Mumbai Reprise

So we mustn't hold Muslims accountable for Islamic terrorism. Not even the 36 percent who quietly or openly celebrated when those four crashing airliners obliterated the lives of 3,000 innocent people on 9/11. And not even the ones who actually take up arms against civilians, and who, in pursuit of their place in paradise, blithely murder a six-year-old little boy while forcing his parent to watch. Oh no. Calling out their religious affiliation — their religious inspiration — would stigmatize these folks. We mustn't. The BBC, the New York Times, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. State Department all say so.

In the Daily Beast, Steve Emerson takes aim at the media's carefully-honed blind spot:

In 2007, the perversity of [placating Islamists] was demonstrated when the FBI released its annual hate crime reports. Of the total 1,628 victims of anti-religious hate crimes, 69.2% were Jewish and 8.7% were Muslim. Yet by my still unfinished account, there were at least 40 times more stories last year about Islamophobia than about anti-Semitism.

I'm not a phobe of any kind, I think. There's real danger — and stone cold injustice — in pointing the finger at a whole group of believers for the acts of, ultimately, a few. But sometimes, recognizing that danger, and trying to steer clear of it, induces political correctness of clownesque proportions.

Muslims and terrorism... That's not just an elephant in the room, that's a herd of mammoths. It's not that no one broaches the subject, but that the people who do tend to rarely be from the so-called 'polite' part of society — the soft, dominant intelligentsia. I wish reality would finally set in a little more widely. I'm with Emerson when he says that

...if we refuse to use the term Islamic terrorist, we conveniently take away any onus of responsibility for Islamic groups to halt the murderous ideology they propagate.

You can still argue for what's perhaps a more patterned if not more nuanced view of the topic, though. Nobody's Business reader McDuff does so here, eloquently and passionately. Worth reading.

Comments

[McDuff]

Yup, nobody mentions Islam. Especially not the politically correct, leftist intelligentsia.

On the other hand, these right-wing nazis all managed to squeeze it in.

http://www.juancole.com/2008/12/pakistani-reaganism-must-end-new.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attacks-india1

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7758651.stm

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/fears-for-hundreds-in-mumbai-hotels-1037222.html

Making a group "take responsibility" for crimes is known in human rights circles as "collective punishment". Not only is that wrong, it is also -- as we've seen in countless counter-terrorism operations around the world in which is has been tried and found wanting -- counter productive.

Here's what we in the west seem to continually fail to understand: Islam is no more monolithic than Christianity, and far less monolithic than some Christian sects. We seem fine accepting that Greek Orthodox Christians are of a different breed to Episcopalians in Rhode Island, and that calling one group to account for the perceived sins of the other is inherently ridiculous, but we only just manage to get our thick skulls around the concept of "Sunni" and "Shiite" and become completely unable to believe that Islam has a similar fine granularity of conviction and practice. It's only because of this that we could see any merit in insisting that the Husseins down the street become "responsible" for the actions of murderers in India. Of course, if we accept that the Mosques our neighbours attend are no more "responsible" for radical attacks than you local Baptist minister was for abortion clinic bombings or your local Muslim temple was for rape and paedophilia in Texas compounds, as seems monumentally simple and self-evident, then asking them to denounce the actions makes no sense at all!

"But that 36%! They approved 9/11! Did you see how many people's deaths they cheered on! Isn't there something wrong with a culture that can produce that? Doesn't that need to be addressed?"

Two weeks after Hiroshima polls showed that over 80% of Americans supported the bombing. In December 1945 Fortune funded a poll in which almost a quarter of respondents said they wished America had dropped "many more" bombs before Japan had a chance to surrender. Those two bombs, remember, killed a hundred thousand people and injured a hundred thousand more. Islamic terrorism, on the other hand, has killed around ten thousand people this century - including those killed on September 11. That's an order of magnitude difference. Yet we feign shock and clutch our hankies when others support acts against us? We demand that they prostrate themselves before us and appease *our* sensibilities? If their hands are bloody by association then we've got gore to our elbows. Yet we're not horrible evil people, and neither were the nationalists who saw Hiroshima and said "fuck yeah!" No matter how alien their culture looks to us, let's not pretend that they're devils and monsters any more than we are, shall we?

Do you see all those links above, talking about the origins and backgrounds of the Mumbai attackers? Notice that Islam was, as I've been saying, part of the story but by no means the most prevalent or the most enlightening part? Origins way back in the when, Americans funding the Pakistani Military who set up black groups for "deniable attacks" on India with the intent of destablising Kashmir, those activities attract the interests of religious extremists along with all the other psychos, the money dries up and the Pakistanis lose control of their pet militants, who are now organised and trained and able to function independently, and then various groups get radicalised still further, splinter off and conduct an attack like this.

And you say that, out of all of that, the important thing for us to emphasise, the obvious cause, is *Islam*? Not the Kashmiri partition or the government-funded black operation? I don't know how many times to repeat this, but here's another try. When you say that Islam is the root cause of these attacks and the socio/geo-political background is just unimportant, nearly noise, secondary, you are *wrong*. You've got it backwards. You will *not understand* what is going on if you continue to apply that filter, of assuming everything is secondary to Islam in the Middle East.

Finally, do you want to know why the BBC and other news organs in the UK are wary about explicitly linking all of Islam to terrorist attacks? Other than, of course, the logical illegitimacy of doing so and the irrelevance of the subject? It's not because of a fear of offense, or of retaliation. It's because we have a country full of racist fucks who delight in excuses to beat up "Pakis", and a right wing press which positively revels any chance it can get to whip up a bit of nativist frothing hatred. If the left does sometimes err too far on the side of caution, it's not because they're being politically correct, it's that they're trying to distinguish themselves from the more odious and vile commentators on the other side of the aisle. In that kind of climate, I consider it a virtue to err on the side of caution, rather than risk adding to the constantly churning ocean of alarmist, salacious nationalism.

But then, not living over here, I guess you wouldn't know the context in which the BBC and the Guardian operate, leading to all those misinterpretations of what's written. Perhaps cultural understanding that puts facts in context is, well, a good thing that stops us from being wrong in general.

[Rogier van Bakel]

" Making a group "take
responsibility" for crimes is
known in human rights circles
as "collective punishment". "

And of course, I demand nor advocate any such thing (quite the opposite, if you'll re-read the post). Nor have I ever argued that Islam is the "root cause" of all the violence, although the violent perversion of the Muslim faith is considerably more widespread than that of any other religion in the last hundred or 200 years.

Gotta say, I liked it better when you weren't constructing straw men.

Oh, and as for the feared "Paki beatings," I suggest you try to absorb Emerson's finding, above, concerning who's getting beat up, and how the media report it.

[McDuff]

It's not a straw man, it's a genuine interpretation of what you're talking about. Perhaps the problem is in the vagueness of the term. You say that moderate Muslims should "take responsibility" for extremists, OK, so what would that look like? What would they have to do to appease us? Who has to act, how far removed from extremist groups should they be before they are exempt? How can we effectively distinguish between saying "you need to take responsibility for this" and saying "we assume you're guilty because of your religion." And is there a significant difference? While you don't call for collective punishment, I struggle to see how a realistic push for the kinds of things you seem to be calling for would turn out any other way than holding a particular subset of society up to a standard that no other group has to be. How do you think that's going to turn out?

As a rhetorical tool it may feel good, but as a practical solution or a rational appraisal of the situation it falls short.

As for the extent of "violent perversion", I think it all depends just where you draw the boundaries. It wasn't Muslims who dropped Agent Orange in Vietnam, or drowned their own teenaged soldiers in muddy trenches in Europe. There may well be a more explicitly religious tenor at the moment in the Middle East, but if you consider that religion is just another manifestation of the same urge that brings us nationalisms and tribalisms, and that the majority religious consensus in Europe and America over the last century has been particularly pro war - especially as we embarked upon some of the bloodiest slaughters in history - I'd say that the clear bright shining line you wish to draw perhaps isn't as clear as all that.

I reckon if you took a poll of the last century that Christians would have killed more people than Muslims. Perhaps we don't need religion to whip us into a murderous frenzy here in the west. Is slaughtering for countries significantly better than slaughtering for gods?

As far as Mr Emerson's story goes, it's partly irrelevant to my point since I was talking about the media environment in the UK and he's talking about the American media, which is a different, much limper and sadder kettle of fish. On the broader issue that the media talks about Islamophobia but not Anti-Semitism, again this argument relies on a context vacuum to not be exposed as pretty petty. This country is not currently occupying Israel, it does not have a "war with Jewish extremists" sucking all the air out of the foreign policy room, it does not have a particularly loud and vocal segment of the press doing everything it can to create a wedge between Jews and the rest of society.

To put it another way, there are fewer articles about Anti-Semitism because, in the event of Anti-Semitic violence nobody comes out from under a rock and starts arguing that it's *justified* or that it's the fault of the Jewish community for not living up to some arbitrary standard. It's an editorial non-issue. You can't get a point-counterpoint or some chap in a flat cap arguing the "common sense" position that all Jews are terrorists. So it gets less coverage than issues which are more controversial, such as how many times Mr and Mrs Kumar at number forty-two should tell us how much they would disapprove of the murder of our white virgin daughters before we can really believe them.

Also, Mr Emerson's article contains this choice passage:

> the common justification by the Muslim terrorist perpetrator
> was that there was a “war against Muslims” by the West
> and the Jews that had to be avenged. The real
> truth is that there is war against the West and the Jews
> by Islamic jihadists. And no amount of territorial withdrawal
> or peace negotiations will assuage them.

*Their* rationales for violence are all simplistic and based in nothing other than illogical prejucide. *Ours* are carefully nuanced and well thought out. If *they* can't see that *we're* good people, that must mean that *they* are savages who can't be reasoned with.

Anyone who waves away all perceived and real injustices by the west against various Islamic populations and then claims that all the sin is on one side simply isn't worth listening to. People like that are just cheerleaders for the nationalistic impulses that make us stumble blindly into wars over and over again, no matter how nicely they try and put it.

[Rogier van Bakel]

Sigh. I don't expect moderate Muslims to take responsibility for extremists. Why would they? I just want the many peaceful ones (peaceful is not necessarily the same as moderate, but that's another discussion) to distance themselves from the Islamic violence every once in a while. Publicly. Loudly. Not necessarily individually (though that would be most welcome), but collectively.

It's not that odd or unrealistic an idea given that some in the Muslim world, such as the columnist Aijaz Zaka Syed, advocate the same thing.

Tell me, what's so demanding -- or burdensome -- about speaking out against violent assholes who've hijacked your faith? I've done it a hundred times and I have no dog in this fight -- it isn't my religion. I'd expect peaceful Muslims to care MORE about condemning violent Islamism than I do, not less. Go figure.

Do you remember the Million Muslim March that was organized by Islamic moderates in the U.S., to protest the terrorist violence? Yeah, neither do I. That's because it was a grand plan that never got off the ground. The organizers quickly realized they couldn't get that number to march on Washington DC. So they scaled back their expectations, and surrendered to infighting, and the participants dwindled to absolutely nothing. Seriously: NOTHING. They couldn't fill ONE bus. Wrote about it here: http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2005/08/stuck_in_lodi_a.html

Think back to the last half a dozen times (or SIX dozen times for all I care) that you saw Muslim throngs demonstrate or agitate. Ask yourself what they were so upset about. Were they protesting suicide bombers and the violent Mujahideen fuckwads who pump little kids full of lead while ululating about their own coming eternity in paradise? Not bloody likely.

It'd be one thing if they were instead protesting against the Iraq war (as have I) or against U.S. foreign policy (as have I). But almost invariably when you see a mass of seething Mohammedans taking to the streets, it's over some perceived slight to their fucking prophet: the Rushdie novel, the Motoons, the Rushdie knighthood, the Sherry Jones book, some Geert Wilders pronouncement, a play, an art exhibit, something the Pope said -- take your pick.

The atrocities committed by their religious brethren? Meh. THAT shit is nothing to get in a lather about, apparently.

[McDuff]

What happened to my last comment?

[Rogier van Bakel]

Don't know. I didn't deep-six it, if that's what you're worried about. Could be a Typekey or Typepad issue. Sorry for your trouble.

[McDuff]

I didn't think you did, I just wondered if it had been caught in the spam queue.