Andrew Bolt:

" Which two of the following three things are so obviously dangerous that they've just been banned? And which one was this week declared safe for distribution?

Exhibit A: Free Bibles placed by Gideons International in the bedside cupboards of public hospitals.

Exhibit B: A jokey TV commercial in which Wogs Out of Work's George Kapiniaris complains about an Indian call centre.

Exhibit C: A book sold last year by Sydney's Islamic Bookshop that praises suicide bombing as "legitimate and praiseworthy" and says it's best to "wire up one's body, or a vehicle or a suitcase with explosives, and then to enter among a conglomeration of the enemy and to detonate".

Yes, it's the Bibles and the Indian joke that have been banned for the immense harm they might do.

And it's the jihad book, Defence of the Muslim Lands, that the Australian Federal Police and Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions this week said could be sold without fear of prosecution for inciting violence... "

" Call me even sillier, but when I lived and travelled in Thailand, I felt not a flicker of anger at seeing a copy of The Teaching of Buddha by my hotel bed, and I foolishly suspect that strangers who come to live here are just as tolerant. Or should be.

Indeed, the Islamic Council of Queensland's president, Abdul Jalal, protested: "It is ridiculous to think that we might be offended by seeing a Bible in a drawer. It is an example of multiculturalism gone mad."

HE'S right, of course. It seems the real racists -- the real troublemakers -- are the multiculturalists who assume Muslims are so intolerant they can't safely be shown a Bible, or denied their own books that preach such violence.

And once more we should heed the warning -- especially in Victoria, where we prosecute two Christian pastors who warn against jihad but tolerate the most radical imams who preach it.

What threatens us most aren't terrorists who talk of blowing us up. It's the paid guardians of our own culture who don't think it's much worth defending -- and who insist we must be made to shut up and leave the speaking to the merchants of hate. "

http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,19159365%255E25717,00.html

May 17, 2006