Political Suicide

‘WITH Kate Moss been and gone, the Sun spots a new Enemy No. 1. “NICK HIM,” orders the paper’s front-page headline.

Dressed in what passes for militant Islam chic, the youth is seen posing outside the Danish embassy in London.

Upset at those now infamous cartoons of the prophet Muhammed, the youth dressed up as a suicide bomber and joined a mob of rabid right wing, “hate-filled” extremists who massed to give full throat to their anger.

Inside the paper, there’s another shot of the man who got the outfit, but not the ambition.

Who is he? And while you’re trying to put a name to the face – uncharacteristically unmasked – the Sun wants you to identify some other protestors?

“NAME THEM,” says the Sun. Who is the man in the beard holding aloft a banner proclaiming “EUROPE YOU’LL COME CRASHING WHEN THE MUJAHIDEEN COME ROARING”? (Surely BASHING.) What about the man who orders “BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM”? “BUTCHER THOSE WHO MOCK ISLAM,” says a third. “MOCK TODAY DIE 2MORO DENMARK,” says another, a woman believed to be a keen text messager.

Our search is not aided by the police’s decision not to arrest a single protestor despite apparent evidence of incitement to violence, let alone the Express’s greater charge of incitement to murder.

This apparent police apathy causes the Sun to produce a cartoon of its own. Readers see a cop turning his back on a bunch of armed Muslim extremists championing “DEATH” while he books an elderly woman driver for straying into the bus lane.

It’s clear that if the man in the fancy dress is to be identified, it will require a covert operation of the deepest intricacies. Who is up to the job? MI5? MI6? No. And No. It’s the Star.

“UNMASKED,” says the Star’s headline. “Suicide bomber is a Brit, 22, from Bedford.”

He’s called Omar Khayam. And speaking in quatrains, the bespectacled protestor tells the Star that he dressed as he did to “make a point”, to “highlight double standards”.

“I can’t make any apologies for it,” says he. “I didn’t go there to cause anyone any harm.”

Indeed. The jacket is, to the best of our knowledge, the extent of Khayam’s career as a suicide bomber.

And he has more to say. While the Mail asks its readers, “Do you know the man dressed as a suicide bomber?”, and publishes the number of a telephone hotline to call if you do, Khayam tells the Express: “Islam is a religion of peace and it has been hijacked.”

Indeed. Hijacked by extremists, narcissists and suicide bombers…’

Posted: 6th, February 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink