Jeff Goldstein picks up the story of Oriana Fallaci (I blogged it here) and sees a "velvet insurgency:"
We see this impulse spreading through Canada (where criticism of certain groups is considered “racist” and is prosecutable by law), and we see harbingers of that same impulse here in the U.S. in things like hate crime legislation and in our mindless cultural surrender to the execrable and anti-individualist “diversity” movement.
Where reasoned criticism is successfully cast as “hate” or “intolerance,” freedom is a moribund ideal; and I don’t know how much longer we in the US—with a lingering guilt over our own historical intolerances fueling a subsequent nonconfrontational desire to do right by the Other—can keep the relentless tide of PC sanctimony at bay.
I heard a very funny joke the other day. Like most good jokes, it was funny because it conveyed a sense of the absurd right alongside the bitter truth. I won't repeat it here, but trust me, it wasn't very gentle with Islam.
I have heard many jokes about religion throughout my life. There have been jokes about pedophile priests for at least three decades. Everyone has either heard or told a Jewish joke. But some how, Muslims are forbidden territory, both from ridicule and criticism.
Our president and his administration had done much in the days after September 11 to squelch anti-Muslim furor. The "funny" thing about that effort is that it was almost completely unnecessary. The trumped up-charges by CAIR of discrimination and intimidation against Muslims in the US not withstanding, there is little evidence that Muslims experience discrimination is an disproportional level. And if you read CAIR's recent report, you will find that among their charges were incidents such as a student at the University of Houston "saw flyers and posters with false and degrading statements about the Qur'an and the prophet Muhammad..." This is construed as a breach of the student's civil rights.
In another section, we get this account: "[T]wo unknown males assaulted a Muslim student at Georgia Tech in Atlanta at night. The attackers beat him for no apparent reason and did not attempt to rob him." So any crime perpetrated against any Muslim is a hate crime. By this same standard, if one is not paying attention while behind the wheel and that person happens to run over a Muslim who happens to be in a crosswalk, that won't just be vehicular homicide but also a hate crime.
The report does site a few serious crimes, but while CAIR continues to cry wolf at each and every provocation--imagined or not--radical Muslims around the world are waging a terror war. The juxtaposition of Islamic terror and the fragile sensibilities of Muslims is telling. Methinks that organizations like CAIR and the Italian Muslim Union doth protest too much.
Hopefully, sooner rather than later, the west will wake up from this surreal daydream we have been in and say, "get serious."
Comments