Beware of the leopard

In Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent wakes up one morning to find his house is about to be demolished. He goes complaining to Mr. Prosser, the guy in charge of the yellow bulldozer outside.

Mr. Prosser answers:

"But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months." "Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything." "But the plans were on display..." "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." "That's the display department." "With a flashlight." "Ah, well, the lights had probably gone." "So had the stairs." "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"

I was reminded of this story reading of the current debate around the Mughrabi Gate works in Jerusalem. Three years ago, the walkway up to the Mughrabi Gate collapsed. The Mughrabi Gate is the only gate through which Muslims allow infidels to enter the Temple Mount.

A temporary wooden bridge was built. Recently it was decided that the wooden bridge is too unstable and risky for those praying in the Western Wall Plaza below it, and that work should continue immediately with building of the final proposed bridge.

The building of a new bridge was planned for years and everybody involved - the Jerusalem Municipality, the police, the Israeli gov't, the Muslim Waqf and the Arab political leaders knew about it. And yet, everybody's acting as if they only discovered it when they opened up the paper that morning.

Even if no bridge is built, the embankment itself is dangerous and should be removed. Since the embankment is 800 years old or so, this is a chance for archaeologists to dig through it carefully. These are the famous "archaeological works" everybody is talking about. Removing the embankment without making a thorough archaeological survey would be a serious crime.

The Muslim response was quick and efficient - riots. One Arab Israeli member of the Israeli parliament explained that this has nothing to do with religion - Israel has conquered the West Bank (in 1967) and therefore it cannot build anything there - but that does not prevent everybody else from portraying it as if this has to do with the Muslims taking religious offense.

And yet, at the same time, nobody seems to object to the fact that Jordan would build another minaret on the mount. One wonders what the response will be when the Temple Mount itself collapses. This is not a theoretical possibility.. it's foundations have been undermined for the past decade at least by Muslim earthworks inside the mount.

What does this have to do with Islam in Europe? Israel is now facing worldwide pressure to stop the building works and Israel is starting to cave in. Should Israel cave in, the European Muslims will take note. One day in the future, Europe would wake up to discover another planned "Day of Rage" and again religious reasons would be carted out.

Should Europe complain that they were not aware of any plans, the Muslims would be able to answer that the plans were on display all along. With a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard".