Patterico's Pontifications

7/16/2005

Editing the Sass Out of Terror

Filed under: Dog Trainer,Terrorism — Patterico @ 8:27 pm



Michelle Malkin notes an opinion piece by a radical Islamist who seems to draw some sort of strange connection between the recent London terror attacks and young British Muslims’ “sassy” opinions:

If I’m asked about 7/7, I – a Yorkshire lad, born and bred – will respond first by giving an out-clause to being labelled a terrorist lover. I think what happened in London was a sad day and not the way to express your political anger.

Then there’s the “but”. If, as police announced yesterday, four men (at least three from Yorkshire) blew themselves up in the name of Islam, then please let us do ourselves a favour and not act shocked.

Shocked would be to imply that we were unaware of the imminent danger, when in fact Sir John Stevens, the then Metropolitan police commissioner, warned us last year that an attack was inevitable.

Shocked would be to suggest we didn’t appreciate that when Falluja was flattened, the people under it were dead but not forgotten – long after we had moved on to reading more interesting headlines about the Olympics. It is not the done thing to make such comparisons, but Muslims on the street do. Some 2,749 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. To discover the cost of “liberating” Iraqis you need to multiply that figure by eight, and still you will fall short of the estimated minimum of 22,787 civilian Iraqi casualties to date. But it’s not cool to say this, now that London’s skyline has also has plumed grey.

Shocked would also be to suggest that the bombings happened through no responsibility of our own. OK, the streets of London were filled with anti-war marchers, so why punish the average Londoner? But the argument that this was an essentially US-led war does not pass muster. In the Muslim world, the pond that divides Britain and America is a shallow one. And the same cry – why punish us? – is often heard from Iraqi mothers as the “collateral damage” increases daily.

Shocked would be to say that we don’t understand how, in the green hills of Yorkshire, a group of men given all the liberties they could have wished for could do this.

The Muslim community is no monolithic whole. Yet there are some common features. Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don’t-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We’re much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks or not.

Which is why the young get angry with that breed of Muslim “community leader” who remains silent while anger is seething on the streets.

Earlier this year I attended a mosque in Leeds for Friday prayers. It was in the month of Ramadan, when Islamic fervour is at its most impassioned, yet in the sermon, to a crowd of hundreds – many of whom were from Iraq – Falluja was not referred to once; not even in the cupped-hands prayers after the sermon was over.

Interestingly, the piece appears in today’s L.A. Times (via TVD) — with the “sassy” sentence edited out:

Shocked would be to say that we don’t understand how, in the green hills of Yorkshire, a group of men given all the liberties they could have wished for could do this. The Muslim community is no monolithic whole. Yet there are some common features. There are second- and third-generation Muslims without the don’t-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. Which is why the young get angry with Muslim leaders who remain silent while the streets seethe. Last year, as Fallouja was being attacked, I attended a mosque in Leeds for Friday prayers during the month of Ramadan. In the sermon to a crowd of hundreds — many of whom were from Iraq — Fallouja was not referred to once, not even in the cupped-hands prayers after the sermon was over.

L.A. Times readers will never see the author’s bizarre connection between understanding the recent attacks and Muslims’ “sassy” opinions.

How unsassy.

UPDATE: The author of the piece has been fired from the Guardian. Turns out he was a member of a radical Islamist group and didn’t tell his paper. What will the L.A. Times say? I ask that question here.

6 Responses to “Editing the Sass Out of Terror”

  1. I’ve got a post on this. I suspect that the Guardian hired an Islamist on purpose in a misguided attempt to be, I don’t know, representative or controversial.

    It’s sad that the LAT is now reprinting Islamist propaganda.

    Brian O'Connell (858f0c)

  2. Sassy Islamists

    There are a few points about the “sassy” Dilpazier Aslam Guardian article I haven’t seen elsewhere. To catch up, read this Daily Ablution post, if you haven’t already. This Harry’s Place post is also …

    Spartac.us (be1a09)

  3. It’s Time to Stick It to the Enemy in the GWOT!

    Sorry for being repititious here but follow this comment at The Belgravia Dispatch. There are other disucssions on this subject. This is all about a war of the validity of ideologies. Follow the links in around the Blogos it actually comes back here to another thread.

    *****

    In scanning this thread you all are onto something . I wouldn’t spend too much time debating the nits though. This is a frame of reference issue. It’s the difference in how the Western world value’s life and the Islamofascists rejoice in death. While Pape has taken hits for his term “rational behavior” Dean at Dean Wprld’s reminds folks this is from the poltical science meaning and not that the bombers was acting rationally in the mental sense. They are robotic delivery agents of a cult.

    The crux is we are dealing with a cult that sprang from the Arabian and North African deserts that predated Islam. This culture has pathological traits in terms of interactions with modern society.

    Don’t overlook a concealed hand of another in this strategic play either – The Chinese. China and via Norks and Dr. Kahn have provided the ME players with missile and nuke tech. This is the real enemy. The Jihadist cause is being exploited by them to take us down a notch or two so they can move into the power vacuum.

    And while I’m at it please go to Dr.Zin’s site

    http://www.regimechangeiran.com

    and read about the brave Iranian journalist near death in prison putting his very life on the line to call the world’s attention to the struggle of the Iranian people for freedom. The Iranian people will overthrow this tryannical regime if they believe they have the moral support of the American people and the free world. Of course the LL and the MSM are on target with this story. Further like all totalitarian regimes, the Mullahs are actively blocking and filtering sites from the outside world. Seems the “Big Lie” looses it’s power to control when there are alternative informational sources available. Remember Hitler had his “final solution.” The Islamofascists have the “Great and Little Satans” as scapegoats for the failures of their ideology.

    […]

    The secret is we must know our enemy [Islamofascism] and the ideology that drives it. We need to exploit the weaknesses of the enemy. We need to drive a stake literally through the very heart of the enemy (e.g. the Mad Mullahs of Iran would be a close first) and wipe this cult-like religious ideology that evolved from the sands of the Arabian and North African deserts from the face of the earth.

    This ideology has been brought to our world by the radical madrasses of this movement by the oil money of the House of Saud. This is the key nexus of this mess that we have ignored for all too long because of our multiculturism, political correctness, and tolerance of other religions and cultures. The enemy is exploiting this strength of the American society. It’s time we awoke and ram this back down their throats.

    […]

    Read More

    Ron Wright (692eed)

  4. Guardian reporter revealed as hardline Islamist

    Ah! Well I’m sure that the ethnic diversity requirement(?) makes having an Islamic extremist on staff at your paper ok then, I guess. I’m sure he has no problem keeping his personal bias out of his reporting of the London bombings.

    Sister Toldjah (59ce3a)

  5. Maybe the LAT and the Guardian could do a feature article on the sassy Islamic invasion of N. Africa and Spain, the only-somewhat-sassy Crusades and Reconquista, or the sassiest-of-all Islamic attacks on Vienna?

    ras (f9de13)

  6. Remember when the LA Times was a good, wholesome, conservative outfit back in 1911?

    In 1911, AFL President Sam Gompers declared Labor Day to be “McNamara Brothers Day,” in honor of the two men accused of bombing the viciously anti-union Los Angeles Times building in 1910. Twenty people died in the explosion. It was widely assumed the two iron worker activists were being framed. Labor attorney Job Harriman joined Clarence Darrow in defending them. Harriman, backed by labor, ran for mayor of Los Angeles. He won the open primary, and would have been elected, until the McNamaras, on Darrow’s advice, and without telling Harriman, changed their plea to guilty four days before the election. Los Angeles stayed an open shop town for two more decades.

    That’s the incident that occured after labor communist/socialists got mad. I think they decided that going to jail wasn’t a good idea, and went to journalism school soon after, getting jobs at the paper.

    Nick @ HBR (826369)


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