Catholics subject to insensitivity (The Sunday Tribune, Ireland, 12 February 2006)

“ALL people, all religions, have to be open to criticism but it must be constructive and sensitive. [A debate] . . . cannot be achieved by extremism in either culture.”

“We in the Sunday Tribune are against censorship and believe passionately in freedom of speech. But the publication of cartoons that Muslims find so offencive was not correct. For that reason we are not reproducing them today”
(Sunday Tribune Editorial 5 February).

Is the Tribune serious? Do you recall the obscene and vicious attacks on Nora Wall (Sister Dominic). “Vile Nun”, “Pervert Nun”, “I was Raped by Anti-Christ”. Did you imagine that these came from people who were concerned about child abuse? Do you remember the article by the Sunday World ’s crime correspondent Paul Williams “Rape Nun’s Abuse Pact by Smyth”. He claimed that Nora Wall had procured children for Fr Brendan Smyth! Nora Wall sued and got damages of 175,000. I don’t recall the Sunday Tribune (or any “Liberal” newspaper) highlighting the issue. Did you even mention it and if so when?

Several years ago, The Irish Times did an article about “Piss Christ”, an artistic masterpiece that showed a crucifix in a bucket of urine. American Christians who wanted to deny public money to the artist were called “fascists” by The Irish Times. What was the constructive and sensitive response by the Tribune?

Do you really think that liberals can (literally) spew vomit over Christianity and their own culture and then demand tolerance of Muslims?

Berthold Brecht was the leading intellectual in the Weimar Republic. He was also a Stalinist bootlicker. His own mistress Carola Neher, star of The Threepenny Opera, visited the Soviet Union, was arrested and disappeared forever into the Gulag. Brecht did not protest or lift a finger to help her (it would have meant allying himself with “reactionaries”). The obscene treatment of Nora Wall, Sister Stanislaus Kennedy and Sister Xaviera by Irish “liberals” is on the same moral level and you are equally unfitted to fight against our modern fascists.

Rory Connor, 11 Lohunda Grove, Dublin 15.

www.tribune.ie

http://hindustantimes.com/news/181_1630952,0008.htm

http://in.news.yahoo.com/060220/43/62m7f.html

and some from England:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/19/nsharia219.xml

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch politician forced to go into hiding after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, responds to the Danish cartoon scandal, arguing that if Europe doesn’t stand up to extremists, a culture of self-censorship of criticism of Islam that pervades in Holland will spread in Europe. Auf Wiedersehen, free speech.

http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers17%5Cpaper1699.html
is worth reading w.r.t. this last point.

#58, Amitabha, I find the following book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/185640000X/002-8216153-7489621?v=glance&n=283155
Distorted Imagination: Lessons from the Rushdie Affair
by Ziauddin Sardar
# Hardcover: 303 pages
# Publisher: Grey Seal (January 1, 1990)
# Language: English
# ISBN: 185640000X

So is the claim that Ziauddin Sardar had additional writings on the Rushdie Affair that did not find a publisher?