Daniel Greenfield article: Just the Facts, Imam

Posted: 16 Aug 2010 08:25 PM PDT

Just the facts, Imam. A Muslim terrorist attack damaged a building, allowing Muslims to pick it up for a fraction of the price, in order to build a mosque on the spot. Some people might say that sort of thing is tacky. A little like coming by to make an offer on the house, after your cousin murdered the entire family who lived there. Sure, you might claim that you're not responsible, but it just doesn't look good. Especially once you start palling around with your cousin, and suggesting that maybe he was just misunderstood. And maybe that family brought it on themselves.

But the media still insists that Islam had nothing to do with 9/11. Or if it had anything to do with 9/11, it was those "other Muslims", not these Muslims. The media isn't really good at explaining the difference between these Muslims and those Muslims. Often the media insists that those Muslims are actually these Muslims. Sometimes they claim that those Muslims are actually not Muslims at all, but people who are upset about foreclosures and work related stress.

When Malik Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood, the media spent thousands of pounds of ink claiming that he was suffering from some airborne form of PTSD that he picked up from the soldiers he was abusing-- all evidence to the contrary. When the Times Square Bomber tried to kill a few thousand New Yorkers, the media claimed that he was upset because his house had been foreclosed on. Inconveniently enough, he turned out to be a Muslim terrorist, complete with his very own Al Queda martyrdom video.

But the media has never actually said those five little words. "Sorry America, we were wrong." Because the media is never wrong. Sometimes they're just technically incorrect. Sometimes the facts just don't agree with their reality. And the reality can get pretty hazy down on the other side of the Reality Based Community. Especially when there's enough drugs in the mix. And even when it's just the liberal Kool Aid talking.

So when it comes to Muslims, the media doesn't exactly have a great track record of telling apart "these Muslims" from "those Muslims". After 9/11 the media did multiple interviews with a kindly and friendly Imam, by the name of Anwar Al-Awlaki. Anwar explained to every media outlet that would listen that Islam is opposed to terrorism and anyone who thinks otherwise misunderstood one of those 12,000 "You Shall Smite the Infidel" verses in the Koran. After doing enough interviews on NPR and PBS, Anwar Al-Awlaki is hiding from US drones somewhere in Yemen, and has been linked to both the Fort Hood Massacre and the Times Square Bomber.

You might think that Anwar Al-Awlaki snapped after enough appearances on PBS and NPR, whose soft calming music and lobotomized hosts could turn anyone into a terrorist, but Al-Awlaki was actually advising the 9/11 hijackers, even before the attacks happened. So when Anwar Al-Awlaki was telling the press that Islam is opposed to terrorism, he was asking them to ignore everything the FBI and CounterJihadi sites had found. Which they happily did.

What that all adds up to is that the media's proven ability to handicap who is or isn't a Muslim terrorist is about as good as Crazy Blind Louie's ability to handicap horse races in China, when he doesn't speak Chinese and has been trapped in a coma for the last 3 years. At this point if the media tells you that someone isn't a Muslim terrorist, the Vegas odds are on the side of him being Osama bin Laden's right hand man. If the media tells you that an Imam is moderate, run to within 50 feet away to avoid the shrapnel.

The media's approach to Islamic terrorism is a lot like Pat Buchanan's approach to the Holocaust. They will concede that terrorism probably does exist, and it might involve Muslims, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be, there's a lot of context, and anyway look at the history of it. It's not as if we're defending them, except we're writing all these articles explaining how we shouldn't have been fighting them in the first place. And really what did we get out of the war anyway?

Finally the media plays its trump card. Religious freedom. It's in the Constitution, Man! And who has never doubted the media's commitment to religious freedom, except when it comes to prayer in schools or in the military. Or their commitment to the Bill of Rights, which they would die for, except for the parts they don't like very much.

Certainly the media has a point, when it argues that it's wrong to claim that a house of worship shouldn't be built, because it's offensive. The media has never been known to do that. Except when they actually claim that houses of worship can be destroyed, because they're offensive.

5 years ago, the good Muslims of Gaza decided to torch a bunch of synagogues. Naturally the media got very outraged about it. Well, not exactly. The media actually enthusiastically endorsed the burning of synagogues. Why? Because synagogues in Gaza are innately offensive.

While a synagogue was being vandalized by a gleeful Muslim mob, CNN's Matthew Chance explained:

This structure behind me --very controversial because it is the Jewish synagogue in the middle of Netzarim. The Israeli cabinet, of course, voting to leave those synagogues standing, very much angering the Palestinian Authority, because they know that these buildings are seen very much by the vast majority of Palestinians as potent symbols of the Israeli occupation and could not be protected or even left standing. And so we're seeing very sensitive scenes here over the past few hours as the Palestinian security forces move the civilians out of that synagogue and move their bulldozers in to take away these structures, again, seen as hated symbols of the Israeli occupation.

A mere 5 years ago, CNN justified the destruction of Jewish synagogues because they're offensive. It described the destruction of a House of Worship as "take away these structures", a lovely euphemism that Goebbels probably couldn't have improved on. A euphemism that suggests the synagogue was being taken somewhere for a walk. Or maybe to a better place. Instead of being crudely demolished, after it had been burned and ransacked by a Muslim mob.

But today CNN can't fathom the media that someone would find building a house of worship offensive, particularly when it's built next to a virtual cemetery of the victims of that particular brand of worship. Yet in 2005, CNN was willing to justify the actual destruction of a house of worship because it's "offensive". What a difference 5 years and a different religion makes.

But perhaps CNN could extend the same "sensitivity" they displayed for the mobs of Gaza, to their fellow Americans, who might conceivably view a mosque near Ground Zero as "a symbol of occupation". One that would have to be taken away very sensitively. Perhaps all the way back to Mecca. Sensitively, of course.

And this wasn't some sort of bizarre CNN fluke either. This is how Reuters gleefully painted the scene: "Attacking symbols of the hated Israeli occupation, youths set ablaze several of the synagogues". And here's a lovely one from the London Telegraph: "The skies were yet to be lit by the rising sun when the first flames from burning synagogues could be seen, set alight by Palestinians incensed by years when the Israeli army ruthlessly defended the settlements." It's amazing how much poetry is called up from the journalistic soul at the sight of burning synagogues. If you didn't know any better, you might actually think they enjoyed seeing synagogues destroyed.

But of course that would be ridiculous. I mean just take a look at this excitable chunk of prose from Ken Ellingwood and Laurie King: "Many vented their fury over the occupation by laying waste to the synagogues that Israeli authorities chose to leave standing. At the Neve Dekalim synagogue, a hulking Star of David-shaped building visible from miles away, a club-wielding crowd had descended by early morning to smash every window and tear insulation from the walls and ceilings." You get the feeling that Ken and Laurie would have been just as excited to be up and about during Kristallnacht. And if Ken or Laurie had decided to take a club to that hateful Star of David shaped building, surely no one would have been too surprised.

But I direct your attention to more than just the purple prose. When Ken and Laurie and CNN and Reuters and the Telegraph don't like synagogues, then they're "hulking", destroying them becomes a matter of "sensitively" "taking them down" and the synagogues have it coming, because those damn Jews "chose to leave them standing."

It's clear that the media has no problem understanding resentment toward a "House of Worship". As long as it's Muslim resentment toward a non-Muslim house of worship.

The same blatant dishonesty and historical revisionism that was on display when Muslims destroyed 26 Jewish synagogues in Gaza, was also on display when Muslims destroyed 150 churches in Kosovo. Or the 170 Hindu temples destroyed in Kashmir in the last 20 years.

If a Koran falls into a toilet somewhere, it will be on the front page of the New York Times. If a 100 churches or synagogues burn, look for it somewhere on page A18, under the Grey Goose ad and just above a story about nesting pelicans in Bangalore. Three paragraphs. No photo.

Today the same people who whitewashed, excused and even celebrated the Muslim desecration and destruction of synagogues, churches and temples are absolutely shocked that anyone would object to building a mosque near Ground Zero. What kind of people would dare object to a house of worship. I mean besides Muslims anyway. It's Un-American. And you know what is American? Putting up a massive building dedicated to an ideology of murder, where the ashes of its victims drifted on the cold September wind.

That my friends is American. Not the "American" of George Washington or Theodore Roosevelt or the firefighters and police officers who somehow made it up a hundred stories to rescue people they had never met. No, it's the "American" of Benedict Arnold, Norman Cousins and the ACLU board of directors. And of course that great All-Time Champion of Americanism, Barack Hussein Obama. Barry, who thinks the Muslim call to prayer is the prettiest sound on earth. And the Constitution is a dim buzz in his ear.

Just the Facts, Imam. Here 3,000 Americans were murdered. For working in offices or visiting them. For being members of the NYPD or the PAPD or the FDNY. For putting on a uniform or a suit. For living their lives. And then the walls and floors and furniture around them burned. The papers in their hands burned. Their bodies burned. The ashes drifted down narrow streets. Streets where George Washington and his men once passed to visit Fraunces Tavern and toward Broadway where the Iranian hostages rode back in a ticker tape parade on their return.

Now the money that nourished their killers, will help erect a mosque. A temple of death by the ashes of the dead. And the media is outraged that we won't allow it. That we won't stand for it. The same media that stood and grinned while Muslims burned synagogues, churches and temples. That tells us that the Muslim terrorists who try to kill us are not really Muslims. Just going through a midlife crisis, picked up some PTSD from some bad coffee or was just having a bad day. Because we are not equal. On their farm, some animals are more equal than others. Some have the right to kill, others only have the right to be killed. Some have the right to build houses of worship, others have the right to build and to burn what others labor to build. Some have the right to be offensive, others only the right to be silent.

The dead of 9/11 are silent now. Or rather they have been silenced. As countless millions have before them were silenced. With flame and sword. In mass graves and at spearpoint. Tortured and mutilated. Torn apart with bombs. The dead cannot speak out against their murderers, but we can. The dead cannot protest, but we can. It is our duty to stand up and speak out. This is our place. Our land and our city. These are the streets where they tried to kill us. These are the streets where they will try again. To speak out is to defy those who would kill us and claim our cities as their own. Who would build monuments to their own victory over the ashes of our dead.

First they bomb. Now they occupy. We have lived through the bombing. And now we rise to defy the occupation.