[ April 19, 2024 ]
There is a disturbing trend, more of an insistence, by the mainstream media to label crimes wholly unrelated to any interpretation of Islam as “terrorism.” Not all that long ago, certainly post-9/11, media reports of “terrorism” meant the perpetrators were influenced by so-called “Islamic extremism.”
Earlier this month, Andrew C. McCarthy (he who led the prosecution of “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing) engaged in a perfectly legitimate statutory analysis at National Review Online of whether the perpetrator of the Las Vegas mass shooting earlier this month was a “terrorist.” His conclusion: yes, under Nevada and Federal law, the shooter likely meets the definition of “terrorist.” He further noted that even from a layperson’s perspective, “clearly, Paddock did terrorize a community, particularly an event attended by 22,000 people, at least hundreds of whom he put in mortal peril” (italics in original). (For purposes of our discussion, we put aside uncorroborated claims from ISIS that the shooter was a jihadist, while acknowledging those who point out that the attack has the hallmarks of a lone-wolf under the spell of “Islamic extremism,” including The Geller Report.)
Our problem from a counter-jihad perspective begins with the term “Islamic extremism” and variations thereof. The problem was compounded when the media began using “terrorism” as shorthand for “Islamic terrorism.” Folks on the left are very quick to insist that crimes with no Islamic motivation be labeled as “terrorism.” Heaven forbid anyone associate criminal acts with the tenets of Islam. Use of “Islamic extremism,” and any politically correct code words emanating therefrom, reflect either a blatant misunderstanding/ignorance of the literal interpretations of Islam (i.e. the Islam of Isis, Al Qaeda, et al.) or an intentional desire to deny the truth of what literal Islam says (i.e. the nefarious Muslim Brotherhood-associated Council on American-Islamic Relations). From a scholarly standpoint, “Islamic extremism” is actually “Koranic literalism” or “orthodox Islam.” Thus even use of the term “Islamic extremism” by the media already steers the uninformed away from examination of the literal tenets of Islam and causes them to look outside of the Koran, Surah and Hadith for external reasons why savage cowards commit horrific crimes in the name of their brand of Islam, i.e. poverty, lack of education, poor infrastructure… “Anything but Islam!”
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Robert Spencer shares numerous examples of the disconnect between poverty and “Islamic extremism” over at Jihad Watch, as does the Geller Report. Even the New York Times, no friend of Mr. Spencer or Ms. Geller, noted: “Not long after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for instance, Alan B. Krueger, the Princeton economist, tested the widespread assumption that poverty was a key factor in the making of a terrorist. Mr. Krueger’s analysis of economic figures, polls, and data on suicide bombers and hate groups found no link between economic distress and terrorism.”
More recently, the notion of poverty-as-root-cause-of-Islamic-extremism has been conclusively disproven by a report from no less than the World Bank, dated 10/2016: “We find that Daesh [ISIS] did not recruit its foreign workforce among the poor and less educated, but rather the opposite.”
Thus we safely conclude that the root cause of “Islamic extremism” is in the books of Islam. It is disturbing, to say the least, that we still have to engage in this intellectual debate about Koranic literalism some 1,300 years after Islam was purportedly born.
In 1979, four years before the U.S. Marine barracks bombings in Lebanon (by a group literally calling itself “Islamic Jihad”) and a full twenty-two years before the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the late great William F. Buckley lamented our misunderstanding of Islam:
“The general ignorance of the Western World concerning Islam and its power, latent and active, to move men and create historical events is widely deplored and universally cultivated.” William F. Buckley Jr., Front Line, “The Rising Tide of Islam” March 16, 1979.
Therefore, one hopes the mainstream media will at least consider using the term “Koranic literalism.” Here’s to a new hashtag: #KoranicLiteralism
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38 Comments
6 years ago
islam is peace. so it’s islamophonic to talk about islamic violence
6 years ago
Reply to
Mahou Shoujo
Now, don’t blame him. He’s just got too much goat spunk on and in his mind.
6 years ago
Reply to
Trump can't ban islam
Yes, islam is a piece, all right. A piece of sh*t. And there is no such thing as “islamophobia.” Means nothing. So, go back to your goat, or whatever four-legged creature you use as your semen receptacle and tell them your sad stories. Cheers!
6 years ago
Reply to
santashandler
“Trump cant’ ban Islam” is a lady so has no capacity to rut with goats unless the goats have that inclination themselves.
6 years ago
Reply to
Cai
One was being “diplomatic” as is appropriate in these disputatious times. Allah is wise, all-knowing!
6 years ago
Reply to
Qur'an 18:86
Incorrect. God is not Satan (Allah). Never confuse the two lest you lose your soul to the One true God (Jesus Christ) who will judge you the moment you die. Hebrews 9: 27
6 years ago
Reply to
Trump can't ban islam
“islamophonic” does that have something to do w/the adhan?
6 years ago
The founder of Islam was a mass murder. So are his true followers; around the world and through time.
6 years ago
Reply to
Spaulj67
Left/Liberal/feminazis will impose sharia everywhere if there is no resistance to such stupidity.
Just like they banning a Model on Instagram for being too hot and sexy http://bit.ly/2v09Kyv
CAN IT get more Ridiculous ?
6 years ago
Reply to
Spaulj67
And I still hear responses that the cult is not a mental disorder. Just because the dsm-v does not state it does not mean we have to put our brains out to pasture.
6 years ago
Reply to
Spaulj67
No need for Inspector Poirot to figure they are getting rich or maybe even they are mentally ill and simply do not know it.
6 years ago
It is time to stop doing autopsies on non existent corpses. Do take the trouble to figure out what happened and it’s relationship to other events. If you can’t get the details, then deal with what is reality, stop speculating and playing word and mind games. There is black and white, not everything is grey.
6 years ago
Reply to
Mahou Shoujo
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6 years ago
Reply to
Alice
Useless, when land rovers get parked at truck stops, they get laughed at.
D
6 years ago
Reply to
Mahou Shoujo
My pleasure. I find most comments you make to be truthful and concise.
6 years ago
Reply to
WM1
Google is paying 97$ per hour,with weekly payouts.You can also avail this.
On tuesday I got a great new Land Rover Range Rover from having earned $11752 this last four weeks..with-out any doubt it’s the most-comfortable job I have ever done .. It sounds unbelievable but you wont forgive yourself if you don’t check it
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6 years ago
A key part of this nonsense is the pretence that the quran has to be “interpreted”. This is plainly untrue because numerous verses of the q itself declare it to be clear and easy to understand. And obviously Allah would do a perfect communication job not requiring any mere human to explain. More at http://www.IslamHoax.com and http://www.BecomeaTerrorist.com
6 years ago
As I have said on a variety of previous occasions, any time there is a violent public act you should immediately and automatically assume it has a muzzie cause and component. Then work your way backwards through the evidence to see if anything proves you wrong. You will instead be proven right the vast majority of the time.
6 years ago
Why not just say “islam” or “fundamental islam” if you must use adjectives?
6 years ago
Here the answer:
”……fill their hearts with terror”.
Surah 8:12
6 years ago
If it was a mooslime, it’s islamic
6 years ago
I agree with the author that terrorist acts committed by Islamic extremists need to be identified as such in the media, and that knowing the ideological motivation of jihadists is essential to effective counterterror operations. But I can’t agree that it conversely is somehow incorrect to call NON-Muslim perpetrators of such acts “terrorists” TOO. Terror is a tactic, not an ideology. Radical Islamism is not the exclusive home of terrorism, nor does it in any way excuse Islamist terrorism to call other terrorists what they really are, too.
6 years ago
Reply to
Michael Jacobs
Radical, islamism, islamist, you’ve hit all the meaningless, dishonest neologisms used to excuse islum and muslums from islamic terrorism all in one paragraph! A great job of muslum apologia! You’ll make a great muslum collaborator in our muslum totalitarian future!
6 years ago
Reply to
IzlamIsTyranny
I’m not going there, Mr. Tyranny; we’ve been over those issues too many times before.I oppose Islamic terrorism as much as you do. But the question remains, why would anybody DENY the truth that even NON-Islamic terrorism is also “terrorism?” That lebaling is not done to “water down” concerns about Islamic terrorism, but to call a spade a spade. Do you disagree that, for instance, the car ramming in Charlottesville was terrorism? How about the church shooting in Charleston, SC?
The problem I’m aware of, as I hope you agree, was that for too long, US officials were NOT willing to call certain acts committed by obviously-Muslim killers in the US “terrorism,” labeling Major Hasan’s shootup at Fort Hood as “workplace violence,” for example. That’s just stupid, and willfully blind. But it’s just as stupid and willfully blind to refuse to label as terrorism, something which clearly is intended to be so, just because the person who does it isn’t a Muslim.
Are we talking about the Las Vegas shooting? That’s terrorism, whether or not Paddock had converted to Islam. He terrorized people, and his intention was to terrorize them. All that’s missing, to justify the label, is proof of a political purpose, and I believe the truth will show he _was_ a “soldier of ISIS” as ISIS claims. But what he did was terrorism, regardless.
6 years ago
Reply to
Michael Jacobs
Yes you never really can refute or address any of my points because you don’t have any refutation — beyond hand wringing and /or hand waving.
NJOI your totalitarian future…
6 years ago
Think of the line in a Few Good Men – the press “can’t handle the truth”. They are whores for the machine!
6 years ago
Wow, William F. Buckley was way ahead of his time. I still remember some sorry, sad, SOS, seventies lieberal baited Buckley by calling him a nazi, Buckley, a US WW2 veteran got out of his chair at that comment.
6 years ago
The issue is that Islamic violence is a very real issue and not just in the Western world. Look at how many radicals there are even in places like Malaysia and Indonesia, you can’t blame neo-Nazis for that.
