Last week a 53-year-old software engineer, Joseph Stack, became enraged about his business failures, and tax problems he had had all during the 1980s and 1990s, and, in particular, with a provision in the Code called "Treatment of Certain Technical Personnel." In his suicide-note-and-farewell, Stack ranted about "pompous political thugs" and about a tax system that he felt was weighted against him, Joe Stack. The note was not that of the Tea Party variety, that is, not against Big Government, but against one very specific provision in the Tax Code, and then against, apparently, not measures to increase government intervention in health care but, rather, against the failure of the government to increase its intervention. He ranted against, as a Wall Street Journal article noted, political "thugs and plunderers," "the joke that we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies," "the vulgar, corrupt Catholic church," and "the recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies." As James Taranto of the WStJ put it dryly: "left-wing bogeymen all." The closing couplet, according to Taranto, was this:
The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
Taranto's main point was that someone who despised Corporate America, and its handmaidens, and denounced "the recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies" and "the vulgar, corrupt Catholic church" and "the joke that we call the American medical system" could not be called, as he knew so many in the press would want to call Joe Stack, a right-winger, a Palin supporter, an enthusiastic guest at one of the Tea Parties.
But Taranto dealt only glancingly with the question of whether or not Joe Stack's deed, in flying his plane into the IRS building, was an act of "terrorism." Art Acedado, police chief of Austin, Texas, according to Fox News, had "labeled the incident a single act by a lone individual and refused to classify it as terrorism."
But there was one party that was insistent that this act be called "terrorism." That was the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which issued a press release:
[CAIR] called the apparent airborne suicide attack on an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office in Austin, Texas, an act of "terror."Before taking off in the light plane that he allegedly used to attack the IRS office, Joseph A. Stack reportedly set fire to his own home and posted an anti-government screed on the Internet that was signed "Joe Stack (1956-2010)." . . .
"Whenever an individual or group attacks civilians in order to make a political statement, that is an act of terror," said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. "Terrorism is terrorism, regardless of the faith, race or ethnicity of the perpetrator or the victims. We pray for the speedy recovery of those injured in the attack." . . .
Awad noted that if a Muslim had carried out the IRS attack, it would have surely been labeled an act of terrorism.
Here is how Taranto dealt with that claim by CAIR:
That's odd. Why would CAIR think a Muslim would do something like this? The question is facetious, of course: CAIR is understandably defensive about the stereotyping of Muslims as terrorists, or terrorists as Muslims. Such stereotyping is also understandable, since the last time terrorists flew planes into buildings, they were Muslims who claimed a religious motive. One can hardly fault CAIR for pointing out that the Stack attack runs counter to the stereotype, although expressly citing the stereotype in the process undercuts the message.
And Taranto was far too accommodating - and wrong, too - to agree that the incident could be called terrorism even if not "organized terrorism":
In any case, CAIR is right that the incident meets the definition of terrorism: a politically motivated attack on civilians. When people say it wasn't terrorism, what they probably mean to say is that it wasn't an act of organized terrorism or war. Had the attacker been Muslim and left a screed against "infidels," it would have been reasonable to suspect that he was part of al Qaeda or some other enemy group, or at least that he was influenced by its ideology. That he was apparently a lone nut instead is a great relief not only to CAIR but to anyone who worries about attacks by America's enemies.
So let's see if it is enough to say, in effect, yes, it was "terrorism," but not "organized terrorism." What does "organized terrorism" mean? Do you have to have more than one person involved? Do you need others who have helped plan the mission? What exactly constitutes being "organized"? And if a single Muslim, possibly without any contact with any other Muslim now alive, enters a church or a synagogue and sprays that church or synagogue with gunfire, can that be an act of "terrorism," even if it is not "organized"?
The key here is that a Muslim who calls himself a Muslim thereby signals to us that he believes certain things, in the Total Belief-System of Islam, or at least that those things which Islam inculcates do not so thoroughly dismay or disgust him that he has decided to no longer call himself a Muslim. One can understand why, in a Muslim-dominated land, those who are disaffected from Islam might not wish to draw attention to this, for they know that they can be killed, or their interests severely harmed, and their lives ruined, if they openly declare that they are no longer Muslims. But what about Muslims living in the West, in conditions of far greater safety? If they continue to call themselves Muslims, then it is not unfair to attribute to them agreement with, or not deep disagreement with, what is contained in the Qur'an and the Hadith and the Sira.
And so we come to the hundred-odd jihad verses in the Qur'an, a book instinct with violence and aggression and hostility toward non-Muslims, and we find passages such as 9.29 and 9.5, and in 8.60 the need to "strike terror" in the hearts of Unbelievers. What shall we make of this? That it is meant metaphorically? But the words of Allah are to be taken literally, and the Qur'an is an uncreated and immutable text, not to be tampered with, and not - now that for more than a thousand years the Gates of Ijtihad have been shut - subject to any renewed interpretation. Its meaning is fixed.
If a lone Muslim, not in contact with any other living Muslim, suddenly attacks Hindus or Sikhs, Buddhists or Christians or Jews, with whom he has no personal connection (that is, he did not know his victims, but knew only that they were Hindus or Sikhs, or Buddhists or Christians or Jews), has he committed an act of terrorism? James Taranto seems to be implying that this would not constitute an act of "organized" terrorism, which is, he has written, what we mean when we talk about "terrorism." But every Muslim has his guide to right conduct, his guide as to What Is Commanded and What Is Prohibited. Every Muslim knows that Muhammad is the Model of Conduct, uswa hasana, the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil.
Every Muslim knows what the Qur'an's "jihad verses" (as the composers of the Calcutta Qur'an Petition call them) contain. Even in the case of the handful who may not, who may somehow have avoided noting the murderous hostility toward non-Muslims that is everywhere in Islam, such knowledge must, and with reason, for the purposes of Infidel self-defense, be attributed to them. We cannot allow any Muslim to simply claim "I had no idea what was in the Qur'an" or "in the Hadith" or "I really didn't know that Muhammad had consummated his marriage with little Aisha when she was nine, I didn't know about the raid on the Khaybar Oasis, I've never heard of Asma bint Marwan, I didn't realize that he had had 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza decapitated, I had no idea that there was this concept of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb." We just can't. We are perfectly justified, at this point in the world's history, to assume that those who, in the Western world, now call themselves Muslims are adequately informed about the contents of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and that we then can judge whether or not we can trust them, now or at any time, on the basis of that real, or attributed, knowledge on their part.
Which brings us back to Joe Stack, who was not out to strike terror into the stony hearts of the IRS, but merely to strike back at it for what, he believed, it had done to him. And it served - something had to serve - as a symbol for a host of offenders. It's not even clear that Stack was against taxation and Big Gummint, but rather, that he had a very specific objection to a tax code provision. His other stated objects of fury suggest that he wanted bigger government, and hence more taxes, and was alarmed more by those who defended, as he saw it, the privileged - "George Bush and his presidential cronies" - or who were too feckless or dilatory, in his view, to do what needed to be done, in his view, to do something about "the joke that we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies."
The important thing is not that he was alone, but that his ideas were his own ideas, and not part of an ideology that could be transmitted, as Islam is transmitted, through early reading, and constant re-reading or re-memorizing, or re-hearing, of a book called the Qur'an, and another book (or variant versions of that book) which contain the most "authentic" Hadith, and another book which contains the Life of Muhammad.
Unlike a "lone Muslim," Joe Stack was not inculcated from a young age with hatred of the IRS, or the government. He was not out to right wrongs, to terrorize the IRS. He was simply at the end of his tether, and that tether snapped, and he snapped, and he decided, in this publicity-maddened age, to go out with a bang. It wasn't so much "Striking Terror Into the Hearts Of (the IRS, the government, the drug companies)," but, rather, simply Going Out With A Bang.
But the "lone Muslim" can reasonably be described as a "terrorist" if his act of terrorism has been inspired by an ideology shared by a billion people, and taken seriously by a great many of them, and if he thinks, if it is reasonable to think he thinks, that in smiting this particular Infidel or Infidels, he is "striking terror" into the hearts of other Infidels, and thus landing a blow for Islam.
This is not what Nihad Awad wishes you to hear. But there are all kinds of things Nihad Awad wishes you not to hear. He wishes you not to hear about Chris Graubatz, and the documents he discovered, and the conversations he was privy to, while working at CAIR. He wishes you not to hear about all the members of CAIR who have been arrested and charged with connections to terrorism. He wishes you not to remember what he said about Nidal Malik Hasan, the deeply devout Muslim who believed he had a religious obligation to "strike terror" into the hearts of the Infidels, his fellow soldiers in the American Army (which had previously paid for Nidal Hasan's entire medical education, and was paying him some $90,000 a year) on the Chris Matthews show: "We have to find out how he thinks and what he did, but I will never come to the conclusion that religion is the motive, religion is the reason for that. I am a Muslim."
And there is so much more that Nihad Awad would prefer that you not hear, including what his CAIR confounder Omar Ahmad said some years ago at a Muslims-only gathering (save for one intrepid reporter) in California: "Islam is not in America to be equal but to become dominant. The Qur'an, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."
And there is an Unshakeable Ally that Nihad Awad can count on. That ally is Stupidity. It is one of the strongest forces on earth. It can't be dealt with, the way evil can. It just keeps coming back. And one form of the Stupidity is that which refuses to make distinctions. But at the heart of the exercise of intelligence is the ability to make distinctions. We are capable, or should be, of distinguishing Shakespeare from Rod McKuen, Mozart from Eminem, and the kind of terror that consists of inserting a small glass rod into the urethra of a prisoner, as the Hungarian Secret Police were said to do, and then once it was inserted, smashing the prisoner's penis with a hammer, and the kind of "terror" that consists, as in the case of one Binyam Mohamed about whom such a fuss is being made in Great Britain right now, of "sleep deprivation" and acts of psychological "torture" that apparently involve denigration or verbal humiliation. If you can't see the difference, then you are a fool.
But a blogger by the name of Andrew Sullivan proved equal to the task, when in discussing the case of Joe Stack, he readily described it as "terrorism" and then went to what was intended to be, apparently, a series of self-evident tautologies that everyone would agree with, because the rhetorical force would carry one along and sweep away any application of reason. Here is what Sullivan wrote:
"Terrorism is terrorism whoever does it. Torture is torture whoever does it. Murder is murder whoever does it. Just as I oppose affirmative action and hate crime laws, which make specious distinction on the basis of race and other characteristics, so I oppose making any distinction on those grounds when describing terrorism."
That's it. No "distinctions" are to be made. But the Intellect's main activity is that of Making Distinctions. For Sullivan the phrase "terrorism is terrorism," with no investigation as to what act can legitimately be said to be "terrorism," and what things - such as what prompts it, and what effect it is intended to have, and what the act itself consists in - all this is too much for Andrew Sullivan. He's just too busy to bother. He knows.
He thinks he can simply abdicate his responsibility to make distinctions, even fine distinctions. No. He can't. And the mere rhetorical raising of the voice does not convince, nor the assumption that Andrew Sullivan makes, and wants his readers to make, that he, Andrew Sullivan, is always on the side of the angels. He's stupid, not evil. Certainly not as bad as the nihad-awads of this world. But he is their aider. Their abettor.
A very sound analysis, Hugh. But while what you write on Sullivan is true enough, note that CAIR in its release also approves of what Glenn Greenwald wrote for Salon:
http://salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/19/terrorism/index.html
Included there is this:
"Despite all that, The New York Times' Brian Stelter documents the deep reluctance of cable news chatterers and government officials to label the incident an act of "terrorism," even though -- as Dave Neiwert ably documents -- it perfectly fits, indeed is a classic illustration of, every official definition of that term."
Perhaps, as you suggest when you emphasise the need to make distinctions, the official definition of "that term" has been on the shelf too long. It is old stock.
I live only a few miles from where the incident discussed above occurred. Since 9/11/01 involved planes deliberately being crashed into populated buildings, and since most people agree this constituted terrorism, then many will take the parallel here that someone deliberately crashing a plane into a populated building should be considered an act of terrorism as well. There are significant similarities and even more significant differences between the two. For those morally confused persons who support this act, I would remind them of what the victim's son said concerning it - that nobody, himself included, agrees with everything the government does, but that that does not give someone the right to commit murder. Though the gentleman who worked in the building that was killed was indeed a victim, this act actually makes the government, in this case the IRS, appear to be the victim. So Stack and his supporters are damaging to their own position, and perhaps damaging to those with legitimate grievances toward certain tax laws that do not resort to or condone such acts of violence. In any case, Islamist sympathizers will no doubt mention Mr. Stack's act, along with Timothy McVeighs, et al, to divert attention away from the overwhelming Islamist character of the vast majority of such terrorist acts on American soil, viz, http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/AmericanAttacks.htm, not to mention world wide: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attacks
Not sure if this has already been sent to you...
From The Times
February 23, 2010
Turkish police arrest 50 in move against anti-Islamist coup
Balance of power: many soldiers were held yesterday over an alleged plot
Turkish police arrested the former heads of the Navy and Air Force along with several other senior military officers yesterday in a sweep against top brass linked to a coup plan against the Islamist-leaning Government.
The existence of Sledgehammer, a detailed plot hatched in 2002-03, came to light last month. The arrests could be a spectacular milestone in the democratic history of Turkey, where four previous governments have been ousted by the military but no one has come to trial.
“This morning our security forces began a detention process,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, said during an official visit to Spain.
By the end of the day almost 50 people — including Ibrahim Firtina, the former Air Force commander, and Ozden Ornek, the former Navy commander, five other senior former generals and seven serving soldiers — had been detained in a series of early-morning raids in nine cities. They were taken to Istanbul for questioning by anti-terrorism police.
RELATED LINKS
Sledgehammer arrests show coups are a crime
Turkey puts 86 on trial over planned coup
'Anti-Islamists' charged over Turkey 'coup plot'
Police carrying out the raids entered military schools — from where previous coups were fomented — and the Mehmetcik Foundation, which helps the families of dead soldiers and veterans. Other teams searched the house of the former General Cetin Dogan, who used to head the First Army in charge of the region around Istanbul. He was credited with masterminding the so-called Sledgehammer plot. His lawyer said that he believed the police would be seeking a warrant for Mr Dogan’s arrest.
Another former First Army chief, Ergin Saygun, and the retired admirals Ahmet Feyyaz Ogutcu and Lutfi Sancar, were also arrested, as was Engin Alan, a well-known name among the military who spent much of his career in special forces or anti- terror squads fighting the Kurdish insurgency in southeast Turkey.
Many soldiers were named and their duties were outlined in the Sledgehammer plans, which could explain the swift arrests.
The plot, which was discovered by the independent Turkish daily, Taraf, was the most detailed coup plan ever to come to light in Turkey. It included more than 5,000 pages of scanned documents, CDs of slides and 48 hours of audio recordings, which were seen by The Times. Computer files had digital imprints dated 2002 or 2003, apparently tracing them to military computers.
General Firtina’s name was linked to an alleged plan to bring down a Turkish Air Force jet and blame Greece to generate the nationalist solidarity necessary to stage a successful coup. The Government, it was hoped, would also look inept in issues of national security.
The plot included plans to attack two mosques and use subsequent riots by survivors as proof that Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK) was encouraging Islamic extremism.
It was through the leaked diaries of General Ornek that the Turkish public first heard of a series of other coup plans currently being tried under the banner of Ergenekon — a shadowy, well-connected group of ultra-secularist rightwingers. More than 200 people, including military officers, lawyers, journalists and politicians, have been arrested since the case began 2½ years ago.
Generals Firtina and Ornek had been questioned in December by the police as part of the Ergenekon investigation.
The trial has been attacked by its critics as a witch-hunt against AK opponents, despite what appears to be evidence against many of the detainees. Liberals who have supported it have complained that prosecutors have been unwilling to touch the senior military, where many suspect the plots were founded and directed.
“There was a justified criticism that ... those who really had the power to stage a coup were still at large,” said Alper Gormus, whose magazine, Nokta, was forced to shut down after publishing extracts from General Ornek’s diary. “Now with the detention of the former forces commanders, this objection is no longer founded.”
Sledgehammer, like the Ergenekon plots, tried to justify a military takeover by creating an atmosphere of chaos, nationalism and the fear of fundamentalism in the predominantly Muslim but secular state.
The generals involved in Sledgehammer and other plots cite the widespread fear that the AK party, which was established partly by members of a defunct political Islamist movement, would sweep away Turkey’s secularist system.
Takeover bids
1960 The Prime Minister and two other ministers were hanged after a military coup
1971 The Coup by Memorandum came after civil unrest. Suleyman Demirel, the Prime Minister, quit and martial law lasted two years
1980 The military gave itself almost unlimited power in a provisional constitution
1997 Necmettin Erbakan, the country’s first Islamist Prime Minister, resigned under pressure from the army and the judiciary, which said he threatened the secular order
2002-03 Sledghammer was allegedly hatched by Ozden Ornek, the commander of the navy, and other top military figures
Sources: Reuters; Times archives
I haven't looked all that deeply into this farce, but I'm of the opinion that the Stack attack seems more like an act of despair and/or revenge than terrorism in the proper sense.
Terrorism, as I understand it, is the use of violence against civilians for the sake of scaring them into political compliance of one sort or another.
I don't get it that this character had any specific political goal whatever.
Sure people were frightened, as they would be by any violent act, but what political step are we expected to take in order to fend off the wrath of Stack, or perhaps his buddies, now that he is defunct?
Neither is there, the complaints of America's enemies notwithstanding, any context of some political movement of which Stack could be considered a sort of wing-nut peripheral associate.
The Tea Party crowd is far too non-violent and deliberative to be a candidate, and even were that not the case Stack's blatherings, as pointed out above, don't fit with the considerations and outlook of the Tea Party crowd.
Feh!
The liars will lie and the slanderers will slander. That's natural.
Feh!
In case anyone is uninformed, Andrew Sullivan is - like Charles Johnson - a liberal turned conservative turned liberal...except with a twist: He's obsessed with Sarah Palin's down-syndrome son, Trig, believing - against all evidence, that the child is actually her grandson and that she - Palin - is covering up for her teenage daughter (who by the way, just happened to recently give birth to her own baby in what was a world-renowned scandal).
Sullivan is a fruitcake who makes the so-called 'birthers' seem absolutely rational by comparison.
Thanks for the update, fightback. This internal struggle inside Turkey, between old guard defenders of Kemal Ataturk's vision of a secular state and a resurgent conservative Islam, has been going on for some time. Stories about this slowly unfolding drama are featured from time to time in http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/ .
Those who are being arrested appear to be the defenders of secularism inside the government, the police, army, and educational institutions - the arrested are, in fact, from the same factions, incidentally, that periodically overthrew the government to install the "military dictatorships" so reviled in the West. But recent events suggest one might wish to reassess these dictatorships in response to changing forces.
On the one hand, the arrested have been part of the political elite, and are the same people who are behind such things as the denial of the Armenian genocide, and laws making it a crime to "insult Turkishness" which we here condemn or laugh about. These are the people deemed responsible by the EU for Turkey's not yet being democratic enough, as defined by the EU, to be accepted into the EU.
On the other hand, they are also the same people who have been the principal barriers resisting the forces of resurgent Islam inside Turkey.
So these arrests are a double body blow. First, they are the secular backbone of Turkey, and while perhaps removing them may give satisfaction to a few Greeks, with their removal go also the forces keeping the country from repudiating Kemalism. The second body blow is related to this. Suppose Turkey is, for one reason or another, not admitted into the EU, perhaps by conservatives in Western Europe becoming alarmed enough at the prospect of millions of Turks flooding into their countries to force blockage of the application. If Turkey is rebuffed at the alter after courting the EU for so long, there will no longer be reason to keep up secularist pretenses inside the country, no longer any reason for not repudiating Ataturk's vision. After all, this was only made possible because Turkey had unwisely chosen to ally itself with Germany in WWI.
What if Turkey, being rebuffed by Europe, then decides to follow its heart, to turn toward the siren call to resume its rightful place at the head of the ummah, perhaps even to re-establish the caliphate? Recall that it was the loss of the caliphate that was cited by OBL as being one of his justifications for 9/11, and there are about a billion people who wouldn't mind seeing this happen.
It sounds extreme and unlikely, but then in Iran becoming an Islamic republic in 1979 also seemed preposterous. In any case, Turkey is a place to keep an eye on.
According to Islam 101, a familiar document, when Muslim lands are attacked, jihad is a fard 'ayn (individual obligation). Therefore, how can you not considered Ft Hood, Ft Jackson, or any other individual act of religiously motivated violence organized terrorism? Washington, DC is clueless or deliberately ignorant.
About Andrew Sullivan - as you say, Hugh, he's a social flip-flopper like Charles Johnson, a liberal-turned conservative-turned liberal, who can't seem to make up his mind what he is. He's a notch above Thomas Friedman in his ability to string words together in such a way as to give the illusion of insight, but slightly less adept at the craft than, say Christopher Hitchens. I used to subscribe to the Atlantic, but stopped when Sullivan became unbearable and instead now send the money to charitable organizations.
I wrote nothing about Andrew Sullivan being a "social flip-flopper" (I don't know what this means). Perhaps you are confusing what a poster may have put up with what I wrote, which was only about his failure to make distinctions, the most important task of the intellect. I wrote only about his sets -- "Torture Is Torture, Murder Is Murder, Terrorism Is Terrorism" -- of tautologies. In his view, this may constitute a well-reasoned argument, expressing the indignation of the morally-advanced Andrew Sullivan, who is unwilling to admit any need to define, distinguish, weigh, assign value (he's one more Podsnap, standing very high in Mr. Podsnap's opinion), and even thinks this unwillingness should be understood as a sign of his own unwavering moral rectitude.
So here goes, in the same vein: "War is War, Peace is Peace, Evil Is Evil, Good Is Good, Understanding Is Understanding, Une Femme Est Une Femme, Mais Un Caporal..." Ooops, I deviated into a kind of allusive sense there at the end, sorry, couldn't help myself, won't happen again. Fortunately for Sullivan, he doesn't have that problem.
No Jizya:
Quite the contrary - Washington, DC must be DELIBERATELY COMPLICIT.
http://www.sunlituplands.org/2010/02/mystery-of-barack-obama-continues.html
Hugh, yes, it was Cornelius' characterization I incorrectly attributed to you. My apologies to you both.
Joe Stack was seized on by Muslim disinfo. artists as part of their campaign to have the words "Islamic" or "Muslim" censored by the media when used with the word terrorist, and to stop Muslim Ideological Profiling (MIP). Since the Quran commands true believers to become terrorists in 8:60, and also commands them to muster all the equipment and force they can, including nukes, screw them. Terrorism is just a technique, and it's not about the person, it's about the org. they work for. In this case the org. is headquartered in MECCA, which somehow has become the Teflon City, when we have so many spare nukes gathering dust. Do we have to ask for somebody's permission, or what? :)
Do you want to know how deep the rabbit hole goes? Study history free online with the Historyscoper and find out what happens when you take the red pill at http://go.to/islamhistory
I hope it is clear -- must one state the obvious? -- that in refusing blanket application of the word "terrorism" I am not endorsing anyone, or attempting to mitigate the crimes of such people, whether it is Joe Stack in his plane, or the postal worker who mows down eight fellow employees and then two people standing on the sidewalk for good measure, because, the newspapers formulaically explain, he had been "disgruntled." These are murderers, but not "terrorists." They are lone lunatics, suffering a raptus.
Is Amy Bishop a "terrorist"? No, she's apparently a life-imitating-art example in the line of Rhoda Penmark, protagonist of William March's "The Bad Seed." She shot her brother, likely delivered a pipe bomb to a Harvard Medical School professor who was directing her thesis, and in Alabama killed three fellow professors because she wasn't getting tenure. Was she a "terrorist"? No. But should anyone be sympathetic to her? No.
Part of the problem, I believe, is that the word 'terrorist' is rapidly becoming synonymous with both 'muslim' and 'Mohammedan'. It's the same phenomenon as 'hoover' being used for 'vacuum cleaner', aspirin for pain killer, etc, and for the same reason; if most vacuum cleaners are Hoovers, then the name becomes a common noun.
While I can understand why Mohammedans would like this to stop, the solution is not to complain, or point up the few terrorist attacks that are NOT Mohammedan in origin. The obvious solution, as Robert has pointed out almost daily for years, is for them to stop carrying out terrorist attacks!
Joe Stack was seized on by Muslim disinfo. artists as part of their campaign to have the words "Islamic" or "Muslim" censored by the media when used with the word terrorist, and to stop Muslim Ideological Profiling (MIP).
It seems the BBC has 'relaxed' its self-sensorship on "Islam" and "Jihad" in their reporting. For example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8529613.stm
"Mr Rudd said there was a growing threat from Islamist radicals born or raised in Australia." .. and also: ""We are now seeing emerging the potential so-called lone wolf escapade where we don't have sophisticated planning but an individual is seduced by the international jihad and as a lone wolf does extreme things," he told ABC radio." ("Jihad" was mentioned 5 times)
But this is still not enough, because they still shy away from naming the enemy: Islamic Jihad. This is a problem with using the blanket "terrorism" label, because it fails to identity the real "Islamist" enemy. "International jihad" is a half measure, but in right direction: just add "Islamic" to it and you're home.
Is "Islamic Jihad" necessary? Is there another kind? The word "Jihad" is enough, and it stands, synecdochically, for another word: Islam.
Hugh, I think your analysis misses something. There are muslims who are terrorists as well as hindus or catholics. However, they are only called muslim terrorists or catholic terrorists or hindu terrorists IF they claim or if it is apparent that they committed their act of terror for some religious purpose. A catholic terrorist can be somebody who kills an abortion doctor or a muslim terrorist can be someone like Nidal Hasan who killed 13 people after explaining in detail the doctrine of jihad. However, a Turkish terrorist from the extreme left organisation DHKC or the Kurdish nationalist organisation PKK will not be called muslim or islamic terrorist because the motives as THEY say have nothing to do with Islam though they are at least cultural muslims. An islamic terrorist is one who says his motivation is Islam. Likewise, a muslim who has trouble with the IRS and flies his plane into an IRS building and leaves a note talking about his endless trouble with the IRS should not be called a muslim terrorist but just a terrorist. Now if that guy has trouble with the IRS and leaves a note explaining his trouble with the IRS and adds that if America does not convert to Islam there will be an endless row of muslims who do like him until Islam is victorious, then he will be called a muslim terrorist.