Janet Albrechtsen, and oy vey, agnus dei, it's on with the Muslim bashing again ...

In the old days, there used to be a rule relating to travel that ran "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".

It turns out that it had a religious source. Back in 387 AD when St. Augustine arrived in Milan, he noted that the Church didn't fast on a Saturday as was the custom in Rome. St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, said to him: When I am at Rome, I fast on a Saturday; when I am at Milan, I do not. Follow the custom of the Church where you are. Then it turned up in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy as When they are at Rome, they do there as they see done, and next thing you know, over time it turned into the advice don't stick out like a sore thumb that we know today.

As for sticking out like a sore thumb, its origins are wreathed in mystery, though likely of a swollen bandaged kind. The OED contents itself with a couple of examples from Erle Stanley Gardner, the Perry Mason man:

1936 E. S. GARDNER Case of Sleepwalker's Niece xiii. 128 'No,' he said, 'that's the one thing in the case that stands out like a sore thumb, now that I stop to think of it.'

1941 Case of Haunted Husband (1942) xvi. 126 A private detective in that atmosphere would stick out like a sore thumb on a waiter serving soup."

Pulp fiction loves its atmospheric cliches, but if you'd prefer The Anatomy of Melancholy by Burton, you can find this work here at Project Gutenberg.

But why the wandering down cliche lane? Well it's Janet Albrechtsen day, and avoidance is sometimes necessary, especially when Dame Slap's scribbling furiously about how all Muslims are extremist, including moderate ones, and how they irritate her to hell, in The extremes of moderate Islam ...

She starts off with an anecdote about an American man, one Luke Gregory Lloyd, who allegedly pulled out a loudspeaker cable when he was woken by the Koranic reading, and got into trouble in Indonesia.

Uh huh. Who hasn't run around in the streets of Australia screaming 'the bloody bells', 'the bloody bells, shut off those bloody bells' on a Sunday, especially when the bloody bells are just a tape recording, and not even an honest display of the art and craft of campanology. Of course at the time I was dismissed as a grouchy petulant atheist with an attitude towards weddings, but hey it was a difficult time ...

Nonetheless I was intrigued enough to check out another source, and found this bit in SBS News under the header US man arrested for pulling mosque plug:

The incident happened on August 22 and Lloyd has been under police guard at a hotel ever since, pending further investigations.

"He got angry as the Koranic reading woke him up. He scolded people in the mosque before pulling out the loudspeaker's cable," police officer Lalu Mahsun told reporters.

He could face five years in jail under the mainly Muslim country's blasphemy laws. Police also said Lloyd's visa had expired in 2006.

Uh huh. Loon gets Romans agitated, and Romans discover he's actually overstayed his time in Rome, so they put him up in a hotel. Shock, and dare I say it, horror ...

I guess if I'd wanted to scribble a piece about tolerance in the United States, instead of this kind of Odd Spot piece, I might have gone with the assassination of George Tiller by Scott Roeder, and developed a huge thesis around it.

It would have been just as flimsy and half-baked as Albrechtsen's wringing of hands, but I might have acquired some intellectual comfort from the notion that I could write as deformed a hate-mongering column as any managed by The Australian's star columnist. I'd probably have called it The extremes of moderate Christianity ...

So when Albrechtsen wrings her hands about the treatment of the Ahmadiyah sect, or the way a bunch of hardline Islamics take a view about Christians in Indonesia, I could bring up the wonders of Christine O'Donnell, the television face of fundamentalist ratbags like pastor Terry Jones or the cavortings of the Westboro Baptist Church.

But more likely I'd get distracted, and draw your attention to the Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian. Here's a couple:

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

That's the trouble with atheism. In the end, who cares a toss about Islam or Christianity, or the outburst in Australia of intolerance if you dare to question the notion that Mary MacKillop is some kind of sporting hero up there with Bradman ...

But the funniest spectacle in the Dame Slap piece? A valiant defence of Playboy, and it seems, since no nudity is allowed, the defence is for the articles:

... how is moderate Islam doing when it comes to freedom of speech? While President Yudhoyono boasts about his country's "increasingly incisive" free press, one the markers of moderate Islam's commitment to democracy, it's too bad if you're the editor of Playboy Indonesia, a magazine consciously remodelled for the local market with no nudity.

Uh huh. So what about the notion that banning pornography for blacks is a breach of their human rights? Sorry, you seem to have failed to understand that the black helicopters landed in the NT to defy the noble pornography banning intervention, and failed to understand the implications of this most effective piece of social engineering, where rights and freedom of expression have to bow to matters of community concern:

The UN view from the transit lounge can focus only on the Big D, discrimination, and the Big R, rights. The government was discriminating against indigenous people by breaching several international treaties to which Australia was a signatory, entrenched racism infected the country and the Racial Discrimination Act needed to be reinstated to protect the rights of indigenous people, he said. No nuance enters the UN’s discrimination equation. (here).

Yes, yes, ban Playboy, and not just for the articles, and lock up their editors and throw away the key.

Was it only in April this year that a group of "child experts" were calling for such rags to be restricted to adults-only premises (here), in the guise of thinking about and saving the children?

Who'd have thought that such moderate Islamics would be allowed into the country, let alone find room in the media for their thoughts? What's that you say? Tim Costello, Noni Hazlehurst and Alastair Nicholson aren't Muslims? Well I never ...

But Albrechtsen achieves a genuine double flip and pike by, as usual, pinning all this on soft liberals and their soft thinking ways:

Move to New York and the fraught debate over the proposed Ground Zero mosque. Muslims demand the mosque be built. And their left-liberal supporters decry opponents of the mosque as bigots. They demonise and scold mainstream Americans who think otherwise. Even New Yorkers believe Muslims should show some sensitivity to the atrocities committed in the name of Islam on 9/11. A poll in The New York Times found that while 67 per cent agree the right to freedom of religion allows the building of the mosque, they believe the developers should find a different site. An editorial by the moralising New York Times would have none of that. Building the mosque would be "a gesture to Muslim-Americans", it lectured. What about a gesture from moderate Muslims?

Where to begin with this kind of flurry of paranoid thinking? Back at the beginning, when the mosque was proceeding without debate, before the media, and Fox Noise in particular got hold of it and used it to inflame the senses? Or currently, noting the way that rabid commentators of the Albrechtsen kind keep returning to this bone, and digging it up with a most peculiar logic - that the victims of mass media orchestrated hysteria should just apologise and move along. Still I guess that's the way it works for liberals, gays and feminists ...

What's perhaps most wondrous of all is the way that Albrechtsen purports to be some kind of moderate in search of moderation, and in the meantime lathers herself up into fundamentalist hysteria about the lack of moderation:

Moderate Muslims would surely understand tolerance is a two-way street. They might agree the building of a mosque at Ground Zero is a political, rather than a religious, point. Instead, there is just silence. Always silence.

Actually it started out as a religious point. About as much a religious point as Muslims having a prayer room in the twin towers before they were brought to ground, about as much a religious point as Muslims having a prayer room in the Pentagon before it too copped an aeroplane ...

But when you're on the rhetorical treadmill, moderation is the last point to be considered in an argument.

The logic behind Albrechtsen's rant is eerily reminiscent of recent outbursts in the United States, most notably Brian Kilmeade's effort in logic: Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. (here and here for his pathetic back down).

Well you won't find Albrechtsen following Kilmeade's I misspoke with an I mis-scribbled:

In a BBC interview last month to coincide with the publication of his memoirs, former British prime minister Tony Blair described radical Islam as the greatest threat facing the world. He's correct.

Say again? Surely when he was in power Tony Blair was the greatest threat facing the world ... Or perhaps that should be radical Catholic leaders who are the greatest threat facing the world? Or what about radical Christians in general? Or what about radical religions, given that all religions are radical?

By golly this is an easy game to play. Could it be that a radical Janet Albrechtsen is the greatest threat facing the world?

But a Western leader pointing the finger at radical Islam is the easy part. The harder task is for leaders and the rest of us: to request help in the form of far more moderation from those who describe themselves as moderate Muslims. Unless that happens, the clash of civilisations between Islam and the West will end very badly indeed.

And there you have it. The clash of civilisations ...

But of course it's not up to Janet Albrechtsen to settle things down and be moderate. That's not the job of an indignant head kicker slavering and slobbering over a clash of civilisations and issuing dire warnings and heaping calumnies on one party ... Why then you'd be asking for far more moderation from someone who thinks of themselves as moderate, when ranting ratbaggery is really their go ...

Is this just by way of Albrechtsen not enjoying her time in Indonesia? Which by all accounts, in many places, as with many developing countries, is a noisy, dirty, smelly country designed to offend elevated Western sensibilities ...

Because it's always funny to see a bar room brawler and an attack dog call for moderation, but before said moderation can be produced, quickly deliver a knee to the groin, a rabbit punch to the throat and provide an offer of Armageddon as a way to settle the discussion ...

The intent is to inflame, generate much smoke and heat, and quite possibly a fire or two, the sage advice of the taxi driver offered at the start of the column - that rules are made to be broken, live and let live, let things go - eviscerated in a bonfire of confected rage and indignation.

What's an atheist to do? Well of course a pox on Islam and Christianity, but above all a pox on Albrechtsen for so heartily stirring the pot with rhetoric and demagoguery worthy of the Tea Partiers it turns out she so much admires ...

(Below: and so a soppy cartoon which is just so moderate. Waiter, bring me that Albrechtsen-sized baseball bat).