From the AP, the Flyin’ Imam/Jetboard Jihadi story: Emphasis mine.
Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam.
Shahin expressed frustration that — despite extensive efforts by him and other Muslim leaders since even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — so many Americans know so little about Islam.
“If up to now they don’t know about prayers, this is a real problem,” he said
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The Council on American-Islamic Relations planned to file a complaint, said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper.
“Because, unfortunately, this is a growing problem of singling out Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims at airports, and it’s one that we’ve been addressing for some time,” Hooper said.
In Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Capt. Lemeul Gulliver learns that the Houyhnhnms – the horses, aka “the perfection of nature†– do not understand the concept of dishonesty. There is no word for “lie†or “falsehood†in their tongue – instead, they refer to the act of speaking a lie as “saying the thing that is not.â€
It continually amazes me, the extent to which the despotism of PC multi-cultism, and its secret police capitans diversity and tolerance, forces otherwise reasonable people – most of us PowerLine readers—to in the daily course of life say “the thing that is notâ€? Mark Steyn as always offered a trenchant example: as soon as there is a terrorist act in the U.S. or Britain, Bush or Blair trot down to the mosque and declare that Islam is a religion of peace. Even though everyone knows that is a lie. But God help the sinner brave or foolish enough to speak the thing that is: that wherever you go on this planet, where there is inhuman cruelty, violence, ignorance, thuggish brutal hatred, there you will find the “deen†of Mohammed.
That’s just one example, as anyone who’s suffered “corporate training†on “tolerance†or “diversity†can attest. Or who’s observed the mandated multi-culti stew in a kid’s textbook (here is a ludicrous example that I think may indicate the influence of this crap. At a recent church retreat, my wife ran the hospitality table. She made a HOSPITALITY sign that featured a pic of five white guys in tuxes holding trays. A teenager – nice kid, she’s adopted, smart as a whip – saw it and bleated, “What is this? All white men? You couldn’t find any other races?†The kid is Asian—would she prefer, maybe, a picture of five Asian men in tuxes holding trays? “What sort of message does that send? That all Asians are waiters?” etc etc etc) But the impact, psycho-social-spiritual, of speaking/acting/breathing “the thing that is notâ€â€¦ okay, it’s not as horrible as North Korea, or Soviet Russia—“Dizzy with Successâ€! even as 10 million peasants are dying of hunger. Or Islam, “we are the people chosen of God†when everywhere you look is poverty, filth and misery. But still…
Think about it. You’re sipping your pumpkin-spice latte and nibbling on your biscotti in the waiting area, trying to tune out the “failed.. war… Katrina… “ meme blaring out of the airport CNN. Then you see some big bearded sportsman, in flowing robe and skullcap, clutching his Koran (paid for by a grant from a Saudi charity) swaying back and forth, salaaming to Allah for all he’s worth. He’s near the boarding line… for your flight, Newark to Lexington… He asks the desk clerk something, and you hear her say, “we’ll be making that announcement in about ten minutes, sir...” And he goes back to his salaaming.... Well, you think. He can’t be… like Atta, I mean, he wouldn’t be that obvious… but wait. He’s dressed like one of ... them, isn’t that the best cover? Because the airlines would not single him out for a search, because they fear the antics of Ibe Hooper and his losers at CAIR… You look the spouse and kids… what do you do? You could go to the ticket counter and say you don’t like his looks. But if you did that, Ibe Hooper would be protesting for you. And you don’t want to be protested by Ibe. Because then you are editorial page fodder as a sort of icon for the collapse of civility in America ("thanks to Bush’s so-called ‘war on terror,’ peace-loving moderate Muslims are… unparalleled harassment and blows to their dignity...” Katie and Brian Williams will hold you up as an example of how the great mosaic of America is collapsing thanks to your lack of tolerance, your inability to respect diversity...
God forgives, but the gods of multi-culti don’t. ANd I have a mortgage, don’t you?
So we must say the thing that is not, and conduct ourselves as though the things that are do not exist.
But thank God for the blogosphere!
I’ve often thought that if one political leader stood up and said the thing that is, that just spoke bluntly and called our enemy by the name that is, and told us we had a long, tough fight ahead, he or she would be elected to the White House by a landslide. Err, Rudy?
I’ve often thought that if one political leader stood up and said the thing that is, that just spoke bluntly and called our enemy by the name that is, and told us we had a long, tough fight ahead, he or she would be elected to the White House by a landslide.
Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it’s called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom. These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus—and also against Muslims from other traditions, who they regard as heretics. . . .
. . . . There’s always a temptation, in the middle of a long struggle, to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world, and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism and tired of murder. This would be a pleasant world, but it’s not the world we live in. The enemy is never tired, never sated, never content with yesterday’s brutality. This enemy considers every retreat of the civilized world as an invitation to greater violence. In Iraq, there is no peace without victory. We will keep our nerve and we will win that victory. . . . .
He was in fact elected to the White House. I’m not so sure about the landslide part, tho.
Yes, Cromwell, yes. Your post alludes to the crux of what I have been trying to articulate in several threads here.
The enemy is Islam. Not because all Muslims are evil, but because the ones who are evil are forcing us to deal with Islam on their terms. Through their terrorist actions, they are forcing us to either see Islam as the enemy, or be frozen into inaction by our own doubt and sense of the unacceptable nature of profiling on the basis of religion or national origin. Their insistence on religious tolerance is the mechanism they use to freeze us, and our Left is complicit. As long as Muslims can cause self-doubt in our Left, and play on our sense of racial and religious tolerance, they can carry out Jihad with impunity.
We have been taught that to attribute the actions of the few to the many is morally reprehensible. We have been taught that to profile based on race or religion is unacceptable in a civilized society. The Islamic killers know this, and understand it as the weakness that it is, and are quite effectively using it against us. They see us wringing our hands over things like profiling Muslims at the airport, and they can sniff victory just over the horizon. They see that unless we shed these deeply rooted aversions toward profiling, prejudice, and intolerance, that we will eventually fall to Jihad. They know they are engaged in a religious war even if we don’t want to admit it, and in the meantime, they intend to create all the doubt and division that they can.
The incident at the Twin Cities airport is a perfect example. The passengers who complained and raised flags of alarm about the group of Imams were correct in doing so. They had no other course of action. To neglect the potential threat would be simply ignorant, and acting against the instinct for self-preservation. This is regrettable, but it is a situation born of Islamic fanaticism, not intolerance. This is the situation the Islamic fanatics have created, and this is no accident. They intend for us to eventually see our fight against them as a fight against Islam, but not until we begin destroying ourselves from within through self-doubt. They have backed us into that corner, and we will eventually have no choice but to see it their way, or be destroyed.
We must profile, and we must shed guilt for doing so. It is not the fault of the West that Jihadis are calling into question whether any Muslim can be trusted at an airport, in a neighborhood, or even in Western society.
The time will come, when out of a sense of self preservation, people of the Western world will understand that because of the actions of the few (jihadis), we will be unable to afford the luxury of differentiating between Islamic Jihadis and “other” Muslims (of which I submit are an extreme minority when one includes sympathizers). Hopefully we will realize this before we lose a city to a nuclear device, or before we are dealing with a biological pandemic.
I am not afraid to say the thing that is: The enemy is Islam. If we can finally bring ourselves to say it and understand its implications, we may begin to understand what it will take to win the war.
I admire GWB greatly; unfortunately he has not—for whatever reason, perhaps a misplaced belief that the desire for liberty beats in the heart of all Muslims, when it’s probably just oh, say, one hundred forty-two out of the 800 million —prosecuted the war as though it were against facists, that is, gotta keep killing them until they crawl from the smoking rubble begging us to stop. Shelby Steele thinks this is because PC has invaded warfighting, that is, we cannot be seen pounding the “other” of the PC imagination into surrender.
I greatly admire Bush, like I said, but war means fighting, and fighting means killing (was the NB FOrrest? Sherman?), and that’s what the time demand. Not some half-assed respect for barbarian values. More Sherman’s march or Drogheda—and less noises about “religion of peace” or “great religion highjacked by thugs.”
IronDioPriest—not only do we agree on Islam, but I think we probably have similar tastes in music. Though I of course worship at the altar of James Patrick Page…
IronDioPriest—not only do we agree on Islam, but I think we probably have similar tastes in music. Though I of course worship at the altar of James Patrick Page…
Well… I worship at the altar of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ… But I DO dig awesome tunes, and Page does indeed rock! You can click on my name to read my bio if you’d like… I come from a… somewhat unique background for a conservative.
IronDioPriest—not only do we agree on Islam, but I think we probably have similar tastes in music. Though I of course worship at the altar of James Patrick Page…
Well… I worship at the altar of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ… But I DO dig awesome tunes, and Page does indeed rock! You can click on my name to read my bio if you’d like… I come from a… somewhat unique background for a conservative.
IronDioPriest—not only do we agree on Islam, but I think we probably have similar tastes in music. Though I of course worship at the altar of James Patrick Page…
Well… I worship at the altar of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ… But I DO dig awesome tunes, and Page does indeed rock! You can click on my name to read my bio if you’d like… I come from a… somewhat unique background for a conservative.
Hey, it’s nice to see that there are wierd conservatives, too, but then, I knew that. :-)
Yes, I’d be pretty paranoid about my fellow travelers on a plane, especially since I’d be on the plane without my trusty knife to go up against their box-cutters.
And yes, the world of diversity is very strange, but don’t try to tell me that the world of true believers on the right, isn’t. True believers. left or right are tedious, dull. predictable...until you can break through and connect with their common humanity. Once that is done, we can, in the words of Billy Joel “all go down together.”
Unfortunately, with the crazed Muslims, we are all going down is the same plane, together,
And yes, the world of diversity is very strange, but don’t try to tell me that the world of true believers on the right, isn’t. True believers. left or right are tedious, dull. predictable...until you can break through and connect with their common humanity.
I’ll pass on the equivalence between true believers on the left and right. I am a “true believer” in the principles of liberty as articulated by Friedrich Hayek.. which means there is a world of difference between me and some trustafarian anti-globalizser chunking a garbage can through the window of Starbucks, or the newest acolyte to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. The Left and the muslims allow “diversity” only within extremely narrow paramaters, and seek to impose or coerce the rest of the world into subscribing thereto.
And coming as I do from a long line of Deep South Southern Baptists, I can say that while their piety might grate, the fried chicken and pulled pork BBQ is pretty awesome.
I’d suggest that conservatives/libertarians are the only people who do have a respect for diversity—given the fact that philosophically, conservatives (Christians too) and libertarians believe in indivudal choice—which includes the right to make the wrong choice or stupid choices.
The incident at the Twin Cities airport is a perfect example. The passengers who complained and raised flags of alarm about the group of Imams were correct in doing so. They had no other course of action. To neglect the potential threat would be simply ignorant, and acting against the instinct for self-preservation. This is regrettable, but it is a situation born of Islamic fanaticism, not intolerance. This is the situation the Islamic fanatics have created, and this is no accident. They intend for us to eventually see our fight against them as a fight against Islam, but not until we begin destroying ourselves from within through self-doubt. They have backed us into that corner, and we will eventually have no choice but to see it their way, or be destroyed.
We must profile, and we must shed guilt for doing so. It is not the fault of the West that Jihadis are calling into question whether any Muslim can be trusted at an airport, in a neighborhood, or even in Western society.
The time will come, when out of a sense of self preservation, people of the Western world will understand that because of the actions of the few (jihadis), we will be unable to afford the luxury of differentiating between Islamic Jihadis and “other” Muslims (of which I submit are an extreme minority when one includes sympathizers). Hopefully we will realize this before we lose a city to a nuclear device, or before we are dealing with a biological pandemic.
I am not afraid to say the thing that is: The enemy is Islam. If we can finally bring ourselves to say it and understand its implications, we may begin to understand what it will take to win the war.
I agree. Why should we predicate our survival to the goodwill of the enemy?
Isn’s RR getting kind of a free pass here? He came slinking out of Lebanon after the marine barracks disaster, picked wars with 4th rate countries, but sure as hell had a presence. The man had a gift for avoiding REAL conflict, which probably makes him a statesman of sorts, but the image of him as a true tough guy seems a bit off. GWB is a true tough guy with BAD judgement. RR was mostly image, but had good judgement.
OK, I;’m convinced, I’ll take RR, but not for the reasons most people are giving here.
I’ve always said that political correctness will destroy our nation! Besides it runs counter to the freedom of speech. That should have sent up a warning flag and we should have never allowed that policy to be born.
I’ve always said that political correctness will destroy our nation! Besides it runs counter to the freedom of speech. That should have sent up a warning flag and we should have never allowed that policy to be born.
When did it start anyway? I don’t remember.
Read Tammy Bruce’s book, “The New Thought Police”. It gives good insight into the rise of demands by the Left for politically “correct” speech, and its evolution into demands for politically “correct” thought.
On a side note, I hate even using the term politically “correct”, because it is actually so very incorrect. The ironic twist of this kind of thinking is that it even permeates the name it’s given.
