on, why worry about the past? Why indeed...

You see how crazy and insensitive that sounds?

Crazy? Insensitive?

So why does the Mayor of New York and his Planning Commissioners think that it's a good idea to build a 13 or 15-story (reports differ) Islamic Cultural centre, complete with Mosque right next to the site of one of the deadliest attacks on American soil imaginable?

It is so self-evidently wrong that it should really require no thought at all, despite Fox TVs attempts to justify it.

Sure, you could tell me to butt out as I don't live there. However, what happened that terrible day affected everybody, not just Americans; and everybody remembers where they were when they heard about the attack. For me, I was in a store in Dublin trying to find a shirt (and how banal that sounds now) when the large screen there showed what at first I thought was part of a Bruce Willis movie.

The silence that set in with everybody there when it dawned on us that this was actually an attack on America, well I never will forget it. For some reason, my long dead grandmother's home made chocolate biscuit cake flashed across my mind. I could almost taste it at the same time that I realised that from that moment on no one was safe, that none of us was as invulnerable as we had thought we were. Strange, isn't it?

Later, on a visit to New York I found myself at Ground Zero. I hadn't intended to see it, not wishing to be a death tourist, but I was in the store Century 21 and one thing led to another. I recall finding myself inexplicably crying. It was the sheer scale of it, I suppose, and the realization of the enormity of what had happened just kicked in.

If it affected me like that I could only barely glimpse what it was like for people whose friends or relatives never came back to them.

For permission to be given to the American Society for Muslim Advancement to go ahead with this project is to me just beyond belief.

For a start, surely Muslim Advancement is an oxymoron of the highest order in any case. But we'll let that go for the moment.

How can this possibly help to heal anyone? Who dreamed up this ridiculous "inclusive" charade? You are simply handing over your city and your country to the very people who despise what you stand for; and you dishonour the dead of 9/11 at the same time that you make a joke of your sons and daughters who are dying overseas.

But we all seem to have turned into soft touches where our Islamic friends are involved. Political correctness has become so utterly ridiculous now that we have a scenario like that in Britain last week where a pair of suspected al-Qa'ida terrorists can't be booted out back to Pakistan because - well, you know what's coming, don't you? - it would "infringe their human rights".

Abid Naseer and Ahmed Faraz Khan have been given permission to stay in the United Kingdom even though the court agreed that they were planning an attack on Manchester.

The judge also declared that he was "satisfied" that in particular Naseer "still poses a serious threat to the United Kingdom" but went on to say that his hands were tied because these two beauties might be tortured if they were to be deported.

Well, that's all right then, isn't it? My friends and relatives are at risk from these creatures and their like because, first and foremost we must look out for their human rights. We, of course, don't have any.

At the pinnacles of the Mountains of Madness? We're over those and are now getting a helicopter ride down over the far slippery slopes.

I keep on hearing about how much moderate Muslims want to be taken seriously in the country that they that they are living in. Well, since you are bent on having US being sensitive towards YOU and your needs, may I respectfully suggest that you do not look down on our ways, as you do here in Ireland?

May I also respectfully suggest that in New York you moderate Muslims show sensitivity towards the city that you live in and tell your masters that: "No, we will not show disrespect to those who lost people on 9/11 because to endorse, encourage, say prayers near or give even tacit approval to a mosque being built on this site is just to add hurt to those who are already hurting."

Is that too much? Just say that you do not wish this, if you truly are moderates. It's not a lot to ask because after all we have bent over backwards to accommodate you in a manner that is befitting one human being to another, even though we know that we would never be granted the same consideration in a Muslim country.

And don't give me that crap which I'm already hearing. You know, the bulls*** that says that Muslims died that day as well. I know bloody well they did. Some of them were flying the planes.

I'm fed up with bending over for people who get upset because their prophet is shown as a joker in a bear outfit. "South Park" is a cartoon, for heaven's sake. If you can't handle that kind of humour then switch the television off.

Can't you lot take a joke? Jeez, we got over the Paddy the Irishman and Jock the Scot stuff eons ago. Try to catch up!

I even had the pleasure of listening to a Puerto Rican laugh his head off recently when I cracked the old one: "What happens when you throw a Puerto Rican off the roof? He'll spray paint the building on the way down!"

Not very funny and of course later he tried to knife me but when even Puerto Ricans have a better sense of humour than the mad Muslims then you know that there's dark days ahead.

Thank heavens for militant Buddhists, that's what I say!

Sure, Gob and begorrah, I do be making fun of the Irish as well, so I do be; and the blessings of the little people on ye all!

And don't get me started on the Scots. Short arms and deep pockets, the tight bastards!

The English? Well, no need to make fun of them. They've already done a pretty good job of that all on their own.

Or as Prince Charles tearfully said to little William when he was born: " I want you to have all the things that I didn't have... like India."

The point is, we all make fun of each other. You bunch of heathen, desert religion worshippers should get that; but the laughter stops when you contemplate desecrating - and I don't use that word lightly - a burial ground.

Quite seriously, moderate Muslims near and far, make your feelings clear that you do not wish this travesty stuck in the face of the bereaved that lost their sons/daughters/friends/ neighbours on that terrible day.

If you show respect then it will be given back to you.

If truth be told, I shouldn't even have to ask you to consider this: decent human beings would not have to be asked; they would have taken this on themselves. Are you all so immersed in your religion that you cannot accept that this is simply a stupid and insensitive thing to do?

Why do we always have to be overly intellectual in order to come to a conclusion that we knew was right from the start?

Now a couple of guys who aren't being shown the proper respect this week are two of our elder statesmen. Yes, that's right: people were nasty to Bono the Bore and Geldof the Gob.

First, up steps Andy Storey, lecturer in Development Studies at University College Dublin, who was very unhappy with the diminutive one.

Quothe Andy: "He is a useful idiot for world leaders who like to look cool when photographed alongside him."

Way to go, Andy! I'm with you so far!

"He is calling for increased aid but, at the same time, he is legitimising the very people who are helping to maintain the huge disparity between rich and poor."

Surely not. Are you saying that the Exalted One is... like, fallible? What would His apostles do if that were the case? This could demoralise the planet!

Andy isn't too impressed with Canada giving him a vanity project either, editing the "Globe and Mail" for a special African edition. Well, it was His birthday after all and what do you get for the Ego that has everything?

"It's typical of the man's narcissism", concluded Andy Storey.

Oh dear, you simply must try harder, Bono. Or even better, just go away and stop annoying us.

I've just heard that you've had to cancel U2's latest bore- fest because you've put your back out and are in Munich having it treated. As a matter of fact, I hear that it's bloody painful.

God forgive me but it doesn't take much to make me happy.

And then there's Geldof, who obviously has come off his medication and decided that since he's had a few kicks in the teeth over where the aid actually goes to as regards Africa, now decides that Australia of all places is in need of his advise.

He's over there at the moment, expletives flying, as he lectures the Aussies on what they are doing wrong.

With weary inevitability he is telling them that they will only find their "spiritual core" when they acknowledge the indigenous people of the country; and so far I'm with him there. But does he have to come across as such a lecturing full of himself gobshite?

He was at one of these hilarious power breakfasts in Brisbane the other morning and mouthing out of him as to how the Aussies could learn from him and not be so "economically stupid".

Bejeepers, I thought that it was we guys who could learn from the Australians. Then again, I'm not Saint Bob.

He urged the "rich bastards" at the breakfast to "contribute whole-heartedly" to educating black people.

What is it with this guy that for all his intelligence he doesn't recognise a hectoring, patronising tone when he opens that large mouth of his? Jeez, here am I asking Muslims to respect the country that they are in and now we have an Irishman giving orders right, left and far from centre.

As for the "rich bastards"comment, does he not realise that he himself is a multi- millionaire through his astute handling of Planet 24? Well, you didn't think that he got there because of his music did you?

That might be half the guy's problem: frustration at not being taken seriously as an artist. He did the first three albums with the Boomtown Rats and they were bloody great (my own personal favourite being "I Never Loved Eva Braun" from "A Tonic for the Troops") and what since? Just taking out his frustration on everybody.

Australia has been working to improve the lives of the Aborigines, and I'm damned sure that they don't need Geldof lecturing them when they have their greatest and most courageous journalist, a true hero in my eyes - John Pilger - putting their case so much better and guess what? Without the cursing and the grandstanding that comes so naturally to Geldof.

Nor does this saint do anything for free. Just refer back to an earlier column and you will know all about his last visit down under and what he charged for his pearls of wisdom.

Says Bob: "You've removed from your society - from having a go - 500,000 of your own. That's absurd. It's economically stupid."

Well, in this case I am glad that he was lecturing Australians and not the usual saps who hang on his every word. Because he sure got his answer. For a start they were understandably unhappy that he compared the treatment of Aborigines to what he had seen in Africa. Not a good idea, SIR Bob.

New South Wales: "Stick to your own country, Bob - you don't have no idea what's going on."

Canberra: "Dude, you have no right to comment on this topic. Worry about your own country."

What country would that be, I wondered; but Sydney made it more plain: "Geldof needs to stay in the UK and put that house in order before he tries and tells what Australia needs to do."

And perfectly put: "Geldof didn't seem to be so critical of the evil corporations when he was making his fortune in the music industry. Still, he may have mellowed over the years, but this diatribe didn't suggest it."

You got that, Sir Bob? They're telling you to stay in your own country. After all, as Margaret Thatcher said of you, "True Brit, true grit."

Now, with those two beauties put to rest, can we have a promise from the Islamic community not to go ahead with this ridiculous plan for Ground Zero?

Then I'll show YOU some respect. Hell, I may even stop calling you a bunch of insensitive camel-humpers.

If the Prophet has not struck me dead then I hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net