Last week, a Canadian critic reprimanded me for failing to understand that Muslims feel “vulnerable.” Au contraire, they project tremendous cultural confidence, as well they might: They’re the world’s fastest-growing population. A prominent British Muslim announced the other day that, when the United Kingdom becomes a Muslim state, non-Muslims will be required to wear insignia identifying them as infidels. If he’s feeling “vulnerable,” he’s doing a terrific job of covering it up.~ Mark Steyn
Face facts, dinosaur media types. Militant Muslims are the bad guys. The problem is not President Bush, or American foreign policy, or the big bad United States. The problem is evil, as perpetrated by Muslim radicals. Extremist madmen (and women) in the Muslim community who want all Westerners dead--especially Jews and Americans, as evidenced by the horrific India attacks--are the problem.
It is positively psychotic for any member of the MSM to act like the Bombay terrorist attacks were America's fault. Today, Pearl Harbor Day, is a good time to examine how the bombings and murders are being portrayed. Can you imagine a newspaper in December 1941 reporting that the Japanese were feeling "vulnerable"? That the "vast majority" of them were "moderate"?
No? Well, neither can I. That's because it makes zero sense. And no one in the media at that time was stupid enough to present anything but the facts. Let's toast the good old days of journalism, long gone and sorely missed.
Steyn concludes:
I wrote in my book, America Alone, that “reforming” Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to accept that. Spread a rumor that a Koran got flushed down the can at Gitmo, and there’ll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there’ll be protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a rabbi in Bombay in the name of Allah, and that’s just business as usual. And, if it is somehow “understandable” that for the first time in history it’s no longer safe for a Jew to live in India, then we are greasing the skids for a very slippery slope. Muslims, the AP headline informs us, “worry about image.” Not enough.
The West worries too much about calling evil what it is, when it happens. We do so at the peril of our existence. I wonder if, at this point, we have time enough left to figure that out for ourselves.
