The Arab Sole...

How can people celebrate the throwing of a shoe???

OK, so I'm coming to the shoe-throwing party a tad tardily; but I've been driven to comment on Muntader-al-Zaidi--the discalced disgrace to journalism, whose aim wasn't half as hot as his subsequent fame--by some absolute drivel I've just read on Facebook.

On a thread of comments that somehow found its way onto my home page, I read the following opinions on the man who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush at a press conference in Baghdad:

"Muntadar will be remembered as a man of courage who stood up for millions around the world at great personal risk and peril."

"… courageous, protest against perceived global bully gangster, revenge against rape of his proud nation, symbolic act to humble US President."

"I would do it for my country."

"In his mind, he holds Bush responsible for thousands of women on the street, whose only source of living is selling their flesh for sustenance; this man who threw his shoes may have witnessed the humility of such women who lost their husbands, fathers, brothers or cousins who took care of them."

And on and on they went, lauding Muntader, excoriating Bush, in a relentless stream of righteous indignation. Unable to allow such tripe to go unchallenged, I threw in my two dinars' worth by posting this to the thread, entirely against the current: "Puerile, pathetic act. His celebration across the Arab world shows how low that region has sunk, how bereft of inspiration and pride it is."

To which I received this immediate response from someone in the Arab world, dripping with dismissive and sanctimonious omniscience: "I don't think you've ever experienced a tragedy in your life EVER, Mr. Tunku."

It goes without saying that I have experienced tragedy in my life, but none as great as the tragedy that has befallen the Arab world--and I'm not referring to the "rape" of a proud people by Bush and his cohorts, aided and abetted (of course!) by the Jews. The tragedy I'm referring to is the intellectual and spiritual poverty of the Arab (and wider Muslim) world (for Muntader has been lauded also in Turkey, whose largely madrassa-free people ought to know better).

The Arabs, who once upon a time boasted Averroes and Avicenna, are now reduced to eulogizing a boorish act of agitprop as a heroic achievement. America gave us Martin Luther King; South Africa gave us Mandela; India gave us Gandhi; the Arab world gives us ... Muntader-al-Zaidi. A people who invented the zero are now reduced, themselves, to zero. Only a people who live under the boots of their rulers celebrate the throwing of a shoe at a guest.