Letters to the Editor
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Funny stuff
"2. If al-Qaeda or Hizbollah had been as quiet as the Ku Klux Klan in the past, oh, century, nobody would have noticed them. But even the Klan, ridiculous as they are, have never engaged in anything near the level of violence that is commonplace among Islamists in the 21st century."
The "last century", huh? lol. Yeah, I'm sure you're so concerned about the "levels of violence" among Islamists. The overwhelming vast majority of which occurs against other Muslims. Right.........
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The 25% solution
Margalis,
It is hilarious. 20% didn't answer the question and 5% were favorable really means that 25% are favorable. C'mon now it's obvious that's the meaning. I'll even repeat it and bold it for you. What else could it be?
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Thanks,
You've got to love the mind that says: anti-zionism = anti-semitism [...] ignoring the long history of Jewish anti-zionism. Now, I'm not anti-zionist - the problem is too complicated historically for me to commit to a POV like that. But to imply that disagreeing with an ideology is equivalent to attacking the ethnicity which has many members that partake of the ideology, is a truly nasty and racist assertion....-- jojo++
Thank you. It is a common tactic, and one which should be exposed as invalid. For the record, I'm not strictly anti-Zionist. What I know of historical Zionism is limited, but its 19th century origins and aims seemed reasonable and largely righteous. The present-day propaganda machine, MEMRI, is neither. It deserves intense criticism, and attempts to mute that criticism with shouts of ANTI-SEMITE should get all the credence they deserve. The authors and editors of that "information source" want to persuade readers to hold Muslims in low esteem, to suspect them capable of every rottenness on the basis of their religion alone. Golden Boy intends to evoke the same wariness in his readers. This isn't done without ulterior motive -- second-class citizenship for Muslims is its purpose in both cases.
In regard to motivations, I'm perfectly willing to take Golden Boy and Kasmira at their words -- because their motivations are unimportant. They responded to posts in which Glenn argued for equitable treatment for all men in the court of public opinion, in which he espoused the 'novel' idea that religious affiliation is not a valid constraint on citizenship rights. Their responses were designed to undermine that argument and it is not an argument I'm inclined to permit anyone to diminish.
But, I must thank them too. There are many anti-Muslim bigots in this world, and I have no business underestimating their variety. Did anyone else notice the mild hilarity in their responses to being "mistaken" for being Jewish? If someone "accused" me of being Jewish I wouldn't find it so immediately risible.L.W.M., I'd prefer if you'd remove my previous letter from tinyurl.com. I had no wish to see it linked there, and Salon has copyright on everything written to these letters pages.
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@kstone
I don't get your point. The modern Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1915. They've been involved in lynchings and bombings and have been in decline since about World War II. They don't do much. They're repulsive, but they aren't flying airplanes into buildings in the States or bombing the tube in London. If all al-Qaeda or the Qassam Brigades ever did was march and hold sparsely attended rallies, the world would be a better place.
But Christian terrorism, such as it is, is not a global phenomenon; Islamist terrorism is, and demands attention.
Even the IRA and the Unionist militias, at their worst, were very little interested in anything beyond their own local conflict. To maintain that all fanaticism is the same and to ignore the specifically Islamic character of the current conflict is foolish.
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@timberman
Hindutva ("Indianess") is a political philosophy very much like Islamism. Unlike Islamism, Hindutva has not produced anything that might reasonably be called a terrorist organization in the sense that al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiya are terrorist groups.
The principle Hindutva outfits are the RSS, the BJP, and the Shiv Sena. RSS looks and talks a lot like the Hitler Youth, upon which they seem to have been modeled, but they are not, so far as anybody knows, involved in terrorism. The BJP and Shiv Sena are political parties, frequently intolerant and, in the case of Shiv Sena, positively fascist, but also not involved in terrorism as the term is commonly understood. Hindutva tends to manifest itself in mob riots rather than in terrorism, and certainly not in trans-national terrorism.
There are Muslim terrorists commonly attacking Hindus in and around Kashmir. The opposite is not true.
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The fool anonymous
1. Maybe, just maybe, the actions are connected to the creed? You think?
Probably explains why all anti-abortion bombers and OB-GYN assassins are Christian.
2. If al-Qaeda or Hizbollah had been as quiet as the Ku Klux Klan in the past, oh, century, nobody would have noticed them. But even the Klan, ridiculous as they are, have never engaged in anything near the level of violence that is commonplace among Islamists in the 21st century.
You clearly haven't absorbed the central thesis, so I'll put it in bold for you:
Terrorists, especially those driven by religious or ideological extremism, are about causing TERROR in a target population. High body counts are NOT always their highest priority, and in fact are sometimes considered counterproductive.
The KKK - founded in the latter 1860s, then resurrected during the early quarter then the latter half of the 20th century - is a case in point. Their violence was targeted expressly against local minority populations and rarely resulted in more than a few deaths at a time. Their legacy is one of fear and loathing, yet it successfully held back full and legal integration in much of the country for nearly a century.
They were in short terrorists of the most successful kind, to the point where they could shoot down peaceful leftists demonstrators in full daylight and in front of news cameras and yet be acquitted by a Court of law.
You faux comparison to Al Qaeda and Hizbollah isn't much better or more convincing, particularly in light their respective focuses.
I repeat: fanaticism (which is NOT automatically synonymous with religion) is fanaticism, whatever the source of the underlying creed.