Its ALL Blarney!!

My mom bought me a subscription to The Week magazine, a sort of Reader’s Digest of current events/News items over the past week. Overall, I’d say its a good Magazine because it manages to distill the current events into a pithy succinct account that is (for the most part) fair and balanced (by that I mean, doesnt pander to either the conservative or liberal point of view). Additionally, it gives perspectives from around the globe, not just here in the US, and that is valuable also.

So, at the outset, I want to say I really appreciate and enjoy this publication. Unfortunately, I found myself unusually motivated to react to articles in the 1/22/10 issue, more so than usual.

For example, page 14 (NEWS-Best Columns International) had a piece on Profiling Air Passengers by Nationality spotlighting an editorial from Nigeria’s The Guardian, that deplored current US policy of tougher screening for passengers from identified “security risk states” (currently Nigeria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen). The author/editor stated that the US policy was outrageous because “there was no evidence that Abdulmutallab (the underwear bomber) had any support from anyone in Nigeria. The article asks “How can the US justify discriminating against more than 150 million people because of the criminal conduct of one person?”  Another article by Ali Boukhlef in Algeria’s La Tribune points out, all countries in the list but Cuba have large Muslim populations, and that the failed bombing is just an excuse to stigmatize Muslims. He asserts that “many of us are already acquainted with the zeal of Western police forces when they face a Muslim,” and that one can assume “the monitoring…will certainly involve humiliation.”  I fail to see where the author has even the ghost of a leg to stand on, primarily because (GIVE ME A BREAK) the luckless bomber chose his underwear as the best hiding place for his explosives…..Someone please tell me why, under the circumstances, a person’s nether regions should be excluded from some sort of inspection??  And can any country say, if it were the target of the same sort of concerted, determined attempts at terrorism, that it wouldnt have a policy similar to the US?  Perhaps the world (and the host countries of the terrorists in general) would prefer the US act as though it werent targeted by the attacks on the USS Cole, the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, etc?    At least one writer, Anjum Niaz writing in Pakistan’s Dawn, said he didnt blame the Americans…”After all, the crazy people from across the globe who have been trying to bomb them have in fact been Muslims.”  The article ends with a final comment from the United Arab Emirates’ Gulf News that asserted the only way to ensure safety is to screen every passenger, pointing out the shoe bomber was in fact British. The tone of the article was to generally denounce profiling as a practice, stating “demonizing certain nationalities wont make the skies safer.”

This is NOT the time to worry about political correctness. If any of these target countries had themselves been the target of similar attempts by US passengers to blow up innocents on THEIR airplanes, I’d bet you they’d be profiling the bejeezus out of American passengers (and they’d be jolly well self-righteous about it too!!!!)  The truth is:  by FAR, the group who has committed the most unprovoked acts of terrorism around the globe has been the Muslims. Let me be clear:  we are not talking about terrorists who happen to be Muslim, we are talking about terrorists who highlight their religion as JUSTIFICATION for their terrorism!  (I’ll give you a minute to digest that FACT)  In fact, Ive said it before and I’ll say it again: Any ongoing hotspot of violence WILL have as a factor, Muslim activity. Pakistan/India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Turkey, Yugoslavia, France, Somalia, Denmark…the sad fact is, no matter how much the rest of the world tries to compensate for or excuse Muslim terrorism, the Muslim community itself cant deny its culpability. When poor countries’ youths are trained at an early age (via Madrassas) to hate Western culture and to disregard the sanctity of life and to put a political agenda (disguised as a religious calling) above all else, you have the genesis of a killing machine.

Some would say that the Underwear bomber was a shill, and 9/11 was an inside job.  Maybe, maybe not.  Many people think the US has exacerbated the issue by supporting Western-friendly dictators in traditionally anti-US areas. That may be true, but it does NOT give terrorists the right or even a reason to attack and kill innocents–and lets face it, that is who is really bearing the brunt of the terrorism attacks….people who have no connection to US policy. Terrorism does NOT solve a problem, it only fosters chaos and fear and uses the global inclination to be reasonable and fair to its own advantage, all the while gambling that the International Community is too scared to stand up to them and say: ENOUGH! So WHAT if we profile terrorists as Muslims? For the most part, they ARE!!

In closing, I want to point out what was highlighted as the Quote of the Week on page 12 by Leslie Gelb in TheDailyBeast.com:
“if the battle against Muslim terrorism is to be won, moderate Muslims will have to do the heavy lifting. If Americans and Westerners continue to take the lead, it will remain and ‘us vs. them’ war. If Muslims take the lead, it will be ‘them vs. them,’ co-religionists battling co-religionists, not ‘infidel and oppressive’ outsiders bhattling ‘victimized’ Muslims. [So] where are the funds, the programs, and the personnel to re-educate young ones brainwashed in madrasas, and where are the alternate schools for these children? Where are the programs to show up at mosques everywhere and argue with the mullahs who say that Allah wants them to kill fellow Muslims and infidels and enslave women?”

I agree. the ONLY group that can EFFECTIVELY STOP Muslim caused terrorism is MUSLIMS. If Moderates truly deplore what is being committed by their brethren, then they need to STEP UP and STOP their fellow Muslims from tarnishing what Islam stands for. The time for pointing fingers and looking the other way is long past. Moderate Muslims need to admit, to themselves and to the world that they have (perhaps unintentionally) allowed a radical element within their ranks to shed blood.  If they cannot manage to do this, then they are complicit in the bloodshed, and cannot hide behind their protestations any longer.

~ by irishgrl on January 22, 2010.

Posted in because I said so, Politics as Usual, rants, Uncategorized
Tags: anger, Muslim, profiling, responsibility, terrorism