Beinn Dubh

  [Loch Lomond]

The Rushdie affair: Exposing the left's double standards

The Saudi Arabian monarchy is no doubt one of the most repugnant regimes on the planet. Flagrant human rights abuses, political repression, and the relegation of women to chattel are arguments frequently deployed by the Kingdom's many critics. The barbarity of the regime is compounded further by its allegiance with the US and Western Europe, a point that particularly rankles leftists and liberals- and rightly so. We are locked in hideous embrace with a theocracy which purported the very fundamentalist ideology that we are meant to be fighting. A stance which undermines any ability to construct a moral foreign policy, free of the compromises of realpolitik.