Repulsive Un-Islamophobia Idiocy

[sirs]

An award for un-Islamophobia
To be presented posthumously

The story of the Times Square bomber reads like some Urdu dinner-theater production of Mel Brooks' "The Producers" that got lost in translation between here and Peshawar: A man sets out to produce the biggest bomb on Broadway since "Dance a Little Closer" closed on its opening night in 1983. Everything goes right: He gets a parking space right next to Viacom, owners of the hated Comedy Central. But then he gets careless. He buys the wrong fertilizer. He fails to open the valve on the propane tank. And next thing you know, his ingenious plot is the nonstop laugh riot of the Great White Way. Ha-ha, what a loser! Why, the whole thing's totally - what's the word? - "amateurish," according to multiple officials. It "looked amateurish," scoffed New York's Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "Amateurish," agreed Janet Napolitano, the White House's amateurishness czar.

Ha-ha-ha. How many jihadists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: 27. Twenty-six terrorist masterminds to supervise six months of rigorous training at a camp in Waziristan, after which the 27th flies back to Newark, goes to Home Depot and buys a quart of lamp oil and a wick.

Is it so unreasonable to foresee that one day one of these guys will buy the wrong lamp oil and a defective wick and drop the Camp Osama book of matches in a puddle as he's trying to light the bomb, and yet this time, amazingly, it actually will go off? Not really. Last year, not one, but two "terrorism task forces" discovered that U.S. Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan was in regular e-mail contact with the American-born, Yemeni-based cleric Ayman al-Awlaki but concluded that this was consistent with the major's "research interests," so there was no reason to worry about it. A few months later, Maj. Hasan gunned down dozens of his comrades while standing on a table shouting "Allahu Akbar!" That also was consistent with his "research interests," by the way. A policy of relying on stupid jihadists to screw it up every time inevitably will allow one or two to wiggle through. Hopefully not on a nuclear scale.

Faisal Shahzad's curriculum vitae rang a vague bell with me. A couple of years back, I read a best-selling novel by Mohsin Hamid called "The Reluctant Fundamentalist." His protagonist, Changez, is not so very different from young Mr. Shahzad: They're both young, educated, westernized Muslims from prominent Pakistani families. Changez went to Princeton; Faisal to Connecticut's non-Ivy University of Bridgeport, but he nevertheless emerged with a master's degree in business education. Both men graduate to the high-flying sector of Wall Street analysts. On returning to New York from overseas, both men get singled out and questioned by immigration officials. Both men sour on the United States and grow beards. Previously "moderate," they are now "radicalized."

The difference is that Faisal tries to blow up midtown Manhattan while Changez becomes the amused, detached narrator of a critically acclaimed novel genially mocking U.S. parochialism and paranoia. If only life were like an elegantly playful novel rich in irony. Instead, the real-life counterpart to the elegant charmer holes up in a jihadist training camp for months, flies back "home" and parks a fully loaded sport utility vehicle in Times Square.

He's not an exception; he's the rule. The panty bomber is a wealthy Nigerian who lived in a London flat worth 2 million pounds. Kafeel Ahmed, who died driving a flaming SUV into the concourse of Glasgow Airport, was president of the Islamic Society of Queen's University in Belfast. Omar Sheikh, the man who beheaded the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl, was a graduate of the London School of Economics. Mohamed Atta was a Hamburg University engineering student. Osama bin Laden went to summer school at Oxford. Educated men. Westernized men. Men who could be pulling down big six-figure salaries anywhere on the planet - were it not that their Islamic identity trumps everything else: elite education, high-paying job, Western passport.

As for the idea that America has become fanatically "Islamophobic" since Sept. 11, au contraire: Were the United States even mildly "Islamophobic," it would have curtailed Muslim immigration, or at least subjected immigrants from Pakistan, Yemen and a handful of other hotbeds to an additional level of screening. Instead, Muslim immigration to the West has accelerated in the past nine years, and, as the case of Faisal Shahzad demonstrates, being investigated by terrorism task forces is no obstacle to breezing through your U.S. citizenship application. An "Islamophobic" United States might have pondered whether the more extreme elements of self-segregation were compatible with participation in a pluralist society. Instead, President Obama makes fawning speeches boasting that he supports the rights of women to be "covered" - rather than the rights of the ever-lengthening numbers of European and North American Muslim women beaten, brutalized and murdered for not wanting to be covered. The U.S. is so un-Islamophobic that a 13-story mosque is being built at ground zero - on the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory damaged by airplane debris that Tuesday morning in 2001.

So, in the ruins of a building reduced to rubble in the name of Islam, a temple to Islam will arise.

And, whenever the marshmallow illusions are momentarily discombobulated, the entire political-media class rushes forward to tell us that the thwarted killer was a "lone wolf," an "isolated extremist." According to Mr. Bloomberg a day or two before Mr. Shahzad's arrest, the most likely culprit "maybe" was "someone ... that doesn't like the health care bill or something." Even after Mr. Shahzad's arrest, Associated Press, CNN and The Washington Post attached huge significance to the problems the young jihadist had had keeping up his mortgage payments. Subprime terrorism is a far greater threat to the United States than anything to do with certain words beginning with I and ending in slam.

Given the demographic advance of Islam in Europe, the de jure advance of Shariah in Europe (the Geert Wilders blasphemy trial) and de facto in America (Comedy Central's and Yale University Press' submission to Islamic proscriptions on representations of Muhammad), you wonder why excitable types like Faisal Shahzad are so eager to jump the gun. The Islamization of the West proceeds apace; why draw attention to it and risk a backlash?

Because the reactions of Bloomberg & Company are a useful glimpse into the decayed and corroded heart of a civilization. One day the bomb will explode. Dozens dead? Hundreds? Thousands? Would we then restrict immigration from certain parts of the world? Or at least subject would-be immigrants from those places to extra roadblocks on the fast track to citizenship? What do you think?

I see, as part of the new culturally sensitive warmongering, that the NATO commander in Afghanistan is considering giving out awards to soldiers for "courageous restraint." Maybe we could hand them out at home, too. Hopefully not posthumously.


Can Political Correctness get any more repulsive?

[sirs]

?So, in the ruins of a building reduced to rubble in the name of Islam,? writes Mark Steyn, ?a temple to Islam will arise.? Indeed. And yet, as repulsive as this is, so ingeniously does it exploit liberal pieties about multiculturalism that I almost want to congratulate the people behind it for their canniness. You know exactly how this debate?s going to go. If we don?t let them build it, we?re blaming all Muslims for the actions of the tiny minority who espouse etc etc, so let?s strike a blow for tolerance instead and greenlight a mega-mosque at the site of the world?s most famous pit of Koranically inspired human misery. Think of it as a way for peaceful Muslims to contribute to rebuilding lower Manhattan, not as ? a triumphalist icon that?s going to give every jihadist fanatic in the universe an orgasm when he hears about it.

Scheduled opening date: 9/11/11. To show solidarity with America, you see.

Plans to bring what one critic calls a ?monster mosque? to the site of the old Burlington Coat Factory building, at a cost expected to top $100 million, moved along for months without a peep. All of a sudden, even members of the community board that stupidly green-lighted the mosque this month are tearing their hair out.
Paul Sipos, member of Community Board 1, said a mosque is a fine idea ? someplace else.
?If the Japanese decided to open a cultural center across from Pearl Harbor, that would be insensitive,? Sipos told me. ?If the Germans opened a Bach choral society across from Auschwitz, even after all these years, that would be an insensitive setting. I have absolutely nothing against Islam. I just think: Why there???
Called Cordoba House, the mosque and center is the brainchild of the American Society for Muslim Advancement. Executive director Daisy Khan insists it?s staying put.
?For us, it?s a symbol, a platform that will give voice to the silent majority of Muslims who suffer at the hands of extremists. A center will show that Muslims will be part of rebuilding lower Manhattan,? said Khan, adding that Cordoba will be open to everyone.

Says Ace, ?Someone who cared for what the dhimmi thought at all would recognize this as singularly, incandescently inappropriate.? My hunch is that we?re going to end up playing a game with the left about this, as even though most of them won?t admit it, the obvious provocation here will bug many of them too. (Especially lefty New Yorkers.) They?ll tut-tut about wingnut overreaction and tolerance and so forth because that?s just how they roll, but secretly plenty of them will be perfectly fine with conservatives kicking up a media fuss until the mosque is forced to relocate. Further to that end, here?s a fun tidbit from Pajamas Media about Faisal Abdul Rauf, the mosque?s developer:

Rauf has often directly contradicted his seemingly tolerant and peace-loving pronouncements with harsh, antagonistic assessments of the U.S. In his May 7 Khutbah (Muslim sabbath sermon), delivered at 1:00 p.m. at 45 Park Place in Manhattan, Rauf implied that Muslims did not perpetrate 9/11 at all, according to writer Madeline Brooks, who attended (26): ?Some people say it was Muslims who attacked on 9/11 ? ? he stated, before trailing off into another topic.
He also expressed this view in an interview with 60 Minutes aired on Sept. 30, 2001 as well (27):
The attacks were ?a reaction against the U.S. government politically, where we espouse principles of democracy and human rights, [yet] ? ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries. ? [U.S.] policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

If he doesn?t think Muslims were responsible, why?s he so keen to build at Ground Zero? Add that query to the media fuss, please. Exit question: Every major politician in New York State, from Schumer and Gillibrand on down, objects to holding the KSM trial here because it?s a security risk. Any worries that a giant new mosque at Ground Zero might also, perhaps, pose a security risk given what a powerful symbolic draw it?ll be for triumphalist radicals?

Update: The media fuss cometh. One footnote: Apparently it?s not a mosque but rather a cultural center which includes prayer space, among other functions. Which changes nothing.

?I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened,? said Burlingame, who is co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America?
Rauf insists the effort is meant to help heal the wounds of 9/11, ?We?ve approached the community because we want this to be an example of how we are cooperating with the members of the community, not only to provide services but also to build a new discourse on how Muslims and non-Muslims can cooperate together to push back against the voices of extremism.?
But Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, says there are more productive ways to fight Islamic extremism.
?Even when they have the resources, they are using it for a place of worship, a cultural center for organizations,? he said. They are not using it for a counterterrorism research center.

If this is all about ?healing the wounds,? then presumably there?ll be no objection to moving the center if the public makes clear that it doesn?t want to be ?healed? in this particular way, right?


Yea, let's build a Mosque at Ground Zero