The Muslim QuestionAlicia Colon
starts us off this morning by talking about the supposed threat to Muslims of retaliation by Brits or Americans:
I thought of that afternoon the other day after hearing the news of the foiled airplane bomb plot and the capture of alleged terrorists in England. My source for international news is always lucianne.com, because there are articles posted from around the globe. Several indicated that the British Muslim community was worried about a backlash and reprisals. What balderdash. Britain lost 67 citizens in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and yet radical Muslims in 2002 felt safe enough to hold a convention lauding the attacks.Of course, regular readers will know I've been an L-Dotter since way back. Indeed, the way I found out about 9-11 was through Lucianne. I got up about 6:00 my time (9:00 Eastern) and checked out the website. It was still early enough that there were no news articles up yet about the terrorist attacks, but in the first article that I checked the comments on were posts from fellow L-Dotters talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center, then one talking about a second plane, and then a third post imploring us all to turn on the TV. I have to admit, I thought perhaps it was an elaborate gag until the television came on.
Anyway, the much-feared backlash against Muslims never materialized, but groups like CAIR are always treating it like an imminent threat.
Which brings us
to this article, on a commonsense proposal by the British authorities to single out Muslims for greater scrutiny at airports.
The Muslim Council of Britain said the procedure, which includes "behavioural pattern recognition", would inevitably lead to discrimination. Inayat Bunglawala, its spokesman, said the government risked alienating "the community whose help it needs in combating the terrorist threat". He said: "Before some kind of religious profiling is introduced, a case has to be made; and we are certainly not convinced by the arguments for this kind of profiling. First of all, Muslims are not an ethnicity, as was shown by the arrests in last week's raids; there are many white converts to Islam."Yes, but they had names which gave them away as Muslims. Hell, I'd even be willing to say at this point that Caucasians with names like Abdul and Sayeed need to be screened even more than Egyptians with the same name.
Then there are
the inevitable calls to just lie down and accept Muslim hegemony.
Dr Syed Aziz Pasha, secretary general of the Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK and Ireland, said he had asked for holidays to mark Muslim festivals and Islamic laws to cover family affairs which would apply only to Muslims.
Dr Pasha said he was not seeking sharia law for criminal offences but he said Muslim communities in Britain should be able to operate Islamic codes for marriage and family life. "In Scotland, they have a separate law. It doesn't mean they are not part of the UK. We are asking for Islamic law which covers marriage and family life. We are willing to co-operate but there should be a partnership. They should understand our problems then we will understand their problems."Sorry, but I don't get any sense that the terrorism is about the lack of Muslim family law. If anything, the Muslims in Britain need to be further assimilated into society, not given special treatment.
Meanwhile, CAIR has
found another cause.
Last week Muslim groups criticized President Bush for referring to a “war with Islamic fascists.” In an item titled "U.S. Muslims bristle at Bush term Islamic fascists," Reuters quoted CAIR executive director Nihad Awad as saying, “We believe this is an ill-advised term and we believe that it is counter-productive to associate Islam or Muslims with fascism.”I certainly agree, so stop letting fascists associate with your religion!
