Just the Facts, Imam

Daniel Greenfield

Just the facts, Imam. A Muslim terrorist attack damaged a building, allowing Muslims to pick it up for a fraction of the price, in order to build a mosque on the spot. Some people might say that sort of thing is tacky. A little like coming by to make an offer on the house, after your cousin murdered the entire family who lived there. Sure, you might claim that you’re not responsible, but it just doesn’t look good. Especially once you start palling around with your cousin, and suggesting that maybe he was just misunderstood. And maybe that family brought it on themselves. But the media still insists that Islam had nothing to do with 9/11. Or if it had anything to do with 9/11, it was those “other Muslims,” not these Muslims. The media isn’t really good at explaining the difference between these Muslims and those Muslims. Often the media insists that those Muslims are actually these Muslims. Sometimes they claim that those Muslims are actually not Muslims at all, but people who are upset about foreclosures and work related stress.

When Malik Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood, the media spent thousands of pounds of ink claiming that he was suffering from some airborne form of PTSD that he picked up from the soldiers he was abusing– all evidence to the contrary. When the Times Square Bomber tried to kill a few thousand New Yorkers, the media claimed that he was upset because his house had been foreclosed on. Inconveniently enough, he turned out to be a Muslim terrorist, complete with his very own Al Qaeda martyrdom video.

But the media has never actually said those five little words. “Sorry America, we were wrong.” Because the media is never wrong. Sometimes they’re just technically incorrect. Sometimes the facts just don’t agree with their reality. And the reality can get pretty hazy down on the other side of the Reality Based Community. Especially when there’s enough drugs in the mix. And even when it’s just the liberal Kool Aid talking.

So when it comes to Muslims, the media doesn’t exactly have a great track record of telling apart “these Muslims” from “those Muslims”. After 9/11 the media did multiple interviews with a kindly and friendly Imam, by the name of Anwar Al-Awlaki. Anwar explained to every media outlet that would listen that Islam is opposed to terrorism and anyone who thinks otherwise misunderstood one of those 12,000 “You Shall Smite the Infidel” verses in the Koran. After doing enough interviews on NPR and PBS, Anwar Al-Awlaki is hiding from US drones somewhere in Yemen, and has been linked to both the Fort Hood Massacre and the Times Square Bomber.

You might think that Anwar Al-Awlaki snapped after enough appearances on PBS and NPR, whose soft calming music and lobotomized hosts could turn anyone into a terrorist, but Al-Awlaki was actually advising the 9/11 hijackers, even before the attacks happened. So when Anwar Al-Awlaki was telling the press that Islam is opposed to terrorism, he was asking them to ignore everything the FBI and CounterJihadi sites had found. Which they happily did.

What that all adds up to is that the media’s proven ability to handicap who is or isn’t a Muslim terrorist is about as good as Crazy Blind Louie’s ability to handicap horse races in China, when he doesn’t speak Chinese and has been trapped in a coma for the last 3 years. At this point if the media tells you that someone isn’t a Muslim terrorist, the Vegas odds are on the side of him being Osama bin Laden’s right hand man. If the media tells you that an Imam is moderate, run to within 50 feet away to avoid the shrapnel.

The media’s approach to Islamic terrorism is a lot like Pat Buchanan’s approach to the Holocaust. They will concede that terrorism probably does exist, and it might involve Muslims, but it’s not as bad as people make it out to be, there’s a lot of context, and anyway look at the history of it. It’s not as if we’re defending them, except we’re writing all these articles explaining how we shouldn’t have been fighting them in the first place. And really what did we get out of the war anyway?

Finally the media plays its trump card. Religious freedom. It’s in the Constitution, Man! And who has never doubted the media’s commitment to religious freedom, except when it comes to prayer in schools or in the military? Or their commitment to the Bill of Rights, which they would die for, except for the parts they don’t like very much.

Certainly the media has a point, when it argues that it’s wrong to claim that a house of worship shouldn’t be built, because it’s offensive. The media has never been known to do that. Except when they actually claim that houses of worship can be destroyed, because they’re offensive.

5 years ago, the good Muslims of Gaza decided to torch a bunch of synagogues. Naturally the media got very outraged about it. Well, not exactly. The media actually enthusiastically endorsed the burning of synagogues. Why? Because synagogues in Gaza are innately offensive.

While a synagogue was being vandalized by a gleeful Muslim mob, CNN’s Matthew Chance explained:

This structure behind me –very controversial because it is the Jewish synagogue in the middle of Netzarim. The Israeli cabinet, of course, voting to leave those synagogues standing, very much angering the Palestinian Authority, because they know that these buildings are seen very much by the vast majority of Palestinians as potent symbols of the Israeli occupation and could not be protected or even left standing. And so we’re seeing very sensitive scenes here over the past few hours as the Palestinian security forces move the civilians out of that synagogue and move their bulldozers in to take away these structures, again, seen as hated symbols of the Israeli occupation.

A mere 5 years ago, CNN justified the destruction of Jewish synagogues because they’re offensive. It described the destruction of a House of Worship as “take away these structures,” a lovely euphemism that Goebbels probably couldn’t have improved on. A euphemism that suggests the synagogue was being taken somewhere for a walk. Or maybe to a better place. Instead of being crudely demolished, after it had been burned and ransacked by a Muslim mob.