Galway Advertiser 2004/2004_09_23/GA_2309_E1_032.pdf 

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32 N E W S

Galway Advertiser

September 23 2004

Alt.com
BY JEFF O'CONNELL

The hijacking of Islam
Another barbarity. Another beheading. Eugene Armstrong, an American construction contractor. An Islamic website - can that be allowed to stand? An Islamic website? - broadcast a video of a masked man "sawing off the head" of Mr Armstrong with a knife. Mr Armstrong's killer was, purportedly, Abu Musab alZarqawi, a Jordanian who is allegedly behind a string of suicide bombings in Iraq. Zarqawi is also said to have been involved in the beheading of an American contractor, Nick Berg, shown on a video released on May 11. And Spanish officials are also reported to be looking into allegations that he may have been behind the Madrid bombings in March of this year which killed 191 people. Let's be graphic: Five militants dressed in black stood behind Mr Armstrong, who was blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit, and as, allegedly, Abu Musab alZarqawi read a statement, the terrifed American sobbed because he knew that when the statement was over he would die. Two more people, kidnapped by al-Zarqawi's sub-human filth, Briton Kenneth Bigley and American Jack Hensley, await a grisly death at the hands of alZarqawi or one of his henchmen. Is it bad taste, at this point, to remind readers that Michael Moore and Tariq Ali refer to the likes of alZarqawi and the Ba'athist `rump' as `insurgents', the `resistance', and - in Moore's case - Iraq's `Minutemen' - the hastilty summoned army that fought the British during the US Revolutionary war? It really doesn't matter very much if al-Zarqawi is an ally or a rival of Bin Laden's Al Qaeda (personally, I believe Bin Laden is dead, but - to savagely paraphrase the Battle Hymn of the Republic - "his lies go marching on"). The fact is, this man and those who support him have hijacked Islam, one of the world's great religions, and made it seem as if to be Muslim is to be ready and willing to murder savagely those with whom you disagree. But lest we feel smug in our post-modernism, it's worth keeping in mind that Christians, until very recently, were enthusiastically slaughtering each other over the apparently crucial matter of whether the bread and wine of the Eucharist is, literally, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, or only so symbolically. Some Christians (think Sunni and Shi'ite) also tortured and burned at the stake those with whom they disagreed, while brutal and bloody wars were also fought between Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians. Listen to Bob Dylan's `With God on Our Side' for a despairing account of how the teachings of Jesus have been hijacked in the interests of power, prestige, and wealth. Beslan, one of the single most horrific terrorist incidents of the last 50 years, seems to have deeply shocked many Muslims. Scenes of terrified children and mothers fleeing captivity and being shot down while doing so have led to the kind of deep soul-searching one might have hoped 9/11 would have provoked. Never mind. If the slaughter at Beslan (and let's not hear any mitigating garbage about the incompetency of the Russians: taking young children hostage, and subjecting them to appalling conditions for two days, and then deliberately shooting them as they tried to escape puts the perpetrators outside the pale of human consideration) - if the slaughter at Beslan serves as a wake-up call to Muslims who may have, till now, not been as blunt in their condemnation of Islamist terrorism as might have been hoped or expected, some good may come out of horror. And there are signs that this is beginning to happen. Abdulrahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the AlArabiya television station, published a column under the unambiguous headline, "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!" No responsible journalist in the West could have possibly written such an article. But in the pan-Arab paper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Mr Rashed declared, "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims." Continuing, Mr Rashed said, "An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry." The voices of moderate Muslims need to be heard as much as possible these dangerous and intolerant times. The Saudi newspaper Okaz put this with uncharacteristic bluntness in an editorial headlined `Butchers in the Name of Allah': "The propagandists of jihad have succeeded in the span of a few years in distorting the image of Islam. They have turned today's Islam into something to do with decapitations, the slashing of throats, abducting innocent civilians, and exploding people." The terrorists must not be allowed to get away with such crude and brutal hijacking of one of the world's great religions.

GALWAY DIARY

RONNIE O'GORMAN
rogorman@galwayadvertiser.ie

There are six men to every woman at oyster fest
In 1982 Mike Murphy, the ebullient broadcaster and entertainer, was the guest of honour at the Galway Oyster festival. He was a busy man in those days both on TV and radio and it may have been a little ambitious on his part to imagine he would be back in Dublin bright-eyed and amusing in the early hours of Monday to present his` Morning Call'. But that was the plan. And anyway the big night at the Oyster festival was Saturday, which left all day Sunday to recover and to gently make one's way back across the country. The festival was particularly mad and fun that year, helped in no small way by Mike's jokes and enormous energy on the dance floor, and at one stage on the top of the table, a cigar firmly clenched between his teeth, waving his napkin wildly around his head and dancing, it is believed, the rumba. However, the next day he had completely lost his voice and despite trying several alcoholic remedies cheerfully suggested by his friends, he remained gloomily silent as his wife Eileen drove him slowly back to Dublin. Early on Monday morning Eileen phoned RTE to say that poor Mike would not be able to present his programme that morning, as he had lost his voice. For a broadcaster to lose his voice is akin to a pianist losing both his or her hands; so when Mike limped into the studios at Donnybrook later that afternoon to show what a good sport he was to turn up even though he was seriously ill, he was saddened to be greeted by guffaws, and screams of laughter everywhere he went. On a monitor he watched in horror the six o'clock news. When the Oyster festival was shown there was Mike going through his amazing contortions in all their glory. Apparently the director general did not find it one bit amusing. We get another glimpse of Mike's term of office from the writer Hugh Leonard who was the guest of honour the previous year. He recorded the following memory: " My speech (delivered at 1am) was received in a mood of (astonishing) sobriety, and the jokes - both of them - were cordially received. However, due to the hours of terror that preceded my speech, much of the day had passed in a kind of blur, so I resolved to return the following year when another sacrificial goat would be doing his stuff. The speaker turned out to be Mike Murphy, who, in his oration made 104 references to Gay Byrne (actually Mike is cured now). In the course of the day, a friend of mine swallowed exactly the same number of oysters. It was an occasion one could frame." for three successive years, used to play hurling for Gort. He swore that swinging the hurl was good for wrist development. Maybe I should try taking up the game.

Galway loves to party
This weekend marks the Oyster festival's 50th anniversary. It was started by a group of businessmen, including the manager of the Great Southern Hotel, the amazing Brian Collins, whom I have alluded to on other occasions. He was, in effect, Galway's Minister for Tourism when no one else had dreamt of promoting tourism as a valuable money earner. From humble beginnings in Paddy Burke's pub in Calrenbridge the festival

It's all in the wrist
A highlight of the festival is the International Oyster Opening Championships. This is a spectacle always worth watching because the competitors open 30 oysters usually in less than four minutes, and display them for judging neatly arranged on a tray with little or no shell-grit on the fish. I don't know how they do this. Even in the peace of my kitchen, equipped with a strong knife, gloves, extra thick cloth, large apron, and with all the time in the world I cannot open the damn things. I have gently screwed, tapped, hacked, heaved, stabbed, and finally, blood stained and exhausted, thrown them against the kitchen wall, and still they refuse to open. Watching Willie Moran or his sister Noreen or Josie Burke, Gerry Grealish, Seamus Lane or Vincent Graham effortlessly twist off the upper shell with a short blade, is like watching an artist at work. In recent years, the world champions tend to come from Europe or Canada, but Clarenbridge men bravely fought them off until Britain's Sam Scott and Peter Manzi held the high ground for many years. The French, desperate to win in 1969, sent over a left-handed female opener which was regarded as a bit of a sly move. But Johnny Commins of Paddy Burke's saw her off. Johnny, a world champion

has become, according to The Sunday Times in 2000, "one of the twelve greatest shows on earth". I believe there are two reasons for the festival's success and longevity. One is that by general agreement, whether it's the races, the arts festival, or the atmosphere in our streets and pubs, Galway knows how to party, and everyone loves a party. And secondly, its success is connected with the undeniable fact that this small tough-shelled shellfish reputedly exudes powerful aphrodisiac qualities. Its tiny voice calls everyone to have one last bash before cold winter evenings keeps us all at home. Casanova, said to be the greatest lover of all time, scoffed 50 every day. As far back as 1956 the popular journalist Monica Sheridan rallied the women of Ireland with the

cry: THERE ARE SIX MEN TO EVERY WOMEN! She wrote: "It is a rare thing in Ireland to find a gathering where there are six men to every woman, and it is so flattering to the ego, to be for once, among the distinguished minority." That report evidently prompted thousands of women, many come from all over the world, to put her words to the test. The solicitor Henry Comerford, the festival's PRO for many years, had this poem published in The Irish Times in 1976. The Amorous Oyster Bisexual the oyster is And cannot tell its her from his And goes a-courting every day with him or her or even they But your oyster squeals, when firmly bit: "Please! I'not a man or her; I'm it".

Galway Advertiser's Penny Masterson and Declan Barrett, Knocknacarra, who were married recently in the Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Glencastle, Co Mayo. The reception was held afterwards in the Castlecourt Hotel, Westport.