Wool Gathering
Mark Steyn is discussing sheep today in the Chicago Sun-Times. The result is both funny and chilling. As always, Steyn makes you think.
As part of this column's ongoing commitment to in-depth coverage of the issues that matter, we're pleased to present the first of a new series: Sheep In the News. Here are two headlines from the last week.
From the Wall Street Journal: "Ritual sacrifice? Not on my street, some Belgians say."
And from the Sunday Times of London: "Science told: Hands off gay sheep."
The first story is about the 25,000 sheep in Brussels that a few days ago found themselves pointed toward Mecca and then slit through the throat and bled to death. Muslims do this to celebrate Eid al-Adha, which commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God and God's willingness to settle for a ram in lieu. The Belgian Muslim population has grown so fast that there aren't enough places in the city to perform the ritual sacrifice, and come Eid it's like sheep drivetime at every Brussels slaughterhouse, with rams backed up ram-to-ram as far as the eye can see. As reported by the Journal, Mohamed Mimoun grabbed his sheep, took a number and realized he was in for a two-hour wait. Even worse, en route to the slaughterhouse, he was stopped by a cop and fined for having the sheep in the trunk of his Toyota. By law, the sheep is supposed to ride in the rear passenger seats. Baa, baa, back seat.
Read the whole thing. The two items Steyn writes about are weirdly related. That a number of people are concerned about the "rights" of gay sheep as opposed to worrying about a nuclear armed Iran is not a good sign for society. There are priorities at work that do not seem to be in touch with any concept of reality.
Animals, World news | Gaius Sunday, 7 January , 2007
By daveinboca, Monday, 8 January , 2007 @ 10:29 am
The only thing more fun than savoring the incredible wit of Mark Steyn is to appreciate the final point which usually skewers leftist pinheads, in this case Prof. Udo Schuklenk, professor of “bioethics” at an obscure Scottish school and Martina Navritilova who is now re-inventing herself as a group-identity icon for pervs.
Read Steyn for his relentless creative spanking of clueless Belgians [sorry for the tautology] and the non-Scottish possibly Belgian “bioethics” professor who blames the US for, what else, homophobia in an experiment designed to prevent gay sheep and thus promote more sacrifice animals for Islamic mass-slaughters in downtown Brussels.
“”Ann De Greef, a Belgian animal-rights activist, does not enjoy the annual Eid massacre. “It’s not normal to have thousands of sheep slaughtered like this in the middle of a major European city,” she complained.
Au contraire, it is. And, given Islam’s demographic advantage, it’s going to get ever more normal. Muslims pay Belgian farmers about 250 bucks to acquire a sheep for the ritual sacrifice, which suggests they’re pretty serious about it. Indeed, given Islam’s political muscle, it’s more likely that the remaining restrictions on ritual sacrifice will be rescinded. Tired of standing in line at crowded slaughterhouses, many Brussels Muslims sacrifice the sheep at home — which is illegal under Belgian law but which the state already turns a blind eye to.
The left carelessly assumes that the various factions in their identity-group coalition are allies in perpetuity who can be rounded up like sheep and pointed in the same direction. They’re not. The Belgian sheep story is about demographic advance, the Oregon sheep story is about technological advance. But the most potent combination is technology yoked to demography: In other words, how much demand will there be for the latest innovation? Abortion for genetic abnormalities? Quite a lot in America. Abortion to decrease unwanted daughters? An awful lot in China and India.
And a patch to de-gay your baby?
We’re poor little lambs who have lost our way. Baa-baa-baa.”"”
Who can top that for an ending?