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ing in a consumer society that sells and markets sex, which for Muslims
is a sanctification of marriage, as just another commodity."
LeBor seemed to view fundamentalist Islam in the West as being akin
to a spice that enriches an otherwise bland dish. But fundamentalist
Islam doesn't work that way.
It
doesn't flavor-it transforms, subdues,
conquers. Islam means "submission," and in its fundamentalist form it
demands nothing less. Far from being content to serve merely as part of
a culture's "jigsaw puzzle," it demands that the whole puzzle be shaken
up, the picture entirely redrawn. A Western society that accepted such a
religion as its spiritual component would soon prove itself highly inhos–
pitable to, among much else, any of LeBor's fellow writers who might
wish to dissent from his unadulterated admiration for fundamentalist
Islam. Nowhere in his book, indeed, did LeBor serve up a single posi–
tive word about Western freedoms, Western individuality, Western sex–
ual equality, or Western protections for the rights of minorities; instead
there was simply an unwavering insistence on the virtue and piety of
fundamentalist Muslims and the greed and decadence of their Western
oppressors.
Nor did Waage, Lebor, or anybody else pay much heed to the prob–
lems posed by European Muslims' views on homosexuality-views that
Muslim leaders have been less and less shy about advertising.
In
1999,
for example, the
Guardian
described a student conference on "Islamo–
phobia" at King's College, London, at which a speaker began by
announcing politely, "I am a gay Muslim." That effectively ended his
presentation: "For members of the majority Muslim audience, the
expression was enough to ignite the most passionate opposition. Some
people began to shout, while others came raging down to confront the
speaker. Security was called and the conference came to a premature
end." Then, in October
1999,
the Shari'ah Court of the U.K. declared a
fatwa
against Terence McNally, who in his play
Corpus Christi
had
depicted Jesus Christ as gay. (In Islam, Jesus is counted among the
prophets.) Signing the death order, judge Sheikh Omar Bakri
Muhammed emphasized the concept of honor, charging that the Church
of England, by failing to take action against McNally, had "neglected
the honour of the Virgin Mary and Jesus." The
Daily Telegraph
reported that according to the sheikh, "Islamic law states that Mr.
McNally can only escape the
fatwa
by becoming a Muslim....
If
he
simply repents he would still be executed, but his family would be cared
for by the Islamic state carrying out the sentence and he could be buried
in a Muslim graveyard."
