Nicking Our Public Discourse
Listening to Attorney General Holder, one is tempted to modify Trotsky:
You may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you.
By Mark Steyn
What with the Fort Hood mass murderer, the Christmas Pantybomber, and now the Times Square bomber, you may have noticed a little uptick in attempted terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland in the last few months.
Rep. Lamar Smith did, and, at the House Judiciary Committee, he was interested to see if the attorney general of the United States thought there might be any factor in common between these perplexingly diverse incidents.
“In the case of all three attempts in the last year, the terrorist attempts, one of which was successful, those individuals have had ties to radical Islam,” said Representative Smith. “Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?”
“Because of . . . ?”
“Radical Islam,” repeated Smith.
“There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions,” replied Eric Holder noncommittally. “I think you have to look at each individual case.”
The congressman tried again. “Yes, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?”
“There are a variety of reasons why people . . . ”
“But was radical Islam one of them?”
“There are a variety of reasons why people do things,” the attorney general said again. “Some of them are potentially religious . . . ” Stuff happens. Hard to say why.
“Okay,” said Smith. “But all I’m asking is if you think, among those variety of reasons, radical Islam might have been one of the reasons that the individuals took the steps that they did.”
“You see, you say ‘radical Islam,’” objected Holder. “I mean, I think those people who espouse a — a version of Islam that is not . . . ”
“Are you uncomfortable attributing any actions to radical Islam?” asked Smith. “It sounds like it.”
And so on, and so forth. At Ford Hood, Major Hasan jumped on a table and gunned down his comrades while screaming “Allahu Akbar!” — which is Arabic for “Nothing to see here” and an early indicator of pre-post-traumatic stress disorder. The Times Square bomber, we are assured by the Washington Post, CNN, and Newsweek, was upset by foreclosure proceedings on his house. Mortgage-related issues. Nothing to do with months of training at a Taliban camp in Waziristan.
Listening to Attorney General Holder, one is tempted to modify Trotsky: You may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you. Islam smells weakness at the heart of the West. The post–World War II order is dying: The European Union’s decision to toss a trillion dollars to prop up a Greek economic model that guarantees terminal insolvency is merely the latest manifestation of the chronic combination of fiscal profligacy and demographic decline in the West at twilight. Islam is already the biggest supplier of new Europeans and new Canadians, and the fastest-growing demographic in the Western world. Therefore, it thinks it not unreasonable to shape the character of those societies — not by blowing up buildings and airplanes, but by determining the nature of their relationship to Islam.
For example, the very same day that Eric Holder was doing his “Islam? What Islam?” routine at the Capitol, the Organization of the Islamic Conference was tightening its hold on the U.N. Human Rights Council — actually, make that the U.N. “Human Rights” Council. The OIC is the biggest voting bloc at the U.N., and it succeeded in getting its slate of candidates elected to the so-called “human rights” body — among them the Maldives, Qatar, Malaysia, Mauritania, and Libya. The last, elected to the HRC by 80 percent of the U.N. membership, is, of course, a famous paragon of human rights, but the other, “moderate” Muslim nations share the view that Islam, in both its theological and political components, should be beyond discussion. And they will support the U.N.’s rapid progress toward, in effect, the imposition of a global apostasy law that removes Islam from public discourse.
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