I'm referring to The American Spectator's William Tucker and his take on the assassination last week by one of his own guards of Salman Taseer, the Pakistani governor of Punjab. Taseer had the temerity to call for a pardon for the 45-year old Christian mother of five, Asia Bibi, who is currently imprisoned and sentenced to death for the crime of blasphemy against Islam.
To the extent that the story's been covered at all, Tucker lists some of the media's more "mealy-mouthed" explanations for the madness, explanations that range from class conflict to post-traumatic stress to colonialism. Tucker will have none of it. Instead, this:
Here's an alternative explanation to the story. These people are crazy. They live in a world that most Europeans left behind when Hieronymus Bosch hung up his paintbrushes -- a world that most contemporary American leave behind somewhere around first grade. I remember well the panic we all felt that year trying to escape some particularly unpopular girl's "cooties." After another year, however, the terror subsided. We began to lead rational lives. Not so in the great Islamic Republic. The phobias, irrational fears, superstitions, and delusions that most cultures would ascribe to madness are part of daily life. The place is a lunatic asylum. Thank god they live on the other side of the world. But of course, as 9/11 showed, that's not really true anymore. And they do have a nuclear weapon, too -- think of that.Yes, do think of that.
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