NOT A GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND

 14. Sep. 2010. @ 19:39:28 by TheJusticeofthePeace

I had not intended blogging from this parched land where green is a very interesting colour but a story I was told by my guide Omar, an educated middle aged man of liberal ideals in a state where the minimum requirement for acceptance is only an almost basic literal lip service to Islam changed my mind. Omar had spent a year of his post university training in Norwich and was not averse to a cold beer in the appropriate circumstances.

During one of our walking tours in a large regional town where the poverty of the majority contrasted with the Mercedes S class of the few I enquired whether there was any likelilhood of group reaction to seek a better life or did the poverty stricken still accept their fate as being in the hands of Allah?

He told me that just before Ramadan there was an incident that for him summed up the situation and would be easily understood by a westerner making his first visit to a Moslem country.

Apparently local taxi drivers had found amongst themselves a local bigmouth who was trying without much success to induce the municipality to limit the number of owners of old bangers going into the rip off the tourist taxi business. He and three others had discovered that a wealthy well respected American journalist had employed a non taxi driver to drive him around in his new Audi 8. As a warning to others the taxi drivers had cornered him one night, verbally abused him and behaved uncharitably but according to Omar had not inflicted criminal damage on him or his Audi.

The next day bigmouth was arrested and since this was at the beginning of Ramadan he was held without charge and released just a couple of days ago. His associates did not visit him or make any enquiries as to his welfare. Omar explained that since each one of his fellows in this country believes that with the will of Allah he too can achieve an Audi 8 each fellow will climb over the back of all others to get there.

I noticed that my own driver, [not Omar] decent fellow though he was, treated every other driver, cyclist, man, woman, child as though each barred his way to paradise. A drunken Roman cabbie was a veritable paragon of automotive virtue in comparison.

I`m far from being politically expert or knowledgeable but when and if Islamic marxism becomes an entity if it does not already exist in some corner of some mind we will have a problem currently inconceivable.

Assuming that kindly old Irishman Mr Ryan has not sold my seat for a fistful of dollars or charges more than a few dollars more for all the crap I`ve bought at special prices just for me I look forward to a rain soaked airport very very soon.