Posted on 07/05/2005 9:18:47 PM PDT by CHARLITE
The grievance industry went into overdrive last month when burned Korans were reportedly discovered at a local mosque in southwest Virginia.
The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations issued an immediate press release on June 16 calling for "Americans of all faiths to obtain and read the Quran after burned copies of Islam's revealed text were found" in a shopping bag at the front door of the Islamic Center of Blacksburg.
Repent, all ye infidels!
Incensed CAIR officials contacted the FBI and pressured authorities to treat the incident as possibly "bias-related." CAIR-MD/VA Director of Civil Rights Shama Farooq lectured that "A redoubled commitment to freedom of thought and religious diversity is the best response to the burning of any sacred text" in order to "send the message that bigots do not represent our nation's values."
Not content to let CAIR get all the free publicity, other victim-card hustlers jumped aboard the burned Koran bandwagon.
Laila Al-Qatami, a spokeswoman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, lambasted police: "If pages from the Bible were burned and put in a bag outside a church," she huffed to the Associated Press, "I think the reaction of the police would be that it would be a hate crime." Actually, in this country, when you dunk a crucifix in urine, that's "art," and when you hang a framed copy of the Ten Commandments inside a courthouse, that's a crime.
Al-Qatami invoked the Guantanamo Bay bogeyman and blamed the burnt Koran incident on insensitive, ignorant Americans. The case, she asserted, was caused by "a lack of zero tolerance for hate crimes and 'a lack of information about Arabs and Islam as a whole.'" Al-Qatami also told the Roanoake Times: "Let's face it, books don't burn themselves and end up outside of a mosque. It's a willful act."
Muslims in Virginia also expressed their knee-jerk outrage: "It is a shame that people are so ignorant," said Blacksburg mosque member Idris Adjerid. Ahmed Sidky, a Muslim graduate student at nearby Virginia Tech, told the Roanoake Times that the case "was certainly very symbolic."
It certainly was a symbol -- a symbol of the knee-jerk penchant among some civil rights groups and their enablers to cry racism, claim discrimination, and criticize U.S. law enforcement authorities for not doing enough to stop "hate crimes."
It turns out, you see, that the burnt Koran was left at the mosque by . . . a Muslim student.
According to the AP, a Muslim Virginia Tech student took responsibility saying he dropped off the burned Koran and other singed materials at the mosque, hoping "it could be given a respectful disposal." Police Lt. Bruce Bradberry reported that the student, who was not named, apparently contacted police last week, "saying he was going to be traveling abroad and didn't know what to do with the Koran, which had been burned in a 2004 house fire. The student said he placed the book and other fire-damaged materials in a bag and left the bag at the Islamic Center with a note, which apparently blew away."
Whoops.
The grievance-mongers' continued failure to act responsibly and with due skepticism when these cases arise is expected. But the mainstream media's failure to put its America-bashing instincts in check is intolerable. Instead of providing readers with information about many cases of so-called Muslim hate crimes that have turned out to be fraudulent since Sept. 11, The Washington Post quoted the usual suspects and editorialized in its June 17 report that "The Koran burning comes at a time of particular sensitivity. The U.S. military recently confirmed five cases of U.S. personnel mishandling the Muslim holy book at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, acknowledging that soldiers and interrogators kicked the Koran, got copies wet, stood on a copy during an interrogation and inadvertently got urine on another one."
Over the Independence Day weekend, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Colbert King added fuel to the fire, hysterically listing this now-debunked Koran-burning incident as evidence of rampant anti-Muslim bias in America.
Will Colbert King and the boys and girls crying wolf calm down and acknowledge the truth about the Muslim hate crime that wasn't? I doubt it.
More "Affirmative Ficton" hysterically and prematurely hyped to show how "oppressssssssed" minorities are in this country.
We should disband CAIR, AIM, and the ACLU with our trusty racketeering laws.
Char :)
""A redoubled commitment to freedom of thought and religious diversity is the best response to the burning of any sacred text" in order to "send the message that bigots do not represent our nation's values." "
I doubt the Quran/Koran's sacredness and what country is he referring to when he says, "...do not represent our nation's values."? Why should I respect their Quran if they don't respect my Bible, our flag, our country or our people?
If for some reason I ever get my hands on a Kor_n, I'll probably do worse than burn it... then burn it!
Yet, we will not see this part of the story featured as prominently, if at all, as much as we did the "hate crime" story.
As one bright, sassy FReeper wrote on a thread several months ago, "We stop trying to flush the Koran, you stop beheading Americans... Deal?"
I loved that one so much that I actually saved the quote!
Thanks for all of your comments to Michelle's sizzling new column!
Char :)
Call me insensitive, but Al-Qatami is a bigot.
Good to see that there is not religious animosity here. Are you trying to point out that there is no underlying hatred of Islam, while espousing that same hatred? What a self defeating argument.
Like old whatshername on SNL would say, "Nevermind."
Intolerable, of course. It is, in fact, a situation up with which we should not put, (as a wise man from another generation might have stated it.)
Nevertheless, MSM's credibility becomes pared back by finite, measurable amounts each time one of Michelle's essays go ponging around the blogosphere and Internet forums.
Mid to long term, we will win the battle for hearts and minds.
.
When a cult teaches nothing but hate, directed against "infidels," why would any practitioner of such a cult expect anything different in return? I had no problem with islam before 9-11. I know better now. How much respect would Al-Qatami show the Bible or Torah? No, I don't want to hear any whining about how islam is not understood, how it should be respected, how we should all be tolerant. NO! islam needs to show some tolerance and stop killing people over what they believe.
The ignorance of these idiots is unbelievable.The American people showed remarkable restraint following 9/11 but the muslums who were the beneficiaries of that restraint continue to lie and cry wolf.If we acted like they do we would have used their severed heads for tree decorations.Maybe that's the only thing they appreciate and understand.
You are ignoring my point and reinforcing it all at once. The point is that you cannot criticize Al-Qatami for sensing a steadily increasing intolerance for the peaceful practice of Islam, and then express the same hate that you just said did not exist.
See posts 10 and 15.
>"...not religious animosity here. Are you trying to point out that there is no underlying hatred of Islam, while espousing that same hatred? What a self defeating argument."<
Oh, we certainly DO have a high level of animus toward the P.R.O.P.* {Phony Religion Of Peace}, and will reserve the right...
Until islam will collectively renounce its stance on: women's rights (or rather the extremely pronounced lack thereof),
their plagiaristic, paedophiliac false prophet who inaccurately lifted (on a wholesale basis) the basis for his "religion" from Persian Zoroastrianism, the Jewish Torah, Christianity, and Arab peninsular pagan pantheism,
their historically demonstrated propensity for spreading their death-cult via war, stealth, and political intrigue...
...I believe we are well within our reasonable bounds to hate islam itself in general - and to take its practitioners on a case-by-case basis, contingent upon their words and deeds.
That does not a self-defeating argument make - especially given the P.R.O.P.'s stated goal of taking control of the White House, and transforming the U.S. into a 6th century islamic state, dominated by imams, mullahs, and Sharia law.
A.A.C.
I never claimed to not harbor bad feelings towards Islam. From nearly everything I've seen regarding Islam, it is one of the worst influences the World has ever known. And the people whom I've known personally that followed Islam never impressed me as what I would call "grownups."
I wouldn't give a hoot if every Muslim in Mecca burned The New Testament, because it's just so much paper. Nothing can change what's on the inside, and burning a million copies would only serve to combine carbon and oxygen. Nor would I give a hoot if someone left a Koran on my doorstep and it happened to be disposed of in a manner that disagreed with a poster here on FR or anyone else.
Can't speak for others. I simply noticed the hypocrisy of it all-- the knee-jerk reflexism- cum victim status of CAIR frothing at the mouth that their customs have been raped yet again-- if only the world would understand them for the sweet wonderful people that they are -- when in all reality no crime was committed. The FBI need not be involved. Will an apology be forthcoming to this slur on all non-Islamic Americans, I wonder?
The anger against muslims is something that they have cultivated and earned by the actions of their own people. Stop your people from beheading and slitting others throats in the name of allah and you might begin to get somewhere. That is where you need to start, not whining that people dislike a cult that's well known for killing people over their religion on a daily basis. When I can pick up a newspaper and not read that some muslim has blown up a church, synagogue, temple or whatever, I might feel differently. When muslim countries stop imprisoning or killing missionary's, I might think differently. When muslims stop killing their daughters because some pig raped them, I might think differently. And you talk of hate because a book was thought to have been burned? Give me a break. From what I have seen, islam is pure hate, pure evil. The difference is, I don't hate you. I don't want to slit your throat. My God would not want that of me but I do hate your religion and all the violence it stands for. Al-Qatami is right, there is a very real and increasing intolerance. It's for all the bloodshed in the name of islam. You are mistaken, however, this is not about the peaceful practice of islam. It's about the unchecked violence in the name of islam.
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