[Via FrontPage Magazine]
Earlier we looked at “how Western mainstream media enable Islamic terrorism,” specifically by employing an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism to portray such violence as a product of anything and everything—political and historical grievances, “Islamophobia,” individual insanity, poverty and ignorance, territorial disputes—not Islam.
Another strategy that recently came to the fore consists of highlighting Islamic terror attacks that target other Muslims. The logic here is clear: How “Islamic” can such Islamic groups be if they attack and kill fellow Muslims? In other words, whatever the motivation, it surely cannot be Islam, since those being killed are themselves Muslims. This suggests that the terrorists themselves cannot be true Muslims since Muslims are generally forbidden by Islam to kill other Muslims (caveats exist).
A recent example of this is the December 16 Taliban attack on an army public school in Peshawar, where 145 people were killed, the majority being schoolchildren age 18 and under. This incident was reported all over the mainstream media, and rightfully so.
Yet this begs the question: why do similar attacks, when directed at non-Muslims—especially Christians—rarely if ever get the same sort of media coverage?
For example, in Nigeria on November 10,
A suicide bomb attack in a Christian secondary school in the town of Potiskum in Yobe state, north-eastern Nigeria, has killed at least 47 people on Monday as the students gathered for morning assembly. Boko Haram is thought to be behind the blast, having carried out several attacks on schools giving a Western-style education. Translated from Hausa, Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden” of which this latest school attack is a stark reminder.
Earlier in the year in Nigeria “Boko Haram claimed the lives of 59 students at a Christian school … Some 50 men ambushed the school, then beat and shot staff and students. Once finished, they set fire to the buildings, with many students still inside. It’s the fourth attack of its kind since May of last year.”
On October 1 in Syria, at least 41 Alawite children—all under 12—were killed:
The massacre was one of the most severe in terms of children who died since the beginning of the conflict in Syria. According to official Syrian sources, a car bomb and a suicide bomber caused two explosions when the children came out of school, in the suburb of Akrameh inhabited mainly by Alawites, with the targeted intention to cause the highest number possible of deaths among children of the same religious community to which the Assad family belong.
Here is the testimony of an eyewitness to another Islamic attack on a Christian school in Syria, where 12 people—mostly children—were killed:
I want to tell you about Tuesday. It was a terrible day. We cried and prayed all day. Tuesday they were bombing Bab Touma, the old city of Damascus. A lot of Christians live there. There is also a Christian school—a private one. We know a lot of people in that school. Some children from our area also go to school there. When those kids went to school on Tuesday, gathered at the square like they always do, a mortar fell in their midst. Some friends passed by the school and saw that parents and teachers were carrying their wounded children out of the school, dripping with blood. They saw them running to the hospitals in panic. For me, as a mother and a teacher, I can hardly bear to imagine what these people must be going through right now. Twelve people lost their lives in that school, most of them children from the elementary school. Many more of them have lost arms and legs or have other injuries.
As for Islamic attacks on Christian schools that do not lead to casualties, these are quite common. Thus, on November 5 in Bangladesh, hundreds of Muslims, some armed with knives and machetes, attacked a Christian school. They torched its library, burned Bibles and hymnals, and committed other wanton acts of violence. According to a source, “A wave of panic swept through the school and traumatized everyone. Many students became sick in the following days.” The reason for this particular attack? Muslim projection: a rumor started that the Christian school was converting Muslim students to Christianity.
How many of those Western people who could not help but hear about the Peshawar attack—considering its widespread coverage—also heard about these Islamic attacks on schools some of which also took large numbers of children lives? Not very many, I would wager.
The reason, again, is obvious: reporting Muslims killing Muslims does not contradict the mainstream media’s narrative but ostensibly enforces it. For—so the simple logic goes—Muslims who kill fellow Muslims cannot be “real” Muslims to start with, and must in fact be, as Western politicians habitually characterize them, mere “criminals.”
Thus, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan issued a statementcondemning the Peshawar attack, adding, “The barbaric actions of the Taliban illustrate their lack of value for human life and lack of respect for the Islamic faith. These attacks only prove their selfish desire for power and willingness to murder to reach their self-serving goals.”
On the other hand, it is more difficult for the media to dissemble the motives of Muslims who intentionally target and kill “the other”—outnumbered and defenseless “infidel” minorities—simply because they are “the other.”
Whether small numbers or large—whether four children decapitated for refusing to renounce Christ or whether the largest massacre of Christians in Syria—Muslim persecution of Christians will rarely if ever get MSM coverage, for it throws a wrench in the media’s narrative that Islamic violence is a product of anything and everything but Islamic hate for non-Muslims.
Jay Boo says
ISLAM CAN BE REFORMED. (into something else)
All religions can be reformed including Islam.
Truth is not an obstacle to reforming a religion into a new shape.
Religion is not science.
Religion at its core is whatever — its followers chose it to be.
What they chose is what it becomes.
The real problem is getting a consensus.
But the Koran is immutable you say.
I say, “Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, Blah, Blah — so What?”
RELIGION IS FLEXIBLE (even when it is not)
Muhammad conjured up Islam from a sociopathic hellhole claiming that an angel was his intermediary of his hearsay revelations. The old “someone said, that someone said routine”
1 – Mo himself abrogated the Koran’s verses.
2 — Mo consulted other deities for a second opinion — and then crossed that out.
3 – After Mo’s death competing versions of the Qur’an were burned.
When ‘moderate’ Muslims refer to reform however, what they really mean is to temporality suppress what is revealing the location of Islam’s ‘attack dogs’ to its intended enemies without bothering to clean up the dog poop.
However, the stink of Islam can no longer be easily covered up and soon Muslims will have no other choice but to reinvent Islam or let it die a well-deserved death.
In order to remake Islam Muslims will have to think outside the book.
Religion is always malleable when its followers wish it to be.
Truth is not an obstacle at all.
If the weapon of Islam becomes more of a burden then Muslims themselves can bear, they will either exchange it for something else and then re-label it Islam or toss it in the garbage heap.
All Muslims need to do to reform Islam is to invent a new prophet or redefine what was already written through the power of wishful thinking. This is completely doable; it just won’t be Islam.
vlparker says
Well, I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen. Geert Wilders said that polls in the Netherlands show that 2/3rds of muslims support the terrorists. Maybe a couple of thousand years from now.
ben haggai says
How can one change Islam? You are out of your mind? Any change of what the Koran says, or one finds in the hadiths, is sacred and cannot be changed by anyone, under the penalty of death. Go to a Muslim land, whichever, and try to change their religion. I hope they will use a sharp sword, rather than a dull one, to cut off your head.
Jay Boo says
Are you a Muslim?
Jay Boo says
The Koran is not sacred.
The Koran is filth recited by a despicable blasphemous satanic verse liar.
Avi says
The psychology of the Stockholm Syndrome is that the victim becomes very concerned with the welfare of his/her kidnapper, and relatively indifferent to the welfare of other victims. The victim hopes in this way to obtain a kinder treatment from the kidnapper. It is a kind of knee-jerk reaction from people who have no fight left in them.
mortimer says
Too true about Stockholm syndrome (Muslim women are victims of it) … but the Leftarded cultural Marxists are concerned about their ALLIES…their ‘noble savage’ allies who can do no wrong because they are strategic ALLIES!
Georg Lukacs asked, “Who will save us (Marxists) from European civilization.”
The answer is “The noble savage Muslims will save us by obliterating European civilization.”
cs says
The FAKESTINIANS, are the best example of the noble savage, the only thing missing there is the noble. Would be better put, the victimized savage, cuz they have been really victimized at some extent, but they could have remedied this, if they wanted to.
Jay Boo says
“Yet this begs the question: why do similar attacks, when directed at non-Muslims—especially Christians—rarely if ever get the same sort of media coverage?”
—————————-
This is because the news media are opportunistic whores.
Also, many in the American public retreat into a Hollywood fantasy land of sit-com morals defined by moral relativism and slavish appeasement.
mortimer says
Journalists are 1) in a competitive business and usually under a deadline 2) illiterate about all religions, especially Islam 3) quite often (but far from always) cultural Marxists who hate European culture 4) under editors who don’t want trouble and cut any controversial (or correct) opinion about jihad that they do not themselves know 5) under editors who are also cultural Marxists and/or illiterate about Islam 6) in news companies that have Muslim owners or investors.
Journalists have to present ‘balanced’ news which means quoting Muslim taqiyya and disinformation to ‘counterbalance’ empirical facts about foundational Islam.
Jay Boo says
Agreed
joeblough says
Yup.
Quite accurate.
Hang out in the offices of almost any “media” company and that is EXACTLY what you will see. And it doesn’t take long to notice.
Jay Boo says
We need bold shock and awe bumper stickers that provoke just enough to open the door new thinking but not so much that the liberals circle their wagons in an attempt to restock their claims of moral high ground with charges of Islamophobia.
“Beware of the 72 Virgin Beast” for example
Is this a new rock group or a criticism of something Islamic?
mortimer says
Jihadists will vandalize you.
Jay Boo says
Even worse that that:
My liberal neighbors might stare and give me a stern look of disapproval after taking one of their many daily baths in the pool of multi-cultural self-righteous indignation.
particolor says
Are “The Jihad Stones” regrouping ??
mortimer says
This topic chosen by Raymond is VITAL: the “arsenal of semantic games” used by Leftards to defend Islam from critique.
The greatest in recent years is the ETYMOLOGICAL FALLACY (i.e. the ‘original’ meaning of a word is the true meaning TODAY).
The example of this is the slogan ‘Islam is PEACE’…merely because the three-letter root is s-l-m (peace). But the English word ‘hound’ no longer means ‘a generic dog’…it refers to a class or race of dogs ‘hounds’.
Similarly, ‘ISLAM’ means ‘submission’ (rather than ‘peace’). ‘Islam’ is like English ‘appeasement’ since both words contain a root word that originally meant ‘peace’.
If you are living under ISLAM, you have been ‘appeased’…though you may only have submitted outwardly.
Phil says
Sorry Mortimer, but this time you appear to have been misinformed. Arab words are often, not invariably, based on a trilateral root system, but the rule is not absolute. K-t-b is the root for book (as in kitab for book or maktaba for library) but some trilateral k-t-b words do not mean book, e.g. katiba which has a military connotation and has nothing to do with books. Similarly with the s-l-m root. Yes salaam means peace, but the root of islam is al-silm, not salaam, and it means submission (or surrender) – specifically submission to the will of Allah. My apologies for being pedantic, but the claim ‘Islam’ means peace is a common misconception among non-Arabic speakers.
Jay Boo says
Two nice couples in the photo.
I wonder if they are married or just siblings.
The grooms appear to be a bit young, though.
Carolyne says
Both could be correct. They could be married AND siblings. Or at the very least, first cousins.
Salah says
The MSM is corrupt to its core. The irony is: *WE* are subsidizing them with our hard-earned monies so that they may keep lying to us.
Solution? a General Media Strike.
Kepha says
In the immortal words of yogi Berra, it’s deja vu all over again.
At various stages in Communism’s tenure over the bulk of the Eurasian landmass, every so often there would be a wave of dissent, and the Leftist media in the West would give inordinate prominence to “liberal Communists” or some oxymoron like that. There would be noises about how Nagy, or Golumka, or Jaruszelksi or Zhao Ziyang would be working o so hard and sincerely to undo the poisonous legacy of Stalin. Never mind that there were scores of people in the Soviet countries and China who simply hated THE Party. Hence there was so much stress on how Stalin’s purge killed off so many “good” Bolsheviks; or how the Hundred Flowers Campaign and Cultural Revolution victimized “good” Communists. it’s like Tuol Seng in Cambodia: a monument to cannibals who got eaten by their erstwhile buddies while there is no monument to the numbers of Cambodian peasants and townfolk murdered simply because they wanted to keep their livestock or wore glasses.
I suspect that the liberals of today, like those of yesteryear, sincerely hope that they can get on the “good side” of some mythical Islamic heresy that is somehow going to be more humane and open than the standard issue form of the faith.
I certainly mourn for the victims of the Pakistan school shootings–and for the victims in Bab Touma and the Nineveh Plain. But I’m also tired of the MSM trying to “prove” that the ISIS and Taliban sorts are somwhow less “truly” Islamic than their victims.
where is the media coverage on Asia Bibi says
This point from you Raymond is a good one. Where is the media coverage, for example, on Asia Bibi?
She has been locked up in a Pakistani prison for four years for allegedly saying something negative about the prophet Muhammad. Her real crime is being Christian in a muslim dominated country. Where is the media spotlight on this poor unfortunate woman and the blasphemy law – imagine being locked up for just one day, or one week, let alone four years. Where is the media’s compassion? Why is the media standards so poor? Is it because they feel Christians are in a position of strength? Clearly they are not. Look at Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh and look at the persecution.
Angry says
The so-called ‘zionist’ media that the radical left keep babbling on about, is more concerned about the islamists welfare in Gitmo Bay, the pakistani kids being slaughtered by their own, and the families of hamas terrorists faking Israeli oppression to even consider investigating and reporting the atrocities on non-muslims in the middle east.
RT News does to an extent, and even calls left-wing protesters as the ‘radical left’, but with that nasty, hateful mouthpiece Abby Martin and that Jew hating racist George Galloway being hired as presenters for their own hate spouting shows, RT is not worthy of watching.
GFRF says
Islam plays a large role in end time prophecy.
God has everything under control.
His plan is for the ages!
His plan is eternal.
Phil says
And let’s never forget to add the Beslan School Attack on 1 September 2004 to the list. The attack was a vicious act of jihad directed against infidel children and however much we may choose to criticise the actions of the Russian security forces, the overwhelming majority of deaths were due to the actions of the Islamists. And should we be surprised? – the attack and subsequent hostage crisis was almost identical to the 1995 Chechen raid on Budyonnovsk and the 2002 Moscow Theatre Crisis. Of course, when the jihad operation backfired, we get notable Chechen leaders denying responsibility – pity that Chechen ‘Commander’ Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the raid. Shades of the Boston Marathon Bombing, people? And the dead terrorists all turned out to be Chechens and their allies from the Caucasus.
dale says
Muslims kill other Muslims whom they consider to be apostates.All Shiites consider all Sunnis to be apostates and all Sunnis consider Shiites to be apostates. Under Sharai law all apostates must be killed.
Lance Risbey says
As
As an atheist with a childhood background in (Protestant) Christianity, I acknowledge religious organisations don’t always behave like religion pretends, i.e. as a guide to good living with moral values (if that’s an acceptable definition). Eg Christianity in the dark ages 1) with the crusades (especially the 2nd crusade on – the 1st achieved at least the reversal of 4centuries of Islamic expansion into Judea & the “The Holy Land” (to Christians as well as Jews) & 2) the Spanish Inquisition. In those times (we are told) Islam was a beacon of cultural enlightenment, as seen in Spain. Is that religion or culture or what? Scientology claims to be a religion, at least in part for tax deductions and, in USA, to add credibility to its hoped-for authority. That wouldn’t work so well in Australia. Perhaps it’s time to call these organisations what they are: Brainwashing Cults, & in the case of Islamic militancy, a political terrorist movement. Calling it a religion may, in many societies, lend it a legitimacy it never deserved. Certainly not since ~620 AD when Muhammad’s writings seemed to start going beyond a religion of ?Peace to something increasingly violent. Perhaps another option for the “Peaceful Muslim” majority (?) would be to divide Islam in 2 or more “religions”, one based on the earlier chapters of the Quran (i.e. chronologically, not in order of publication) & a more militant version based on the later chapters obviously written by a bloodthirsty, vengeful warlord feigning religiosity. Read “Against Religion ” by Tamas Pataki, regarding the personality disorder underlying devout religiosity. Very enlightening & perhaps challenging, even (!) some Christians.
Jay Boo says
The old “Radical Islam vs Good Islam argument”
Reformed Islam means contradicting the supposed literal words of the god figure of Islam.
That would imply that Muhammad might not have been a true prophet and that the ‘messenger of Allah’ and the Koran are not to be trusted.
Yes, even Ayaan Hirsi Ali has suggested on occasion that Islam “must be reformed” — to be peaceful, (as if to say it is doable, ) although I suspect that she was well aware at the time that a pack of ferocious defenders of Islam dogs were waiting to pounce on her every word and misrepresent her position and character. She likely realized that she could be better handle them by tossing out this ‘free bone’ with an olive-branch word like (reform) to divert their overeager bloodlust of attempting to illicitly seize the moral high ground.
Sometimes it might be necessary to pick the right battles not to be drawn into the enemies waiting minefield character assassination traps.
At Yale Ayaan Hirsi Ali said “indoctrination” is at the source of radical Islam and leads to intolerance and violence. Therefore, she said, in order to fight the symptoms of radical Islam, the “core creed” of Islam—the Qur’an and hadith—must be reformed.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/hirsi-ali-criticizes-radical-islam-at-yale/
Jay Boo says
I meant to put the whole of the following in quotes after — At Yale Ayaan Hirsi Ali said
” “indoctrination” is at the source of radical Islam and leads to intolerance and violence. Therefore, she said, in order to fight the symptoms of radical Islam, the “core creed” of Islam—the Qur’an and hadith—must be reformed.”
The full article with the quote is at the link
Lance Risbey says
Thanks to Jay Boo for your reply. No, I don’t subscribe to the “Good Muslim” vs “Radical Islam” idea. Sorry if it seemed like that. Islam’s use of the Quran as a holy book (as long as it’s taken as a whole) is a problem for Muslims to sort out, because Muhammad’s later, more violent writings contradict his early stuff (which was probably borrowed from Jewish & Christian writers anyway!). If there are “Good Muslims”, & it seems there are (even if they’re too timid to take action against radicals) then it may be they are just good human beings (due to being brought up properly, & despite, not because of, Islam). It’s interesting that “radical” means going back to the roots, or Origin. And that fits the radical Muslim, back to Muhammad’s later teachings & practice (jihad as war & slaughter). I heard a recent interview of a University chaplain who may be forgiven for still being a Christian; what he said illustrates this reform issue. He said that if reform means going back to the Master or Founder, then reformation in Christianity was positive in turning back from years of Catholic power & political control to the teachings & deeds of Jesus, and similarly with Islam (though with a different outcome). He said that, indeed, there IS a reformation within Islam, & it’s called Al Qaeda. No doubt an update of that would add Islamic State.
It would thus be a very brave act if Muslims wishing to be moderate split the Quran into early writings & later writings, and then renounced the latter. Come to think of it, wasn’t something similar to this already tried in India more than a century ago? And what did the radical Muslims do to that brave man? Hence my challenge to very brave Muslims to try to clean up their mess! I’m not holding my breath. . . .