Al that Jaz'
Degrading women long before Ray Rice incident
AN interesting thing, I reckon, occurred over the weekend. I received a message from Al Jazeera America, asking that I appear the next morning to discuss the Ray Rice issue. It was too late, as I didn’t retrieve the message until two days after it was sent.
But, wait a second … Ray Rice? Al Jazeera? Al Jazeera wanted my take on the Ray Rice calamity?
Even in a world gone nuts, even in a world jumping headfirst — many heads having been decapitated — into a cauldron of religious, racial, political and ideological insanity, such a request was comically perverse.
Be careful for what you ask. I have a rude habit of changing the subject, and when asked by Al Jazeera to speak about Ray Rice, I’d have thrown a changeup — or a beanball.
How could a network owned by the buyeverything country of Qatar — an Islamic kingdom ruled by the same fabulously wealthy AlThani family since 1871 — ask anyone about the abuse of an American woman by an American man when Qatar’s oppression and degradation of women, from the instant they’re born, is a matter of Dark AgesthroughOttoman Empire religion, custom and law?
“Oh, yeah, that Ray Rice thing …”
Then I’d have gotten into something else, or tried.
Qatar’s not only condemned and dangerlisted as a theocratic, fascist monarchy by what’s left of Westernstyle democracies, it’s an oilsoaked country that welcomes all — provided they work its oil and gas fields and on its building projects at slavewages and under slavelabor working and living conditions.
Qatar also is consistently identified by the United States, among other teetering democracies, of funding and arming radical Muslims eager to inflict mass murder, as per Allah’s wishes, naturally, wherever “infidels” live, at least live for now. Islamic terror squads don’t seem to run out of money or suicide bombers.
Qatar makes every Western democracy’s terrorist list, every Western human rights inspectors’ worst list. So what about Ray Rice? It would have been impolitic, even impudent, but I’m sure I’d have asked my Al Jazeera host to forget Rice, for the moment, to answer
my questions about the position and complicity of Al Jazeera’s ownership in events such as the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, hotels, churches, synagogues, shrines, temples, buses, trains, boats, planes and population centers from Bali to Mumbai, Germany to Argentina, the Sudan to the Philippines, Barcelona to Brussels, London to Moscow.
Qatar’s state religion is Wahhabi, also known as Salafi, Islamic sects politely called “conservative.” In practical, bloodsoaked terms, they’re “extremist” or “radical.” As per most current events, Hamas, Iran and Qatar are tight. Qatar was a great friend and fi nancier, too, of Saddam Hussein.
Tens of thousands murdered and maimed by “jihadists” — those who know an “infidel” when Islamic Republics, insurgents, cells and their ministers say they do. Yet, Al Jazeera, owned by such religionists — those who sustain ancient disregard for women as born to be neither seen nor heard — wants my opinion on Ray Rice’s twogame NFL suspension for coldcocking his fiancée?
Funny it should ask.