St George! For Merry England

St. George for Merry England!

Gateway Pundit warns us that England has canceled the St. George's Day Parade, which would have featured 1,500 schoolchildren who'd made little flags to carry, out of fear of Muslim riots. He posts this graphic (now that I think of it, I believe that graph from a couple of posts down was also his, originally):


There was apparently some streetfighting in 2001, when a Muslim was stabbed by a National Front member. That one bad act touched off a riot in the Muslim neighborhoods that injured 300 policemen.

The English are naturally being careful here. They have seen this sort of thing before, in their neighbor Ireland. For years there were regular riots on many a 12th of July, because of the celebration of the Battle of the Boyne, where William of Orange and his Protestant army defeated the Stewarts, and the Irish Catholics who made up the majority of the population. The similarity with St. George, insofar as it exists, would appear to be this:

The saint became an English hero during the crusades against the Muslim armies that captured Jerusalem in the 11th century. An apparition of George is said to have appeared to the crusader army at the Battle of Antioch in 1098.
So this is part of efforts to avoid increasing tensions between Englishman and Muslim, by avoiding any symbolism with even the most tangential association with violence or discord. It's sad for the schoolchildren, but recognizing that there are a small number of bad actors in their community, the English are sacrificing as a group in order to protect the feelings of their neighbors. Of course, the Muslim community has been equally circumspect.
Conservative opposition spokesman David Davis said slogans such as "Massacre those who insult Islam" and "Europe you will pay, your 9/11 will come" amounted to incitement to murder and that police should take a "no tolerance" approach to them.
Oh, right.

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