Posted on 03/19/2006 6:14:22 AM PST by billorites
Like many news junkies, I've noticed that stories putting Muslims in a bad light tend to be sketchy and underreported. A minor example is this comment by the head Muslim chaplain of New York City's prisons: "The greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House." In Manhattan, remarks like that are nearly as conventional as talk about the weather, so the controversy was fairly small.
It might have been larger if the media had shown any interest in other points the imam made. For instance that Muslim prisoners are being tortured in Manhattan, and that Muslims must be "hard against the kaffir" (i.e., nasty to infidels), which presumably city employees are not paid to recommend. (By the way, why are clergymen city employees at all?)
A much bigger example is the misleadingly low-key reporting of the Ilan Halimi murder in Paris. We now know that Halimi was killed as a classic expression of Jew hatred. But with so much evasiveness and misdirection by police, government and press, it took a month to get that fact clearly on the table. Halimi, a cell phone salesman, was kidnapped and held for ransom by a mostly Muslim gang. He was horrifically tortured for three weeks, then slain. From time to time, neighbors had come to watch the torture or to participate in it. Nobody called the gendarmes.
At first the government and the press presented this story as a straightforward kidnapping for ransom. A spokesman said Jewishness may have played a role simply because the kidnappers thought Jews were rich. AP and UPI, in feeds to the United States, barely mentioned the possibility of anti-Semitism. After arrests were made, the BBC worked hard to avoid using the word "Muslim," though verses from the Quran were recited during the torture.
The Los Angeles Times account of Feb. 28 shows how hard candor can be. It reported that the gang made hundreds of abusive phone calls to Jews and had systematically tried to kidnap Jews. But the reporters wrote this: "Rather than a premeditated anti-Semitic murder, it seems a more complex product of criminality and dysfunction in the narrow world of thug culture: a poisonous mentality that designates Jews as enemies along with other faces of 'outsiders.'"
Oh, please. If whites had tortured and killed a black man, I doubt that reporters would be carrying on about how complex and unpremeditated it all was. They would just say it was a lynching.
In an excellent article last week, Colin Nickerson of The Boston Globe said the crime was being attributed to a "predominantly Muslim youth gang" notorious for "virulent anti-Semitism." The gang's taunting phone calls to Halimi's father were filled with anti-Semitic slurs and a rabbi had been told, "We have a Jew." The Globe said hatred of Jews is now a hallmark of what's cool in France, even among young immigrants from non-Muslim nations. Very strong article. No dancing around, just good reporting.
Governments and the media often avoid calling terrorism by its proper name. Presumably the idea is to calm the public and avoid embarrassing Muslims. It took nine months for the FBI and the government to admit that the attack on L.A. airport in 2002 was a terrorist operation. We had been told that personal reasons might explain why a pro-Palestinian gunman, who openly admitted the desire to kill civilians, would kill two people at an El Al counter.
The same verbal dance took place recently when an Iranian student rented a large van and tried to run down and kill as many students as possible in North Carolina. He said he was attempting to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world." But the university tried desperately to avoid the obvious T-word.
Tony Blankley wrote a Washington Times column, March 8, on the underreporting of Muslim violence. He said British politicians tell him there is increasing radical Muslim street violence, explicitly motivated by radical Islam, but not reported or characterized as such. Blankley said rioting Moroccan youths in Antwerp went on a rampage, beating up reporters and destroying cars, but police were instructed not to arrest or stop them. A database search shows little reporting on Antwerp riots.
The scary riots in Australia last December, pitting Lebanese immigrants against native whites, were well-covered. But nobody seems quite sure that we are getting the full story about other serious disturbances. From time to time the Internet carries reports of riots that don't make the newspapers, but they are mostly uncheckable.
Suppressing news, whether out of multicultural deference or fear, is a perilous business. We can't know how to react to upheavals if we aren't told about them.
Lock em up one by one - no need to start a panic.
It's akin to plugging the relief valve on a pressure cooker because one doesn't want to address the unsightly steam.
And in this case the attendant reaction will be just as explosive. It's going to blow apart in Europe first...with any luck it will be loud enough and violent enough to open eyes on the side of the Atlantic.
An before any sensitive types seek to chastize me for my thought expressed above...I'm not wishing this on Europe, I just think it's inevitable.
The longer Europe waits, the harder it's gonna get. You would think they would have learned something from WWII.
There is a bright side, in a grim sort of way: If it does blow on this side of the Atlantic, that might create the impetus to 'clean house', as it were. ( Sorry, I was listening to Dick "Head" Durbin this morning )
Everything I have found about Islam, a Religion of Peace®? ( links, blogs, quips, quotes, astonishing and repugnant pictures ) is located here- click the Pic, and scroll backwards:
...read my links- you won't like what you see.
I think Europeans have proved unable or unwilling to learn from history again and again. Course they're not alone there.
The issue is whether a people are ready to face a tough task and shoulder a difficult burden. Bush and about 51% of the American people were willing to look radical Islam in the eye and stay the course during the Nov '04 election. The Europeans are too soft for that kind of stare-down.
Hehehehehe. Great post. "Lipstick on the Islamist pig" is a great line on so many levels.
Sadly, even our own President tries to pretend Islam is a ROP. I kinda, sorta think Americans are beginning not to believe that tripe much anymore - which I think accounts for a lot of Bush's unpopularity at the moment. I think most Americans want a President who kills terrorists, but not one that attempts to build democracies for a people whose religion is inherently incompatible with freedom and liberty. I suspect the cartoon riots, whether most people admit it or not, were kindof the tipping point where a lot of Americans and Westerners in general just gave up on Islam altogether.
I've always thought Islam a scourge, so I'm glad people are coming around to the truth.
The exact same thing is happening here as in the student who tried to mow down students in North Carolina. The reason behind the soft peddling of muzzie malfeasance is the old saw that if you pay them any mind you just encourage their bad behaviour. This line of reasoning works only so far. As the situation excalates and more stuff happens, it will be harder to ignore. The tipping point will bring serious changes in public perception. The Koran, Headscarves and all things Islamic may be outlawed in smaller northern European countries.
The totalitarian nature of European politics will rear its ugly head again. European politics seems to be either black or white - all or nothing - no institution exists there to humanize the political situation. There is no Christian ethic in Eurabia.
KEEP ON BUYING "DANSK"!!!
Even Leo won't admit, or doesn't recognize, that plain old bigotry causes the Euroweenies to dismiss this kind of stuff. It is hatred of Jews, plain and simple. Whis is this so hard to accept? Hitler and the Holocaust happened in Europe. There is a reason for that. It also explains why they love the Muzzies, no matter what kinds of horrific behaviors they engage in. In the mind of the average Euroweenie, they secretly enjoy the persecution of Jews by Muzzie barbarians.
Oops. Meant to type:
Why is this so hard to accept?
"...though verses from the Koran were recited during the torture."
Muslim torturers never travel far without their torture manual.
I want to know why the world still accepts this killer-cult as a religion.
Was the Nazi Party a religion? Was Hitler a prophet?
The moral authority of the left is declining by the day. What puzzles me is why some "conservatives" spend most of their time trying to save liberalism when in fact it needs a good flushing along with Islam the defacto religion of West haters and other assorted losers.
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