Today in drooling racist paranoia

Shock horror outrage! How bad is it, elite Washington Times "Rapid Reactions" team?

London’s Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan declared an end to any kind of advertising in the city that promotes “unrealistic expectations of women’s body image and health,” or, in layman’s, typical Western-style fashion spreads.

Sharia, meet London.

As the Gatestone Institute notes, this reminds of when ISIS took over Sirte in Libya a couple years ago and immediately set up sharia shop, ordering via billboards for all women to don baggy burka’d robes if they wanted to walk in the streets without, say, getting acid thrown in their faces, or raped.

Well, not quite. What it most "reminds of" is -- how did the Washington Times put it back in June 2016?

London’s first Muslim mayor is hitting the ground running with a ban on ads in the city that feature “unrealistic” body images.
 
Labor Party’s Sadiq Khan pledged before his May 7 election win to prohibit ads across Transport for London (Tfl) like those seen in a “beach body ready?” campaign by the company Protein World.

... The decision by Mr. Khan comes just months after the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) began looking for way to “proactively regulate” images of men and women.

Well, that's at least marginally closer to the truth. As noted by professional media outlets, of course, it was a ban on body-shaming ads on the Transport for London network (whose ad policies, we noted at the time, are fairly easy to find), not "the city." And there's some flavorful irony in the link the Gatestone Institute* itself uses to illustrate its sharianoid babbling; it's a column in the Independent headlined "Sadiq Khan is right to ban objectifying ads from the tube -- we never consented to this sexist wallpaper." Much of the adult world, indeed, seemed quite capable of putting this into the general context of how commercial speech is regulated. (Hint: At least he isn't fining anyone half a million dollars for half a second of accidental breast at halftime of the Super Bowl.)

But of course that's not why we have deranged race-baiting fishwraps like The Washington Times, is it? Back to today's story:

And it’s not just London.

In Berlin, where wave after wave of mostly Muslim migrant and refugee** have swept away much of Germany’s tolerant culture, authorities are planning to implement a ban on images of women as “beautiful but weak, hysterical, dumb, crazy, naive or ruled by their emotions.”

Add Paris to the mix — Paris, city of romance-slash-sex, where nudity is practically a cultural norm — and it’s an alarming trend that’s sweeping Europe.

“Paris has said au revoir to ‘sexist’ ads on public billboards,” Gatestone reported. “The Paris city council announced its ban after the Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the move meant that Paris was ‘leading the way’ in the fight against sexism.”

Surely that pesky socialism is the common denominator, then?


What’s the common denominator? These cities have undergone radical demographic shifts in recent times, with major upticks in Muslim populations — Muslim populations that bring strict Islamic principles and beliefs.

But the Left must be to blame for some of it!

Feminists and the hard left are either silent on these new fashion impositions, fearful and unwilling to buck the Islam tide, or worse, outright cheering, seeing such government-imposed bans as helpful in the fight to show women as powerful individuals, rather than objects of lust. But it’s a rather strange cheer to issue. 

Let's get back to the Gatestone Institute for the wrapup:

... “There is a reason for this grotesque campaign banning these images,” Gatestone goes on. “These cities host significant Muslim populations and politicians — the same who frantically are enacting mandatory multiculturalism — want to please ‘Islam.’ It is now a ‘feminist’ talking point to advocate sharia policy, as does Linda Sarsour. The result is that, today, few feminists dare to criticize Islam.”

Indeed.

This is not a campaign from smart women, sick of the objectifying that’s been embraced by even those of their own gender in recent times.

This is a government-imposed ban based on a rotten anti-freedom religion. And it should raise red flags all across the West. Sharia, whether subtly instituted or government-mandated, has absolutely no place in free societies, and must be fought in whatever form it comes. 

Sigh. It wasn't a year ago, and it isn't now -- but when you're too aroused to bother with the clip files,*** you run the risk of reminding the reading public exactly where on the evolutionary scale you fall. It's almost enough to make you miss the Times's old ownership.

* Chaired by John Bolton, if you're scoring along at home.
** Shall we [sic]?
*** Hey, have you guys heard of the "Internet"? You don't even have to leave your desk!