Media Obfuscates Jihad

Media Obfuscates Jihad

http://frontpagemag.com/2010/07/14/media-obfuscates-jihad/

Posted by Robert Spencer on Jul 14th, 2010 and filed under FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, is available now from Regnery Publishing, and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of the forthcoming book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon and Schuster).

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On Monday morning a reporter contacted me to remonstrate with me for my treatment of the reporter in this video, in which I respond to a biased and misleading question by the Swedish reporter Per Gudmundson. The reporter thought I was too hard on Gudmundson, despite the “when did you stop beating your wife” quality of his question; however, I am finished with playing along with the grand pretense that reporters are objective, neutral observers of events, and not the relentless and viciously unfair ideologues that they are. Also on Monday, a minor Associated Press piece about some minor jihadists in Toledo, Ohio, offered a case in point as to why mainstream media journalists deserve no professional respect whatsoever.

Look first at the headline: “Federal judge in Toledo sentences 2 terror plotters.” Two “terror plotters” were sentenced. So far they could be anyone. Islamic jihadists? Maybe. Could also be “Christian extremists” (who will surely be along in a minute to bear out every well-indoctrinated schoolgirl’s desperate and paranoid fear of them). Or maybe Tamil Tigers. Maoist fanatics. You never know. So let’s read on.

TOLEDO — Two Chicago-area cousins who pleaded guilty to taking part in a plot to attack American soldiers overseas have been sentenced to prison terms by a federal judge in Ohio.

Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. They were “Chicago-area cousins.” That seems to be the most important bit of information about them, because that’s what the AP reporter chose as the lead identifier for them. So did they take part in a “plot to attack American soldiers overseas” — maybe lazy recruits in a sleepy, outmoded, and no longer necessary Cold War outpost in Germany, for all we know from the story so far — because they were from the Chicago area? Is Chicago in rebellion against the United States government? Or is it that this is some sort of weird cousins’ plot, a Manson-family type thing?

Prosecutors say the two men were training to kill soldiers and had ties to three men in Toledo who were convicted of organizing the plot.

Ah. They were “men.” And they had ties to three other “men.” So maybe the problem here is males, the source testosterone. Extra screening for men in airports! Now!

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