Mark Steyn for President! What's that? He wasn't born in the U.S.? Mark Steyn for Pope, then. What's that? He's not a Catholic? All right: just put him in charge of all the major television networks.
Shortly after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, The Sydney Daily Telegraph's columnist wag, sent him a note-perfect parody of a typical newspaper headline:"British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing."
Indeed. And so it goes. This time round – Mumbai – it was the Associated Press that filed a story about how Muslims "found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion".
Oh, I don't know about that. In fact, you'd be hard pressed from most news reports to figure out the bloodshed was "linked" to any religion, least of all one beginning with "I-" and ending in "-slam." In the three years since those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned the offending formulations – "Islamic terrorists," "Muslim extremists" – and by the time of the assault on Mumbai found it easier just to call the alleged perpetrators "militants" or "gunmen" or "teenage gunmen," as in the opening line of this report in The Australian: "An Adelaide woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage gunmen ran amok."
Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion.
The veteran British TV anchor Jon Snow, on the other hand, opted for the more cryptic locution "practitioners." "Practitioners" of what, exactly?
Hard to say. And getting harder. For the Wall Street Journal, Tom Gross produced a jaw-dropping round-up of Mumbai media coverage: The discovery that, for the first time in an Indian terrorist atrocity, Jews had been attacked, tortured and killed produced from the New York Times a serene befuddlement: "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."
Hmm. Greater Mumbai forms one of the world's five biggest cities. It has a population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting therein. An "accidental hostage scene" that one of the "practitioners" just happened to stumble upon? "I must be the luckiest jihadist in town. What are the odds?"
Meanwhile, the New Age guru Deepak Chopra laid all the blame on American foreign policy for "going after the wrong people" and inflaming moderates, and "that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster" in Mumbai.Really? The inflammation just "appears"? Like a bad pimple? The "fairer" we get to the, ah, inflamed militant practitioners, the unfairer we get to everyone else. At the Chabad House, the murdered Jews were described in almost all the Western media as "ultra-Orthodox," "ultra-" in this instance being less a term of theological precision than a generalized code for "strange, weird people, nothing against them personally, but they probably shouldn't have been over there in the first place."
Are they stranger or weirder than their killers? Two "inflamed moderates" entered the Chabad House, shouted "Allahu Akbar!," tortured the Jews and murdered them, including the young rabbi's pregnant wife. Their 2-year-old child escaped because of a quick-witted (non-Jewish) nanny who hid in a closet and then, risking being mowed down by machine-gun fire, ran with him to safety.
The Times was being silly in suggesting this was just an "accidental" hostage opportunity – and not just because, when Muslim terrorists capture Jews, it's not a hostage situation, it's a mass murder-in-waiting. The sole surviving "militant" revealed that the Jewish center had been targeted a year in advance. The 28-year-old rabbi was Gavriel Holtzberg. His pregnant wife was Rivka Holtzberg. Their orphaned son is Moshe Holtzberg, and his brave nanny is Sandra Samuels. Remember their names, not because they're any more important than the Indians, Britons and Americans targeted in the attack, but because they are an especially revealing glimpse into the pathologies of the perpetrators.
In a well-planned attack on iconic Mumbai landmarks symbolizing great power and wealth, the "militants" nevertheless found time to divert 20 percent of their manpower to torturing and killing a handful of obscure Jews helping the city's poor in a nondescript building. If they were just "teenage gunmen" or "militants" in the cause of Kashmir, engaged in a more or less conventional territorial dispute with India, why kill the only rabbi in Mumbai? Dennis Prager got to the absurdity of it when he invited his readers to imagine Basque separatists attacking Madrid: "Would the terrorists take time out to murder all those in the Madrid Chabad House? The idea is ludicrous."
And yet we take it for granted that Pakistani "militants" in a long-running border dispute with India would take time out of their hectic schedule to kill Jews. In going to ever more baroque lengths to avoid saying "Islamic" or "Muslim" or "terrorist," we have somehow managed to internalize the pathologies of these men.
We are enjoined to be "understanding," and we're doing our best. A Minnesotan suicide bomber (now there's a phrase) originally from Somalia returned to the old country and blew up himself and 29 other people last October. His family prevailed upon your government to have his parts (or as many of them as could be sifted from the debris) returned to the United States at taxpayer expense and buried in Burnsville Cemetery. Well, hey, in the current climate, what's the big deal about a federal bailout of jihad operational expenses? If that's not "too big to fail," what is?
Last week, a Canadian critic reprimanded me for failing to understand that Muslims feel "vulnerable." Au contraire, they project tremendous cultural confidence, as well they might: They're the world's fastest-growing population. A prominent British Muslim announced the other day that, when the United Kingdom becomes a Muslim state, non-Muslims will be required to wear insignia identifying them as infidels. If he's feeling "vulnerable," he's doing a terrific job of covering it up.
We are told that the "vast majority" of the 1.6 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims (in Deepak Chopra's estimate) are "moderate." Maybe so, but they're also quiet. And, as the AIDS activists used to say, "Silence=Acceptance." It equals acceptance of the things done in the name of their faith. Rabbi Holtzberg was not murdered because of a territorial dispute over Kashmir or because of Bush's foreign policy. He was murdered in the name of Islam – "Allahu Akbar."
I wrote in my book, "America Alone," that "reforming" Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to accept that. Spread a rumor that a Quran got flushed down the can at Gitmo, and there'll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there'll be protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a rabbi in Mumbai in the name of Allah, and that's just business as usual. And, if it is somehow "understandable" that for the first time in history it's no longer safe for a Jew to live in India, then we are greasing the skids for a very slippery slope. Muslims, the AP headline informs us, "worry about image." Not enough.
From 'extremists' to 'practitioners' A group of us discussed this language movement recently and the suggestion arose that soon jihadis would be called
'enthusiasts' Then we thought of the next move to 'hobbyists' And here's me thinking (as we were taught at university years ago) that English was a 'perjorative' rather than 'ameliorative' languague i.e. things tend to go downhill. Not with the Jihadis they don't. Soon it'll be 'meditators'
Robert,
What about you for president!?
Hitler was always crying about the injustices that forced him to be a terrorist, too.
It's a common tactic of aggressors to pose as the aggrieved.
Until the Western leaders open and read the Koran, we're drifting toward an "invisible" buzzsaw called Islamic imperialism.
Our doom being being the massive p.c. denial of its deadly dogmas.
What do Muslims not whine about?
"A Minnesotan suicide bomber (now there's a phrase) originally from Somalia returned to the old country and blew up himself and 29 other people last October."
What does a Minnesotan suicide bomber say in place of "Allahu Akbar"? Does he say "Uff Da!" or "Ya sure, you betcha!"?
"Kids today, eh? Always running amok ...."
Yeah; first Columbine, now Mumbay.
"Why can't they be like we were -- perfect in every way;
What's the matter with kids today?"
jdamn
have you been reading here long enough to come across mention of Martha Gellhorn's classic article, 'The Arabs of Palestine', Atlantic Monthly, 1961?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/196110/gellhorn
Because at one point, after reporting the bizarre conversations she had with whingeing, whining, endlessly lying Arab Muslims (and some thoroughly dhimmified Jew-hating Arabised Islamochristians) she exclaims with exasperation:
"To listen to these conversations is work for a psychiatrist, not a journalist."
She coins the marvellous phrase 'mad hattery' to describe the sort of discourse to which she was treated in, for example, Gaza (then ruled by Egypt, and which she describes as being essentially a prison, saturated with the most virulent Egyptian anti-Jewish agitprop 24/7).
Here's one such instance:
"The Jews are criminals," the camp leader [in Gaza] continued in a rising voice. "Murderers! They are the worst criminals in the whole world."
'Had he ever heard of Hitler?
'He banged his table and said, "Hitler was far better than the Jews!"
'"Far better murderer? He killed six million Jews as a start," I observed.
"Oh, that is all exaggerated. He did not. Besides, the Jews bluffed Hitler. They arranged in secret that he should kill a few of them--old ones, weak ones--to make the others emigrate to Palestine."
"Thirty-six thousand of them," said the Secret Service man, proving the point, "came here, before the war, from Central Europe."
"It's amazing," I said. "I have never before heard anywhere that the Jews arranged with Hitler for him to kill them."
"It was a secret!" the camp leader shouted. "The documents have been found. Everyone knows. It was published. The Jews arranged it all with Hitler."
'There is a limit to the amount of Mad Hattery one can endure, so I suggested that we visit the camp." END QUOTE.
In Caroline Moorhead's biography of Gellhorn she includes some passages from Gellhorn's notebooks as recorded in 1967, after the Six-Day War:
"The Gaza strip, ‘a garden spot, 150 square miles of rolling land covered with citrus groves and green fields’, shaded by the ‘waving plumes of eucalyptus trees’, its roads lined by flowering oleanders, was nothing other than a huge lunatic asylum. It was the nastiest place on earth, and needed psychiatrists, not aid workers.’"
‘The war had neither touched nor troubled the refugees, yet according to Martha those she talked to were sullen, resentful, suspicious, afraid, and full of hatred. Liars as well as cowards, the Arabs were ‘terrible people’."
Moorhead is, of course, highly disapproving of Gellhorn's ruthless moral and political assessments of the Pooor Palestinians, and does her best to accuse Gellhorn of prejudice, racism, and to subtly accuse her of distorting things (note the wording in the second paragraph above, "*according to Martha* {can't you just see the invisible sneer quotes} those {Arab Muslims} she {Martha} talked to {in Gaza} were 'sullen, resentful, suspicious, afraid, and full of hatred'".
Moorhead just doesn't want to believe that Gellhorn - who had visited Hitler's Germany just before the war, and who had experienced the Spanish Civil War at first hand, and had visited Dachau just after its liberation - just might be giving a perfectly true and accurate description of the appalling mental condition of the local Arab Muslims and their Islamochristian janissaries, in and around Israel, in 1960 and in 1967.
Because if she, Moorhead, accepted Gellhorn's on-the-spot description, then she would have to give up her cherished image of the Pooor Palestinians, innocent victims of the Evil Jooz.
Muslims are not only dangerous, they are tiresome.
Excellent article, I was compelled to read it twice. Mark steyn is a no nonsence writer and believes in "truth to power" and is not going to allow a PC purging of what is really going on there. He is going to speak and write without using a psychodelic pen that so many liberal lunes use to perpetuate the achilles tendon that is multiculturalism in our society.
It is not always easy in this society to find those who are restrained from calling a spade a spade. Those who write articles and somehow think of themselves as literary giants in the media with the blandness of a thick fog should be put out to pasture where they can graze to their delight until they can figure out where milk and eggs come from let alone a jihadist,or a Islamist.
It's interestig that the term "ran amok" was used.This comes from the Phillipines,where Muslim "sepratists"in the'20's would wrap themselves tightly in cloth,grab a machete and ru n through a crowd of Westerners swinging away untill they were finally brought down.Somewhere is a photo of my grandmother strapping a .45 cal pistol,one issued in order to more quicklly take down those running amok.
Mark is like a box of Soap in a Laundromat. I works really well but there is just not enough to clean all the Brains that need washing.
gosshawk
re 'run amok' - not only the Philippines but also in Malaysia and Indonesia, where Malay Muslims would do exactly the same thing that you've described. Simon Winchester's marvellous study 'Krakatoa' includes reference to cases of what we at jihadwatch have come to call ' Sudden Jihad Syndrome": where local Muslims who had shown no previous signs of hostility, suddenly attacked their non-Muslim neighbours or employers.
'amok' is a Malay word that means 'rushing in a frenzy'.
The Wikipedia definition has some interesting historic information...except that it carefully bleaches out any possible Muslim association with the problem.
"Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok (also spelled amuck or amuk), is derived from the Malay/Indonesian/Filipino word amuk, meaning "mad with rage" (uncontrollable rage).
"The word was in use in India during the British Empire, originally to describe an elephant gone mad, separated from its herd, running wild and causing devastation. The word was made popular by the colonial tales of Rudyard Kipling.
"Although commonly used in a colloquial and less-violent sense, the phrase is particularly associated with a specific sociopathic culture-bound syndrome in Malaysian culture.
"In a typical case of running amok, a male who has shown no previous sign of anger or any inclination to violence will acquire a weapon and, in a sudden frenzy, will attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone he encounters.
"Amok episodes of this kind normally end with the attacker being killed by bystanders, or committing suicide." END QUOTE
Somehow I have a suspicion that non-Muslims in Malaysia and INdonesia and the Philippines, ethnically and linguistically virtually identical with the Islamised population, do not 'run amok' with anything like the same frequency.
I actually had read that article, DDA. It's excellent. I love to read firsthand account of the APU, especially those from before PC got all out of hand. It shows how deeply embedded mental illness, the capacity for denial and self-delusion, the tendency to believe the most insane of conspiracy theories over common sense and legitimate news are, and how no amount of education can ever overcome a culture so sick and addicted to hatred and victimhood. Take hatred and victimhood away from Muslims, and what do they have? It's all they know. It's their MO and their identity.
"[A] specific sociopathic culture-bound syndrome" indeed. I wonder how much bargaining had to be done in the talk pages of Wickedpedia in order to finally arrive at that one.
Funny (or not) but the news doesn't have a problem calling out other religions...just try to imagine an article that would reference Muslims such as done below.
Vietnamese Catholics on trial in land dispute case. http://apnews.excite.com/article/20081208/D94U9UC81.html
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Eight Vietnamese Catholics went on trial Monday on charges of disturbing public order and damaging property while holding prayer vigils to demand the return of confiscated church land.
The Catholics are accused of knocking down a brick wall surrounding property near the Thai Ha church in Hanoi's Dong Da district during several weeks of prayer vigils late last summer. They face up to seven years in prison.
Several hundred Catholics gathered outside the Dong Da district court Monday morning, displaying pictures of the Virgin Mary. Scores of riot police stood guard around the building, but no clashes were reported.
As testimony began Monday, defendant Nguyen Thi Nhi, 46, said church members held the vigils to "protect the prestige and property of the church."
Property laws are complex in Vietnam, where communist authorities seized buildings and acreage from wealthy landowners, churches and other groups since taking power in 1954. Such properties were used by the state or redistributed to veterans or others who helped bring the communists to power.
Hanoi authorities, who have since turned the property into a public park, say the Thai Ha church and its surrounding land belong to the city.
The church claims it has documents verifying its claim. The city claims a former parish priest signed papers turning the property over to Hanoi in 1962.
With more than 6 million followers, Catholicism is the second most popular religion after Buddhism in the nation of 86 million.
Steyn: Jews get killed, but Muslims feel vulnerable
.....................
Yes, a great article. I linked to it on another thread yesterday. The OC Register carried the even more succinct headline, "Jews Get Killed, Muslims Whine".
Missionaries shouldn't drag their families to exotic places around the world. I don't understand this impulse.
I am so sick of muslims worrying about their skins after THEIR fellow muslims terrorize, torture and kill others.
They could do a lot by getting out in the streets and decrying all this violence, but... hey, there were no cartoons made by the dead of mohammed - so why ask them to do anything?!
grrrr
Excellent article. One observation, however. Mark Steyn mocks the New York Times and the jihadists. But what about the millions of New Yorkers who tacitly accept what the New York Times writes and do nothing? He lets them off the hook. I don't:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/12/has_the_new_york_times_got_it.html
dumbledoresarmy,
What a fantastic article you recommended from The Atlantic Monthly!
Part of me says, "If only most people knew the truth about the refugees, those Arabs who stayed in Israel and the nature of the 1948 War, then maybe some of the demonization of Israel would diminish. Perhaps they would even muster some sympathy for the plight of the Jews...
But then I remind myself that it isn't about truth for most people. Their world view demands that they see Jews as guilty of some great crimes in the Middle East in order to justify their own bigotry, pursue their economic interests with the Arabs or never challenge their ideological conviction that peace would break out between all people if only those Jews in Israel didn't commit injustices that cause Arabs to hate them and terrorize the rest of the world.
DDA,
My Mom actually made sure I read that article as she subscribed to Atlantic Monthly back. Yeah, I am a bit on the old side as my two kids constantly remind me but I was very young when I first read the article. I used the article later on in college as one part of a paper I did on the "Root of the problem with Arab refugees in the Gaza Strip." This was for a Philosophy of world religion's class that I was taking at the time. This was in 1975 and the professor of the class was horrified on the position that I had taken. I was branded a racist in front of the entire class, but I refused to leave or back down from the class or him. Growing up Jewish, I had learned to defend myself from a very young age, both physically and mentally. The next class campus security was there at the professor's request and he brought in two muslims from Syria to dispute my paper. Of course per them, it was all the Jew's fault and the west's for allowing Israel to come into existance,
and I had to endure 45 minutes of Jew bashing. One of the campus security guards was Jewish and had lost almost his entire family in the holocaust, save for his brother. He came up and helped defend my position, actually having
spent time in Israel and the Gaza strip.
He said the article was spot on and accurate. These arabs made it perfectly clear that they thought it was THEIR RIGHT to kill Jews as isalm and the qur'an told them so. My point is even back then in 1975 on a US college campus this was allowed. Jews get killed, muslims complain or worry about themselves and play the victim oh so well. This professor was called on his actions by the board of Regents and was terminated one month later, as I filed a complaint, along with several other students that were not Jewish. Doubt that would happen today in our PC polluted academic environment.
Mark Steyn is just brilliant and he is again in this article. I would recommend his book "America Alone" to anyone who wants a look into what our future maybe if we do not wake up very soon.
I agree with jewcat that the terminology we use is important, and for a start here are a few suggestions we should offer to our journalists:
First, they should stop calling the Arabs in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria "Palestinians." They are Palestinian Arabs. Most of them have shallow roots in those areas; their grandparents or great-grandparents settled there because of the Jews' development of industry and agriculture. Before the establishment of Israel, the Jews in what is now Israel were called "Palestinians." The Jewish National Fund collected money for "Palestine," and it didn't have Arabs in mind.
Second, it isn't the West Bank; it's Judea and Samaria.
Third, our journalists should stop calling Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria "settlers." Every account of a clash between Jews and Arabs there refers to the Jews as "settlers," meaning they're on somebody else's land. But whose? International law has never recognized the sovereignty of any nation over Judea and Samaria since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and Jews have at least as much right as non-Jews to move there. Why do people not see something wrong with that area's being considered the only place in the world that's rightfully judenrein?
From the intro:
Mark Steyn for President! What's that? He wasn't born in the U.S.? Mark Steyn for Pope, then. What's that? He's not a Catholic? All right: just put him in charge of all the major television networks.
What's that? He's not a fawning Obamaniac?
Damn.
The language of the media reminds us more and more of Orwellian "Newspeak", and nowhere more evidently than in reporting Islamic terror: all those incisive journalistic minds are temporarily suspended, accurate analysis stops and bland wiffle-waffle fills the columns. The forms and motives of this deliberate obfuscation need to be documented and exposed, perhaps in a more systematic way than before. There could be a blogosphere vote and "award" for the leading "Newspeak" inventor and publisher. The present leader seems to be Jon Snow for calling heavily armed, religiously discriminating, civilian targeting, Islamically inspired torturers and murderers mere "practitioners", busy practicing their daily duties just like everyone else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak
Now that a former Muslim is President Elect, that we are told over and over by Mainstream Media (and Obama's own lackeys) never was a Muslim, we should fully expect the discussion of Islam as the source of terrorism, to continue to be pushed to the wayside. Too many powerful, very rich people do not want those old questions to come up.
Funny things is, enough Muslims won't let those questions die -- and some will kill to remind us about the apostate that will soon sit in the White House -- so you better ask your leash-holders for a Pope-dome, Barry. We wouldn't want you to become a martyr for the New World Order...
Those who write articles and somehow think of themselves as literary giants in the media with the blandness of a thick fog should be put out to pasture where they can graze to their delight until they can figure out where milk and eggs come from let alone a jihadist,or a Islamist.
Posted by: Mackie [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 7, 2008 8:33 PM
Amen to that! But we'll be stuck with their ignorant, biased tripe until we figure out how to kill political correctness. It won't die easy and just imagine what lies ahead with an Obama administration! I had to turn off Fox News yesterday to avoid the endless predictions of things to come, like meters in everyone's home to measure the amount of energy used! Big Brother lurks, itching to control our lives! I found this in an email and I love it!:
How To Deal With Islamic Jihad
Paul Eidelberg
A day after 9/11, the present writer pondered the problem of how to
deal with Islamic Jihad . Here is a
brief scenario .
The President calls in the ambassadors of every Islamic country
. He hands them the draft of a message and instructs
them to send to it the heads of their respective states .
The message reads something like this:
“The President of the United States requests that you assemble
your religious leaders and inform them that, unless they publicly renounce the
ethos of Jihad and abrogate Islamic verses referring to non-Muslims as
subhuman, the United States will take the following actions:
The American
ambassador to your country will be recalled .
Your ambassador to
the United States
will be deemed persona non grata .
The American
ambassador to the United Nations will introduce a resolution terminating
your country’s UN membership on the ground that the concept of Jihad
violates the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(copies enclosed) .
If the United
Nations votes against the above resolution, the
United States will terminate
the existence of the UN on American soil .
If any there is any
further Islamic attack on the United States
or on American facilities abroad, the U . S
. Navy will be deployed in the Persian Gulf and
Mecca and
Medina will be destroyed
.
Respectfully yours,
The President of the United
States
We don't know the history of Islam, so we can't connect the dots. The jihadists in Mumbai going out of their way to find the Chabad House and torture the Jewish man there was straight out of Muhammad's playbook. He went out of his way (350 miles north of Mecca) to find the Jews of Khaybar and tortured Kinana, their young chief, to death before having sex with his wife Safiyah. So why did the Mumbai jihadists kill the wife rather than raping her? Well, if they were following Muhammad's example it might be that she was of less value because she was pregnant. I blogged about the Khaybar account at:
http://staringattheview.blogspot.com/2008/06/muhammad-and-jews-part-3-bitter-end.html
Of course the media downplayed the killing of Jewish people at Chabad house in Mumbai, it's not "PC!" But if you ask any arab, the media is owned by Jews. I wish that were so!
Aileen-you are very correct about terminology. But better than "palestinian arabs" would be "philistines." Indeed this is what the rest of the middle eastern world calls them and it is really more appropriate. Imagine every time it would be written somewhere, "Well, the philistine did such and said such..." Ah the sweet connotations of them being branded with such a traitorous name in English.
But, I would like to address punctuation. I refuse to capitalize any word that gives the muslims more importance than they are deserving of. Herewith, I recommend that posters here on JW use only small letters for words like islamist, jihadist, muslim, saudi arabia, mosque, etc. etc. ad nauseum! Tiny letters for a tiny people with tiny brains.
Patriot
thanks for sharing that story. I'm sure many will find it illuminating, as well as frightening.
Yes, interesting story, PatriotUSA. Now I understand the emphasis on cutting no slack with Islam shown in your posts.
Though I always contend that our PC sickness has deep roots, sowed long ago, I'm still shocked to see how far it had gotten in a college setting by 1975.
Good for you for sticking to your (virtual) guns in that clash with your professor.