Mick Hartley

Hisham Melhem, at Al Arabiya, on the diminished West:

This week the turbaned president of Iran Hassan Rowhani, a man steeped in Persia’s history and proud of its imperial legacy, visited Rome, Paris and Berlin. He sought new beginnings with the West, now that Iran has come out of the cold following its nuclear agreement with the P5+1 countries.

The man from the East knew that the multicultural and very accommodating West is more than eager to do business with a resurgent Persia, and contracts worth tens of billions of dollars were signed and sealed, but not over toasts at lavish banquets held in opulent halls with their exquisite paintings of voluptuous odalisques and nude statutes of Greek and Roman Goddesses, warriors and Emperors.

It was determined by the anxious powers that be in Rome that the immensely rich and beautiful cultural inheritance of the glorious Roman Empire represented by marble statutes of nude Deities and Emperors should be covered up, and that alcohol should not be served in the presence of Rowhani so that not to offend the (“Muslim”?) sensibilities of the visitor from Iran.

That brazen act of self-emasculation and obeisance took place at the Capitoline Museum, probably Rome’s richest repository of high art. It was the most abject act of self-negation and cultural surrender in recent times committed by a Western state that has inherited the artistic and cultural heritage of the greatest Empire in human history.

The meek Italian behavior symbolizes the diminishing power of the West, particularly western Europe in the face of bold challenges from the marauders of the apocalyptic ISIS, and the practitioners of hard power like Russian President Vladimir Putin whether in the Ukraine or in Syria, and the deferential treatment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the very power behind killer Shiite sectarian organizations in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq….

The only hopeful sign in this sordid tale was the outrage it has created among Italians, who took to social media to mock and denounce the bankruptcy of their government. Giuseppe Musmarra, a political analyst, wrote: “Was there really a need for this humiliation?”

He expressed the views of many distressed Italians when he said: “Covering up the statues in the Capitoline Museum is to symbolically renounce our art and our culture and to abdicate every principle of secularism. It is the capitulation of a country. One can dialog, and one must, but it needs to be done with dignity.”

Are the principles of secularism and liberalism of Western visitors to Iran (and to other very conservative majority Muslim countries) usually respected? Certainly not. That kind of phony Italian “respect” accorded to President Rowhani reminds me of the fake solidarity some naïve western women display when they wear a hijab to symbolize their support and affinity with Muslim women.

Do these Western women know that some Muslim women are harshly persecuted in some Muslim countries if they resist wearing hijab or if the way they wear it is not seen by the custodians of religious purity as sufficiently pious.

To make matters worse, Pope Francis met with Rowhani for 40 minutes at the Vatican, during which the Iranian President asked the Pontiff to pray for him. It will take more than prayers to cleanse the numerous sins of the President and the state of Iran. The Pope ostensibly wanted to discuss “peace” with Rowhani and the plight of Christian communities in the Levant and Mesopotamia; I wonder if he asked him to what extent Iran’s military intervention is responsible for the death or exodus of Christian Syrians….

Western civilization is not about to fall, and the Barbarians are not about to breach the ramparts, but the Italian government this week reminded us that even the mighty Roman Empire declined for a long time before it collapsed in a whimper.