It Was 40 Years Ago Next Month...

I've heard a lot of talk about how the reaction in much of the Middle East over a Danish cartoon has been proof of sinister hearts. This action reminds of so many news images yesteryear when American flags and full-sized uniformed effigies of presidents were burned almost non-stop in Iran and the rest of the neighborhood.

We in the west could not possibly understand this religious passion which compells people to to burn images of the someone who scorned a religious group...

...yet I take you back to the Summer following March 4, 1966, when a comment by a Beatle sparked a wave of bonfires across the Bible Belt in the United States. I don't defend the actions of rioters, however a little bit of understanding of other cultures before you force your superior beliefs on them is wise. Of course, infidels will be infidels.

Is the destruction by angry mobs of people in Syria, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran and Afganistan simply the reaction to the a religious slur? I doubt it. The Beatle Bonfires of '66, though proof of the short-sight of the fundie mind, were non-violent (despite the provocations of the KKK). What is going on now resembles the race riots of the Sixties, when people who were angry at being held down for so long were ready to release.

Muslims in the Middle East have had their fill of the Western world taking over and are ready to take back what is theirs. The elections by Palestinians was only the start. What is going on now is exactly the kind of thing that the Taliban wanted, but failed to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Expect things to get worse if the West doesn't learn how to stop being a bully and a parent.