Déjà Vu: Apologists Unfurl Stale Arguments

By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
July 2, 2007

Moments after the latest terror attack on Britain, television commentators engaged in the usual rhetorical hara-kiri, blaming everyone but its authors: the two Muslim jihadists jumping out of a burning car at Glasgow's international airport ululating "Allah! Allah!" — even as one of them was barbecued — and the European Union's vast Muslim fundamentalist infrastructure, which spawned them.

The initial discussions of the three car bombs — two in central London were defused, unexploded — were déjà vu writ large: Blaming the victims, criticizing British foreign policy offenses that might have "driven" British Muslims to kill their countrymen, highlighting the frustrations of minority communities forced to live in the West, and renewing calls for — yes, indeed — more interreligious dialogue.

It was not much better in America. With live images of the Glasgow International Airport fires blazing away, American networks hosted the so-called experts who, again, explained the "torment" of poor Muslims. Disgracefully, one guest — Michael Scheuer, a former CIA analyst who is a familiar face now whenever instant analysis is needed — droned on about the many reasons Muslims are "so" offended by this or that behavior in the West.

Mr. Scheuer's mindless diatribe, unquestionably motivated by the need to land consulting contracts in Muslim country, pushed a Fox News anchorwoman, Michelle Malkin, to interject something akin to "Let us not blame the victims now." But it was not enough to stop the rant.

But so the story goes: Whenever it comes to Muslims, commentators feel the need for obfuscation. It reaches absurd proportions in Britain, but America is certainly its sideshow.

Last Christmas, Britain's Channel 4 network gave us another example of the mind-boggling confusion over where democracy and freedom of expression end, and indecency begins. It offered an "alternative" to Queen Elizabeth's traditional Christmas message broadcast on the other television stations, and gave national airtime to a living symbol of the war against Britain from the inside: a faceless woman, identified only as "Khadija," who addressed the nation covered in a full black niqab that showed just the slit of her eyes.

The so-called liberal owners of Channel 4 gave this living symbol of menacing, radical jihadism a full seven minutes to explain to us uncivilized folks about how she felt "liberated" by all her enveloping garb and her gender's reduced status, as well as how Islam is far superior to the infidel religions of the British. The most distressing part of this charade was how journalists at Channel 4 — and even a few among my own British acquaintances — thought this travesty was an appropriate parallel to the queen's Christmas message. One of the most absurd examples has been the months taken by the Minneapolis Airport Authority to discuss whether about 700 Somali Muslim taxi drivers who service the busy transportation hub had a "sharia right" to refuse to transport passengers carrying alcohol or blind travelers with seeing-eye dogs. A sheik has issued a fatwa against both — regardless of whether the drivers live in America or Saudi Arabia — because it insults the Prophet Muhammad and his religion.

That such facts were felt to require discussion at all is where the Achilles' heel of Western civilization lies. Accommodate such an order? Why? In some English schools, suggestions to stop teaching about the Holocaust or the Christian Crusades are being advanced because the topics may offend Muslim sensibilities. Just as important, successive Arab kings, and royal families have been given a green light to fund mosques in Britain without a single British prime minister asking for even a single church to be built in Arabia. This is the kind of confused Western liberalism that has transformed large parts of Britain into ideal areas for terrorist recruitment, where cockamamie sheiks preach to Pakistani or other Muslim constituencies about the need to kill and maim fellow British citizens in the name of Islam, all while hiding under the shield of Western democracy.

But so it goes: Attacks on the West from the inside will not stop so long as liberal apologists continue to produce justifications for fundamentalist Muslims who confuse their right to enjoy the liberty of the West with a need to confiscate the rights of everyone else.

Déjà Vu: Apologists Unfurl Stale Arguments

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