When John Bolton does it, it is just a colorful metaphor. When Haji Yaqub does it, it is high crime By Ghulam Muhammed

When John Bolton does it, it is just a colorful metaphor. When Haji Yaqub does it, it is high crime

By Ghulam Muhammed

Al-Jazeerah, March 18, 2006

In BBC's Hard Talk interview program, Stephen Sakur confronted John Bolton, the current US ambassador to the United Nations, if he can reconcile with his infamous statement about United Nations, that if ten stories of the UN building is destroyed it would not matter a bit. An overconfident John Bolton, whose nomination to UN ambassadorship was not cleared by US Congress but was smuggled in by US President Bush, when Congress was not in session, did not change a single line on his poker face and said: it was a metaphor (Dictionary meaning: A figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity.) When Sucker persisted that it amounts to destroying the whole institution, Bolton replied, it was just a colorful metaphor and as metaphors go it was a good one.

A similar case brings in focus Haji Yaqub, the Samajwadi Party's Member of Parliament, who while addressing a charged crowd protesting the blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), announced a 51-Crore reward for anybody who punishes the cartoonists. Till that moment in India, everybody in media and political circle was 'suffering' in silence the sudden spurt of protest meetings formed by huge Muslim crowds all over India. But as soon as Haji Yaqub's visage was seen on TV screen, shouting the reward, the whole media was up in flames, calling for Haji Yaqub's head. At last they finally got the chance to pin down hundreds and thousands of Muslims on the pretext of demonizing one single incident of irresponsible sloganeering, which in fact, was nothing but a 'colorful metaphor', as John Bolton will have it. Neither Haji Yaqub had that kind of money, neither anybody believed, much less supported, a typical politician's heady intoxicated harangues when surrounded by huge crowds in his own constituency. Media now goes on and on repeating Haji Yaqub's 'colorful metaphor' as the war cry of Indian Muslims against not only the cartoonists, but the whole non-Muslim world. That shows up the highly discriminating double standards the world can perpetuate when dealing with Muslim affairs.

GHULAM MUHAMMED, MUMBAI <ghulam_muhammed2@yahoo.co.in>

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

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