Jewish commentator Daniel Greenfield has posted an article about Libya on his blog. Here are some edited highlghts with our links:
‘The tyrant is dead, and the head of Libya’s Transitional National Council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, (who was also Gaddafi’s former Justice Minister), has declared that Libya has been liberated.
‘What a glorious day it is when a country is liberated from its justice minister by its justice minister. If only Gaddafi had been quicker on the ball, he could have staged a revolution against himself and liberated the country from himself.
‘But don’t pop the champagne corks just yet. Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, who liberated Libya from himself, has also declared that it will be governed under Islamic law and that laws which contradict Islam will be abolished.
‘What can the Libyan people look forward to? In Egypt, a fellow who said something about Islam on Facebook got sentenced to three years of hard labor. Egypt, lest we forget, is a moderate Muslim state. How can you tell Egypt is a moderate Muslim state? He didn’t get the death penalty, the way he would have in Pakistan.
‘Westerners who are always on the prowl for moderate Muslims might take caution from his example. The difference between a moderate Muslim and an immoderate one, is the difference between three years of hard labor for saying the wrong thing on Facebook… and the death penalty. Instead of searching for moderate psychopaths, we might be better off asking whether we really need psychopaths at all.
‘Blasphemy laws in the Muslim world are not really about cartoons of exploding turbans and the free press, those are things that don’t exist and never really existed anyway. They’re a convenient way to keep down uppity minorities. Back when there were still Jews living in the Muslim world, charges of blasphemy were a common way of depriving them of their property or their lives. Today Christians are the main target– for as long as they’re around.
‘The Arab Spring which overthrew a moderate Tunisian government put an end to the last vestiges of tolerance. And Islamists have already been gathering outside the synagogue in Tunis and chanting the usual cheerfully peaceful slogans about the Battle of Khaybar. Which is the Muslim equivalent of snapping a Nazi salute and yelling, “See you in Auschwitz.”
‘Back in Libya there is no Jewish community, and a foolishly optimistic fellow who traveled to rebuild the synagogue there was quickly told where he could shove his liberty, fraternity and equality.
‘The Gaddafi regime was a money-grubbing totalitarian mafia, and it will be replaced by a totalitarian money-grubbing mafia, many of whose members will be alumni of the original mafia. Whoever runs the new mafia, whether it’s a “moderate” like Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, Gaddafi’s old justice minister, who wants to abolish all laws that contradict Sharia, or an immoderate, like Abdel Hakim Belhadj, commander of the Tripoli Military Council who’s also a veteran of the local Al-Qaeda franchise.
‘The death of Gaddafi does not mean a new era of human rights, only a transition to a new tyranny. The robed maniac was not the first king, sultan, bey and tyrant to be brought down by an armed mob and some foreign backed revolutionaries. This is how it has always been. The tyrant delivers his patriotic speeches, leers into the camera, alternately panders to the mob or shoots it down, and passes down power to his son.
‘What brought down Gaddafi, Mubarak and the rest of them was not the mythical popular awakening, but well-funded domestic revolutions with international backing and training, and international pressure backed by bombing raids.
‘The tyrant is dead, long live the tyrant.’
