When the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, visited Rome earlier this week, ancient nude statues in the Capitoline Museum—where he and the Italian prime minister held a press conference—were concealed behind large partitions out of deference to Rouhani’s sensibilities. Franck Salameh comments:
The symbolism of [Rouhani’s] January 26 meeting with Pope Francis in Vatican City, both lurid and grandiose in its optics, must have sent chills down the spines of disappearing Near Eastern Christians; dwindling, bruised, besieged “first nations” who owe in no small part much of their decline to Iran’s decades-long aggressive illiberal practices throughout the region.
Yet in an abject gesture of cultural genuflection—or abdication, or diplomatic etiquette, depending on the universe one wishes to live in—Italian officials opted to reward Rouhani for the harm that his government continues to breed around the world, [even going so far as] removing alcohol from the menu of the state dinner given in his honor. . . .
Ought Hassan Rouhani’s “religious special needs,” in the capital city of Christendom no less, be seen as the innocent sensitivities of an innocent Muslim cleric, or might there be something more nefarious afoot? Is Rome’s yielding to Rouhani’s antics in line with common diplomatic courtesies, or is this a form of submission, . . . a Muslim cleric’s thumbing his nose at practitioners of a creed he considers inherently inferior? This all may very well be a tempest in a teapot, but the optics are supremely emblematic, especially to those “once bitten twice shy.”
Read more on Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Dhimmitude-at-its-most-lurid-and-grandiose-a-sad-sign-of-the-times-442989