Ask Not at Whom They Throw Soles--They Throw Soles at Thee

Around the Arab world, if you want to escalate a situation, by saying for example "I'm going to thump you", add the words "with a shoe" and you're literally adding insult to injury, at least the threat of injury.

It's that cultural significance that has added real sting to assault by an Iraqi journalist against US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.

In Arab culture it's considered rude even to display the sole of one's shoe to a fellow human being.

Certainly, crossing one's legs ankle-on-knee style should never be done in a public place for fear of offending the person next to you.

The sensitivity is related to the fact shoes are considered ritually unclean in the Muslim faith. In addition to ritual ablutions before prayer, Muslims must take off their shoes to pray, and wearing shoes inside a mosque is forbidden.

Shoes should either be left at the door of the mosque, or carried (preferably in the left hand with the soles pressed together).

But beyond the Islamic significance, the dirty and degrading implication of the sole of a shoe crosses all religious boundaries in the Middle East. (“Bush shoe-ing worst Arab insult”).

See how much we can learn from the BBC?

Read any of the thousands of articles published today explaining the Islamic significance of throwing your shoes at someone, and you would think the Western media had a mission to educate kuffars on the fine points of Muslim antagonism towards infidels.

Far from it. The AP, The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, and the rest are only piling on because they imagine they’re on the same side as Muntadar al-Zaidi. They have passively-aggressively denominated this ungrateful son of a bitch a hero by unanimous republication of Arab press propaganda calling him a hero. These media people are the journalistic equivalent of those white guys in the audience at Def Jam, laughing their asses off every time some comic in Timberlands starts off, “you ever notice how white people always…?”

As we well know around here, those same news organizations have made it their solemn duty to mention as little as possible about what they know about the worldview and motivations of Islam. Mumbai terrorists shouting “Allahu Akhbar” are “gunmen”, or even “alleged gunmen.” The mission and motivations of jihadist murderers are passed over in delicate silence by the media, the way Victorians are supposed to have refused uttering even the politer names for female body parts.

Reuters banned the word “terrorist” years ago. And read mainstream reports of suicide bombings, massacres, and beheadings and we learn only that they’re committed by a variety of “militants”, “insurgents”, and “freedom fighters” sharing no ideology in common except their apparent hatred of the Republican Party platform.

Had the BBC spent this much time explaining to their audience the Islamic significance of

--cutting off Daniel Pearl’s head, (he was a Jew)

--or the meaning in the Muslim world of the 9/11 attacks, (bin Laden: “Jihad against the Kuffar in every part of the world, is absolutely essential” )

--or the Islamic significance of the Khomeinist revolution, (“Death to America”)

--or how the Koran invited the cartoon riots, (because insults against Allah must be avenged)

--or the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood and its kind (submission of the whole world to Islam by force)

--or the Islamic mission of Hamas (no solution to Palestinian question except the obliteration of Israel through jihad)

--or what the Saudi-funded Wahhabist madrasses teach kids (militant jihad against infidels is the summit of Islam)

--or the Qu’ran’s teaching about freedom of religion (apostates must be killed)

--or the Prophet’s opinions of unbelievers, (infidel lives are of no value)

--or the imams’ religious theories about Jews (they are the offspring of apes and pigs),

who knows how much better of we'd all be now.

There are many things that the audience of the BBC and CNN, and the readers of the New York Times don’t know about Muslims, things far more important than what a good job ungrateful Arabs are doing right now insulting George W. Bush. As it is, Times readers and NPR listeners are still foggily mistaken that what’s been going on the past seven years has been Bush’s war, rather than Our War.

They carelessly credit Muntadar al-Zaidi with hating George W. Bush for the same reasons they all hate him: for being an evangelical, for cutting taxes, for being pro-life, for being the anti-Clinton, for not giving a flying bleep what the Europeans or the editorial board at The New Republic think of him.

But that's not who al-Zaidi was throwing shoes at, or why. He will think no more highly of Obama when his time comes. And even if Obama bows and scrapes to the Muslim world, as some of us fear he will, the al-Zaidis will hate him all the more for being weak, as bin Laden despised America under Clinton. They've hated every American president since at least Jefferson. I clearly remember them burning Carter in effigy in Tehran, too. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

But these fools in the media think that because Muslims also hate George W. Bush, that they share a common brotherhood of peace and progressive values.

The fools.

Meanwhile, I am disgusted at the thought of how long the footage of George W. Bush ducking shoes will be replayed deathlessly in our childish media.

But regardless, no one can take this away from Bush: he at least had the sound instinct to duck, and did duck, in fact, without a trace of shock or flinching, smiling all the while.

While these boobs at the Times and BBC don't even know they have shoeprints all over their faces.