The Phantom Media

No, I said the Phantom MEDIA...

This article at The Examiner by Sakina al-Amin really typifies a certain kind of argument that has been made continuously by both "moderate" Muslims and their left-wing sycophants ever since 9/11. The article concerns Joseph Stack, who recently flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. Al-Amin writes: "It is unfortunate that CNN did not include the man's religion in their reporting of the incident. If they had, we could easily add an '-ist' to the end of his faith, to give it an ominous, and contrived, meaning."

The implication here is obvious: When Muslims fly planes into buildings, we call them "Muslim terrorists". So when this man did the same thing, why don't we mention his religion?

First of all, I don't know which world Ms al-Amin lives on where the media are actively hostile towards Muslims. It certainly isn't Planet Earth. But in any case, the question is still there: why mention the religious identity of Muslim terrorists, but not other ones?

The major mistake is in assuming that the Muslims who have committed almost 15,000 acts of terrorism since 9/11 alone did all this in spite of their faith, that their religion was somehow incidental to their motivations. In fact, the Muslims who committed those acts explained in their own words that they did them in the name of Islam. Take 9/11, for instance. In March 2009 five Muslims convicted of plotting the attacks wrote an “Islamic response” to the charges levelled against them by the American government. In it, they quote from the Qur'an at least a dozen times in order to justify their actions on that terrible day. They write: “In God's book, he ordered us to fight you everywhere we find you, even if you were inside the holiest of all holy cities, The Mosque in Mecca, and the holy city of Mecca, and even during sacred months.” Immediately following this is a notorious passage from the Qur'an: “Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, and besiege them and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush...” (9:5)

We can't understand the actions of Islamic terrorists without referring to their Muslim identity, since that is what they themselves insist motivates them. We don't even need to have a debate about whether they are representing the true teachings of Islam or not - although of course, they are. All that matters is that their Islamic religion can't be separated from their actions. In the case of Joseph Stack, he was not following a religious agenda, and that is why the phantom "Islamophobic" media did not mention his faith: because it was irrelevent.

With "moderate" Muslims like this filling up the mainstream, it is no wonder that no one within the umma has gotten around to actually combatting the terrorists in their midst yet.