America vs. The Narrative

What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?

Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”

What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in America, The Narrative still got to him.

Friedman makes some (limited) good points here but utterly fails to grasp the implications of the question he wants Obama to pose to the Muslim world (b/c Friedman, like all squishy liberals, refuses to confront what this does say about Islam and societies infused with Islam):

"why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God? You need to explain that to us — and to yourselves."

p.s. what Friedman terms “The Narrative” is also comprehensively supported and fed by hateful delusional leftists all over the west, who have been concocting versions of “The Narrative” since before Karl Marx.... for leftist pseudo-intellectuals the interest is not so much to promote Islam for its own sake but to use jihadism as another tool and weapon against freedom, capitalism, and democracy.

To leftists it’s always that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”..... so even though the Chomsky acolytes and NY Times columnists ala Frank Rich and Paul Krugman would be among the first to be imprisoned and slaughtered as in the Iranian “revolution” into theocratic barbarism, their type loves to promote their own versions of “The Narrative” throughout academe, the media, and public policy..... so useful for making Americans and Europeans ignore countless facts and for making us feel “liberal guilt” about standing up for civilization in the face of so many barbarians.

This is so ironic it would be hilarious—if it wasn’t tragic.

Just this afternoon I happened to be perusing articles that together made a persuasive case that a serious political movement in the United States is underfoot, being driven by the Christian Dominionist movement. If you cannot see the connection between the rise of this movement and the increase in anxiety in the Muslim world, I suggest you take a remedial course in common sense.

Perhaps you hadn’t noticed that Sarah Palin’s popularity is out of all proportion to her basic competence, intellect, curiosity, balance, and equanimity. Maybe the headline from this recent Washington Times article will give you a clue as to why, and why that same popularity might be fostering a less-than-benificent reaction in the Muslim world:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/04/palins-evangelical-faith-drives-pro-israel-view/

Care to review what’s behind the recent interest in, and rise in popularity of movies and so forth about demons, vampires, endtimes, Armageddon, etc?
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/1273

Another Times article detailed the influence wielded by the Catholic church in the debate over the health care bill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/us/politics/20alliance.html?_r=1

Upon reading such material, how is a Muslim, or anyone else with a foreign perspective, to interpret the news? How else but that the Church exerts undue influence upon American politics? Is it really such a stretch, therefore, for them to imagine that proponents of such a quasi-, or actual, theocracy might favor a crusade against their own religion?

It’s as though people like Tom are saying, “we have 2 over here to our left, and 2 over here to our right, but there’s no way they add up to 4.” Why on earth not? Wake up! It’s not 2 and 2 we’re playing with; it’s fire and gasoline.

And to those who accept no blame, who say it’s all about their gasoline and not our fire: Shame on you. We want neither our fire, nor their gasoline. Either alone is dangerous, to say nothing of the combination. It’s not an either/or, falsely dichotomous situation. The world needs to be rid of both the fire AND the gasoline.

Two words sum up the “blame them and accept no fault” game: immaturity and self-centeredness. These are the two biggest things religion was constructed to defeat—and at which it has failed, miserably.

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