Ann Summers and the blasphemous blow up doll

Ann Summers has now become the latest target for the Islamist police. The Muslim Association have asked them to change the name of their blow up doll "Mustafa Shag" to something less offensive. You can be sure that by this time next week, Jack Straw and the State Department will be issuing statements condemning newspapers for publishing images of the offending doll, meanwhile Ann Summers sales will hit the roof!

There's no better way to promote something than by seeking to ban it. I'm told that the Satanic Verses is an extremely boring book, but the outcry surrounding its publication did more for its sales than any rave reviews would have done. You have to ask yourself, have the Muslim Association nothing better to do than visit porn shops? Before today, I would never have associated with Mohammed with a blow up doll.

As with the case of the Danish cartoons, this has less to do with blasphemy and more to do with manufacturing a confrontation. As John O'Sullivan writes (regarding the Danish cartoons) in the National Review:

"Vile though it is, this trickery by radical Islamists at least demonstrates the uselessness of appeasing their demands for censorship. If they are granted, our concessions will merely be the springboard for a further attack on Western liberty. And if we disobligingly refuse to furnish them with a pretext, the Islamists will manufacture one as Hitler used to manufacture border incidents in order to justify his planned aggressions. So we might as well fight in the first ditch rather than the last".

Some may look at the Ann Summers affair with amusement, I see it as another ominous sign of our freedoms being chipped away.