This is where I would have drawn the line, too. From Fr. Samir, S.J. at Asia News:

Every year it happens that a Muslim delegation refuses to participate in a reception given by some European authorities or others because, apart from non-alcoholic drinks, wine and spirits are served, and these are banned by rigorous Islam.

In Paris, some months back, an Iranian delegation withdrew because France refused to do away with wine. Three years ago, in Germany, an Iranian delegation led by Rafsanjani was invited to a banquet offered by the foreign affairs minister. As soon as they arrived, when they saw that wine and spirits were being served, they withdrew to a small room. After discussing together, they asked that all alcoholic drinks be removed. One minister refused and they left.

This minister man had the right idea: enough is enough. Those foreign affairs dinners have got to be some tedious times; if ever good, tax-payer paid alcohol were in order, it’s when the Iranians are in town to promise us that they’ll cease nuclear research and development if we agree to negotiate with them long enough to allow them time to complete their nuclear research and development.

Maybe this is what it will take to galvanize the Gallic nation? The Mohammedans will threaten the elimination of intoxicating beverages in any French city in which they live - surely, this is reasonably the next step. Look, I wouldn’t want to my neighbors boozing with fine Bordeaux when I myself couldn’t (and my religion forbid it). Call this reaction of mine mean and spiteful - and I would be sine aureo Baccho.

Now - and in proof my deep-seated ecumenical spirit - I have mixed reactions to the next paragraph of evidence cited by Fr. Samir, S.J. against radical Islam in Europe:

There are swimming pools where specific times are reserved for women, to please some fanatical Muslim. In hospitals, there are demands that Muslim women should not be touched by male doctors. And particular food that is permissible (halal) for Muslims is starting to be demanded everywhere: in hospitals, schools and so on.

Unlike a few other Ithacans, I’m wildly delighted that my tax dollars, though meagre, support in some way the terrorist detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. (Or, to be more accurate, I should say, the detention camp for Muslims whom we’ve brought back from our Crusade against the Islamic world.) But unlike my fellow Ithacans, I’m disgusted at the level on which the Muslims’ there have their “needs” catered to - that’s a pun (read the link). So I don’t support the push for easy access halal all over the Continent.

I am, however, in firm support of this bit about separate times at the pool for female bathers. I hope that Fr. Samir doesn’t think that a desire to avoid mixed bathing, in which both sexes are all but naked, as is the style today, is an insidious characteristic of Islam. Thus my ecumenical spirit: I wholly endorse the Mohammedan call to end mixed bathing.

Further, I also endorse the call for an end to mixed ministration, as it were, between doctors of one sex and patients of another (leaving aside emergencies). When I recently read this passage in Anna Karenina, I was deeply impressed by the shame experienced by Kitty:

She had been ill, and as spring came on she grew worse. The family doctor gave her cod liver oil, then iron, then nitrate of silver, but as the first and the second and the third were alike in doing no good, and as his advice when spring came was to go abroad, a celebrated physician was called in.

The celebrated physician, a very handsome man, still youngish, asked to examine the patient. He maintained, with peculiar satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic of barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than for a man still youngish to handle a young girl naked. He thought it natural because he did it every day, and felt and thought, as it seemed to him, no harm as he did it and consequently he considered modesty in the girl not merely as a relic of barbarism, but also as an insult to himself.

There was nothing for it but to submit, since, although all the doctors had studied in the same school, had read the same books, and learned the same science, and though some people said this celebrated doctor was a bad doctor, in the princess’s household and circle it was for some reason accepted that this celebrated doctor alone had some special knowledge, and that he alone could save Kitty.

After a careful examination and sounding of the bewildered patient, dazed with shame, the celebrated doctor, having scrupulously washed his hands, was standing in the drawing room talking to the prince. The prince frowned and coughed, listening to the doctor. As a man who had seen something of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine, and in his heart was furious at the whole farce, specially as he was perhaps the only one who fully comprehended the cause of Kitty’s illness. “Conceited blockhead!” he thought, as he listened to the celebrated doctor’s chatter about his daughter’s symptoms.

The doctor was meantime with difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt for this old gentleman, and with difficulty condescending to the level of his intelligence. He perceived that it was no good talking to the old man, and that the principal person in the house was the mother. Before her he decided to scatter his pearls. At that instant the princess came into the drawing room with the family doctor. The prince withdrew, trying not to show how ridiculous he thought the whole performance. The princess was distracted, and did not know what to do. She felt she had sinned against Kitty.

Tolstoy’s commentary on this practice of modern medicine couldn’t be clearer. I cite Tolstoy, not as an expert moral authority, but as an author with a privileged position of the revelant type, I mean, one who knew the old Russian ways as well as the innovations of modern Europe. The old prince is a character painted in a consistently positive light throughout the novel; though somewhat of a minor character, he is both kind and wise.

At any rate, I enjoyed Fr. Samir’s piece, and I commend it to your attention.

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