Patriarchs and Hooligans
...or should we say "mullahs and jihadis?"
When I heard that Albanians in Kosovo had declared their independence from Belgrade last week, the corner of my mind not preoccupied with sex, drugs, rock and roll, and litigation strategy expected some enthusiastic rioting, a round of face-saving but generally responsible saber-rattling and loud recriminations by the US and Russia at the Security Council over the latest Balkan shenanigans. What I didn't expect (but should have) were church services. Anyone who turned on MSNBC (our network of choice to avoid Wolf Blitzer's sanctimonious um-hum-ah-what-about-patriotism) to watch the US Embassy to Belgrade go up in flames should have been struck by what the cameras seemed to capture just up the street or 'round the corner, as the case may have been: a most solemn Mass, lit with golden light completed by festooned patriarchs declaiming in serious, and to me, incomprehensible Serbo-Croatian.
It might be too much to speculate that the Mass started before the congregation-cum-mob turned on buildings housing the international community, but I would venture that one must travel at least to Pakistan to find more fervent parishioners rushing out of church to make trouble. It brings to mind Hitchen's comment about whether one should be fearful of a group of men leaving a prayer meeting. (The answer being "yes" in many, if not most, parts of the world.)
Having apparently missed out on a vanguard role in everything from the most juicy bits of the Crusades to the the latest round of rather articulate, if decidedly myopic, Muslim-bashing from the likes of Geert Wilders, et al., Eastern Orthodoxy is probably overdue to set about a clash of neighborhoods. ("Civilizations" being too dramatic nomenclature to describe a field of conflict not much larger than the tri-state area.) MSNBC sadly, but predictably, didn't seem to draw the connection between the Mass on one corner and the flaming embassy a few blocks away. But then again, since when do ostensibly Christian leaders in the Balkans order their countrymen forth to imprison, torture, rape and murder their Muslim neighbors? I find it facile that we blame Milošević for all this while turning a deaf ear to the toxic, faith-based hatred from the patriarchs who supported him, eulogize him and likely continue to castigate the West for interrupting what they must imagine to have been sacred and admirable work. ("Likely" because I'm still somewhat unclear on what was said during the official-looking services that accompanied the embassy burning.) That said, I am the first to admit that this ilk will prove more difficult to face down now that Russia is off the democracy sauce and uninhibited by godless communism. We remain pessimistic.
...ceterum, I believe that Bush should be, like, impeached
