Tel-Chai Nation

The president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights said something very dumb, no matter how vulgar the former Disney TV star's performance was:

What does Miley Cyrus' raunchy, twerk-eriffic performance at the MTV Video Music Awards have to do with Muslims?

Seemingly nothing -- unless you're Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Donohue weighed in on the topic of the week on Thursday, comparing reactions to Cyrus' performance and the controversy over the upcoming Miss World pageant in Indonesia next month.

In comments distributed on Thursday, Donohue that some Muslims have called for the cancelation of the pageant because it "is only an excuse to exhibit women's body parts."

Which, in Dohonue's estimation, is a lot more female-friendly than Cyrus' foam-fingered display

"Last Sunday, at the MTV Video Music Awards, Miley Cyrus simulated masturbation with a giant foam finger, grabbed her crotch, rubbed herself against a man old enough to be her father, pretended the man was performing anal sex on her, and walked around in a nude latex bikini. Her mother loved it. So did her manager. Millions of young girls and guys loved it as well," Donohue wrote.

Comparing the reaction to Cyrus' show to the uproar over the Miss World pageant, Donohue concluded, "Who are the real feminists? Miley's fans? Or the Muslims? If debasing women is the yardstick, the Muslims win."

Lest anyone get the idea that Donohue thought that canceling the Miss World pageant is a good idea, he added, "We don't have to agree with those who want to ban beauty pageants to know that their concerns are not trivial, especially in a day and age when Miley (and her dutiful mother) may be lurking right around the corner."

But the concerns of Muslims are trivial - it's neither wrong nor sinful to see how beautiful a woman's body can be, so long as it's tasteful, and plenty of the best paegeants have accomplished this - and I get the strange feeling some Muslims might not be so objecting to the kind of crudeness Cyrus was wallowing in.

There's a sharp difference between Miss World and Cyrus' vulgarian turn: the former is run according to respectable customs while the latter is an exercise in obscene crudeness, and futility. And Donohue may be oblivious, but the Islamofascists are threatening violence, in contrast to any sensible dissenter with Cyrus, who's not.

That said, I think Cyrus is a terrible performer, much like some of the other junk on the Disney-owned cable channels. But comparing it in any way to Miss World is a failure to distinguish between constructive presentation of beauty and crudeness on MTV that obviously has no point. And claiming that the Muslims are making legitimate claims about something like Miss World is a prime example of naive thinking.

Labels: Asia, Christianity, dhimmitude, islam, misogyny, Moonbattery, showbiz, United States