muslim outreach with uncle heelers

I tried to make a few Muslim friends.
It seemed to me that this was something positive I could do with the world teetering on the brink of all out war.
It wasn't easy for me.
I consider Arab culture and its unifying Islamic ideology to be an imminent threat to the freedom of the world.
There is no group of people I less want to know.
But perhaps that very attitude gave me even more of a duty to come out of my comfort zone to try and make a difference.
Spread a little kindness to take away the blindness, and all that.
Maybe by reaching out in friendship I could contribute just a tiny amount to the cause of peace.
If each one of us made a friend from our enemies camp, why then it might be harder for any of us to willingly contemplate destroying the other, or the other's country, or as in the case with the great heroes of Jihad, the other's air hostesses and office workers.
So the thinking went.
Convoluted eh?
I'm only warming up.
A few years ago I met a Muslim lady whose cafe business was in trouble.
I made sure to eat there every day for a while.
We got talking.
I asked her was it possible for Christians and Muslims to be friends.
She said it was.
After several months of moderately blossoming friendship, she felt she knew me well enough to assert that the people of Kurdistan were not human.
The Kurds are mostly Muslim mind.
Only apparently not Muslim enough for some other Muslims.
Our friendship floundered on my trivial insistence at ascribing humanity to everyone who is a human being.
A while later I was ready to try again.
I made friends with a Muslim poet who was attending the Hopkins poetry festival.
He was labouring under the oppression of a very famous grandfather.
I felt sorry for him.
But hey, he didn't need anybody's pity.
His girlfriend was the best looking woman in the place.
I'd have converted to the peaceloving religion of Islam for her in a second.
No in half a second.
(That old gag. - Ed note)
Myself and Sheikh Ahmed corresponded for several years.
I had begun the friendship with a new version of my earlier question to the Islamic Kurd hating cafe lady.
The new version ran: "Is it possible for Christians and Muslims to be in dialogue?"
We dialogued for two years.
But unfortunately I was dialogueing under false pretences.
The Sheikh expressed himself honestly.
He outlined for me in lurid detail his every twisted infantile thought about evil Americans, democretinisation, and the zionist conspiracy.
I never once told him what I really thought of the peaceloving religion of Islam.
So it was indeed friendship under false pretences.
When the Iranians and Al Qaeda blatently bombed the Blue Mosque in Iraq to incite civil war in that country, the Sheikh insisted the Americans had done it.
Our friendship ended forthwith.
I made a gentle resolution that day that I would never again listen to anti American claptrap from Muslims or anybody else without plainly speaking my mind in replying to it.
There would be no more friendships under false pretences.
And I was O for 2 in the Muslim outreach stakes.

Today I went for coffee with Cecile O'Connor, an Irish school teacher of senior years.
She's a tough old bird
A lady of stern golden hearted mien.
She has been teaching for three decades.
She knows not fear.
She told me she has just welcomed two Arab children into her classroom. They are a brother and sister, nine and seven years old.
My interest was tweaked.
"Tell me more," quoth I.
Cecile sipped her cappuccino with a ruminative air.
"The other day I was teaching the class to say the Hail Mary," she told me. "The little Arab boy stood up and shouted: We don't pray like this. I said to him that he could show the class how he did pray. So he got out a prayer mat, went down on his knees, facing Mecca I suppose, and intoned some really quite beautiful prayers in Arabic."
She eyed me with a speculative school teacherly gaze.
"Alright James," she said. "I have to know. Do you think I handled the situation appropriately?"
I stared at her.
"No," I said bluntly. "No. Not at all. Do you understand the way Arabs raise their boy children? In his own household that nine year old boy has a higher status than his mother, his older and younger sisters, and any adult aunts who live with them. You have now taught this little boy whose parents smuggled themselves into our country, declared themselves citizens and rushed to avail of our free education system, you have now taught him that he outranks you. That he has a higher status than an adult school teacher in the Republic of Ireland. I've gotta tell you Cecile. From my limited experience. That's a very dangerous lesson to be teaching Arabs."

After I left Cecile, I wandered up O'Connell Street for a rendezvous with the Malteaser.
We met in the bright airy cafe above Easons.
I like it.
If any of the waitresses try to kill me, there'll be plenty of witnesses.
The Malteaser noticed I was preoccupied.
"What's wrong?" sez she.
I repeated the school teacher's anecdote.
The Malteaser shrugged.
"We're facing these problems in Malta too," sez she.
"How so?"
"We have a large Arab population."
"Since when?"
"Our Labour government in the 1980's was hand in glove with Gadaffi. The island filled up with Libyans. The tensions are unbelievable. You see James, the problem is not that Maltese people are racist. No really, that's not it. Don't laugh. We're genuinely not racist. The problem is that Arabs expect everyone to respect them. But they don't respect anybody else."
"So how many Arabs are living in Malta?" I asked her.
"About fifty thousand."
"And how many Maltese?"
"Four hundred thousand."
I took a swig of latte.
"You guys are finished," I said.

And much later.
Back at the chateau.
I switched on the computer to check, via the miracle of a Statistics Monitor, on the latest batch of visitors to The Heelers Diaries.
My old friends the Jihadi's of Dubai had dropped in again.
Exploring their limits probably.
They seemed to be particularly fascinated by my articles about Muslim headscarves.
Cultured fellows no doubt.
I hope they found something to keep them entertained.