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If you’ve ever seen Casablanca, you won’t have forgotten the scene in Rick’s Cafe where the German officers who are singing “Die Wacht am Rhein” are drowned out by the French patrons who burst into a rousing rendition of the “Marseillaise.”
Something similar happened last week at the National Opera in Cluj Napoca, Romania. A “multicultural” opera that included a Muslim muezzin chanting the call to prayer was interrupted by members of the audience singing the national anthem.
The Romanian national anthem is not quite as rousing as “La Marseillaise” (at least, not to the non-Romanian ear), and the singers were not as talented as the cast of Casablanca, but the sentiments were the same—namely, that tyranny must be resisted.
What tyranny is that, you may ask. Romania is not an occupied country, nor is it in imminent danger of an Islamic takeover.
But it was not that long ago that Romanians did live under the boot of a communist tyrant. Indeed, Nicolae Ceausescu, who demolished churches and employed slave labor, was one of the more ruthless of recent dictators. With the memory of his bloody regime fresh in mind, it is no wonder that Romanians are sensitive to any signs of nascent totalitarianism—even if it is only the soft totalitarianism of the European Union.
Having joined the EU in 2007, Romania is subject to the increasingly Orwellian dictats of the EU—particularly those touching on immigration. Like it or not, every EU country is expected to take in a certain quota of immigrants. As migrant crime rates soar, many are now beginning to look upon EU membership as akin to membership in a suicide pact.
This is a particularly touchy subject for Romanians because their country is the first stop on one of the main migration routes into Europe: from Turkey, across the Black Sea to Romania, then up into Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Germany.
The half-dozen or so Romanians who sang the anthem at the Opera were likely concerned not only about the political imperialism, but also about the cultural kind. As one of the leaders of the “resistance” group put it, “We see this as a play to brainwash viewers, so people might easily accept the Islamization of Romania.”
The performance they objected to was Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man, A Mass for Peace, an anti-war piece which includes extracts from the ordinary of the Mass, the Islamic Call to prayer, the Mahabharata, and poetry from various sources. As Ned May puts it in his Gates of Vienna column, “the Mandarins of Multiculture recently sent [from London] an ‘inclusive,’ ‘diverse’ opera to Romania to enlighten the benighted locals.”
The “locals” were particularly offended by the chanting of the Muslim call to prayer which begins with the words “Allahu akbar” (God is greater) and then continues: “I confess there is no god other than Allah. I confess that Muhammad is sent by god…” It was at this point that the small band of patriots began to sing their national anthem: “Wake up, Romania, from the sleep of death into which you have been sunk by barbaric tyrants…”
This, in turn, was met by objections from the cultured—or shall we say “multicultured”—audience: “Get out. You are cretins;” “Get out. You can do politics outside.” At this point, police arrived and did escort the group outside. But the reaction of certain members of the audience was telling. They looked upon the protesters as insensitive “cretins” with no respect for high culture.
The problem is that high culture can’t exist for long unless it’s sustained by the culture—not just attendees at a cultural event, but a community of people held together by common bonds of religion, patriotism, history and (usually) language. If high culture has no respect for the “mystic chords” (to use Lincoln’s phrase) that bind people together, it can’t expect a reverential response to its experiments in multicultural indoctrination. In a multicultural society, everyone is expected to be sensitive and non-offensive—everyone, that is, except the multiculturalists themselves. They seem to have exempted themselves from the non-offensive rule.
For example, did the composer of the opera ever wonder, or even care, that some Catholics might take offense at a choral work that takes liberties with the Mass? After all, the Mass does not start with an invocation of Allah and Muhammad. Nor is there any suggestion in the Mass that all religions are morally equivalent, as the choral piece suggests. A member of the audience shouted “you can do politics outside.” But the politics was already inside—it was inherent in the “message” of the opera.
Why was that particular opera chosen as the particular lesson that must be taught to the people of Romania at this particular time in history? Why not Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio—an opera that reminds us that tens of thousands of Europeans once fell victim to the Islamic slave trade?
Why? Perhaps because the London opera might prompt people to more “easily accept the Islamization of Romania.” Of course, Romania is not the only target of the multicultural putsch. Attempts to acclimatize Europeans to Islamization are taking place all over the continent. In Italy, Christmas crèches have been removed by parish priests so as not to offend Muslims. In Sweden, many towns have stopped celebrating Saint Lucy Day for the same reason. In Sweden, also, a new book for children has hit the
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