The Navel-Gazers Vs. The Jihadis

Political Mavens/Jewish World Review ^ | July 26, 2007

[theothercheek]

Reporting on the fatalism – or aplomb, depending on your point of view - of New Yorkers in the vicinity of last week’s steam pipe explosion near Grand Central Station, The Washington Post offers this vignette:

Malcolm Pollack … heard the blast and thought it sounded like Zeus had declared war on the planet. On the street he comforted a woman who was crying and who kept sobbing "I hate it, I hate it."

"You hate what?" Pollack asked.

"I hate … Muslims," she finally burst out.

"You mean, you hate yourself for hating Muslims," he said.

"That's right," she said.

Pollack recalled that jump to a wrong conclusion and shrugged in a way that said, What a city.

It is not clear from this account whether the "wrong conclusion" was the overwrought woman instinctively blaming Muslim terrorists in a "rush to judgement" before knowing what had happened and why, or Pollack transmuting her anti-Muslim sentiments into self-hatred.

The Stiletto imagines a parallel scene taking place at a madrassa – perhaps right here in the U.S. - where students are inculcated in anti-Western wahhabism:

"I hate it, I hate it," said the jihadi-in-training.

"You hate what?," the imam asked.

"I hate infidels," he burst out without skipping a beat.
"You hate what?," the imam asked again.

"I hate infidels," the junior jihadi shouted, with even greater fervor.

Clarification: Malcolm Pollack, one of the protagonists in The Washington Post’s vignette, contacted The Stiletto to let her know that the events did not play out quite the way the reporter depicted them. Here is what happened:

I just wanted to clear this up, as the reporter, betraying, I think, a little journalistic left-rudder, seems to have deliberately introduced this ambiguity (he also made it seem as if the little vignette had happened before his eyes, rather than the day before).

In my conversation with the woman in question, when she said she hated Muslims, and then repeated "I hate it" a few more times, I wasn't quite sure what she meant. It did seem as if she was conflicted about it herself; this certainly wasn't skinhead-style vitriol. So I asked her for clarification, rather than haughtily correcting her, as Mr. Segal implied in his article.

It was indeed a "wrong conclusion", though a reasonable one, that we were once again under attack by our implacable Muslim foes. (It is also quite understandable that many here in Gotham might have less-than-benign feelings toward Islam generally, at this point, an attitude that the echoing silence of allegedly "moderate Muslims has done nothing to ameliorate.) I will charitably assume that this is what the reporter meant.

Pollack has a fuller account of his encounter with the distraught stranger on his blog. He writes beautifully, by the way, so his post is worth reading, if only to savor his erudition.