If you wanted proof of the meaningless of "Europe" as a true political entity, it has been provided by the supine and cowardly response of the EU to the outrageous treatment of Denmark by the Islamic world, writes Kevin Myers.
The withdrawal of the Saudi ambassador from Copenhagen was a matter between the two governments - but once the Saudi government refused to allow the Danish delegation to attend the Jeddah Economic Forum, an international gathering of many nations, then it was no longer a matter between the two governments. It was a matter for the broader political union to which Denmark belongs; and then it came down to the Dumas question. Was it: Tous pour un, un pour tous? Or was it: Sauve qui peut? Now we know: it was SQP. So the various member countries of the EU stampeded into the Jeddah Forum, leaving poor little Denmark to fret alone, seeing its worldwide markets vanish as proof of the price to be paid for freedom of speech. Meanwhile, our President - who should have been withdrawn from the conference once the Saudis started discriminating against fellow EU members - reassured the Saudis that the Irish people abhorred the publication of the cartoons of Muhammad.
Having said how proud she was that Irish Muslims had expressed their "righteous anger" over the cartoons in a peaceful manner, she went on: "What we do not take pride in is the use of violence." What? Is this the same President who has been contending that we should all take pride in the wholly unmandated violence of 1916, and who called its instigators heroes? Please, I beg of her: call in the Muslim leaders of Ireland and explain why it was perfectly all right for hundreds of Irish people to be slaughtered in their own streets in the name of an abstraction called a united Irish Republic, but not all right for Muslims to resort to violence in protest at the abstract cartoon-insult done to their Prophet.
For in terms of moral gravity, I should have thought that the insult to the Prophet was of far graver moment than anything that had happened to the men who planned the 1916 Rising. They had not been provoked or insulted; they were even allowed to march, bearing arms, around Dublin, every Sunday, week after week. The Dublin Metropolitian Police were specifically ordered not to interfere with them, or disarm them, or raid their premises without specific authorisation from Dublin Castle, even if they thought a crime was under way.
This moderation did not prevent these heroes launching their jihad that Easter Monday. So what is the moral difference between letting bombs off in the London underground, or the Madrid Metro, and starting a civil war in the crowded streets of Dublin, in which hundreds of innocent civilians were bound to be killed? As Pearse said: "We might kill the wrong people in the beginning." No "might" about it, matey. In terms of unprovoked terrorist body-counts, the toll for the Easter Rising - still uncertain, but probably at least 500 - is almost in a class of its own, perhaps second only to 9/11.
This Republic's willingness to applaud the men responsible - even honouring their enthusiasm for martyrdom - and to forget their hundreds of victims (as the President so memorably did in her UCC address) hardly puts us in a very different moral position from al-Qaeda. As it happens, the Muslims of Ireland today outnumber the Irish Volunteers of 1916, and vastly outnumber the membership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. So what is the ethical difference between Irish Muslims having an anti-Danish intifada and Irish republicans having an insurrection? What is it, Madam President? What is it, Taoiseach?
Matching this underlying moral hypocrisy has been the proof of the bogusness of the entire EU project. We couldn't stand by our Danish friends when they needed us; but by God, we stuck by our national myths. No wonder Islamicists around the world think the West is doomed. We are pathetic, conceited, cowardly, mean-spirited, ungenerous, supine, unprincipled and smug. The Danes can go to hell just so long as we are free to indulge our own tribalistic fundamentalism, meanwhile pretending we have so much in common with dear old Saudi Arabia, the intellectual and financial inspiration for much of the Islamic terrorism around the world for the past 15 years.
This newspaper carried the following headline last Monday: "Muslim anger justified, say Danes." Not true. Per Bech Thomsen in Copenhagen actually reported that 56 per cent of Danes understood why Muslims were angry. Most of us - but apparently not all - recognise the difference between "understand" and "justify": actually, fewer than 50 per cent of Danes thought it was wrong for the cartoons to have been published. Nonetheless, the appearance has been created, once again, that the West is sympathetic to the worldwide Islamic anger.
An endless Western liberal desire to reach out, to embrace one's still-armed, implacable enemy is perhaps our most fatal flaw. Now, disgracefully, when Danes desperately needed the hand of friendship, we instead empathised with Saudi Arabia, a vile country which is infinitely worse than Ireland of 1916: it kept women participants at the Jeddah forum behind screens, it does not allow women to drive, does not permit Jews to even enter its borders, and its television stations daily feast on banquets of truly obscene anti-Semitism. Perhaps our President would endorse a rising there.
And in the meantime, if we're cute, we might grab the Danes' dairy market share throughout the Islamic world. Up the Republic (SQP)!