Dartblog

“Here in the UK, even my most liberal and left-wing friends have very suddenly become deeply anti-Muslim and are saying that Muslims clearly cannot live in Europe. These people didn’t say that sort of thing even after the London bombings, but they are saying it now. People are furious with these attacks on our freedoms, with our stupid grovelling politicians and newspaper editors, and with the Muslims who marched through London waving banners with slogans such as ‘Behead Those Who Insult Islam’.

I’ve honestly never seen so many of my countrymen this angry before.”

So writes an anonymous commenter at the blog of Mahmood Al-Yousif, about the throngs of Muslims the world over, railing, burning, shouting and shooting over a half-dozen political cartoons featuring the likeness of Muhammad. I have heard similarly from left-liberal readers, who may have cackled when George Bush uttered “they hate our freedom” in the presidential debates of 2004 but now see the light. Or at least the sign. With such ringing denunciations of liberalism’s mightiest ideals, it’s hard to miss the point that Muslim extremists really do hate tolerance, speech, and liberty when any of those things are used to tolerate, utter, practice, wear, depict, enjoy, or otherwise do anything not to their liking. And as numerous commentators have observed, what is ‘to their liking’ is a wholly arbitrary spectrum, because the Koran mentions nothing about banning women from driving or exploding oneself in busy shopping malls.

As George Bush has said, the entire system of Islamic fundamentalism is eerily similar to Communism, in that it is pillared by peons and controlled by rich elites. As has always been the problem the top-down elitist regimes, the West has an irksome habit of attempting to supplant tyranny with freedom. The Islamists have guarded against this troublesome interest in human rights in two ways: through terrorism and by convincing Muslims that every day brings the high likelihood of a genocide prosecuted against them by everyone else in the world (the infidels) and that therefore ‘offense’ must be taken—or in the least, professed—early and often.

And so it has. Manhattan’s World Trade Center was attacked for the first time on February 26, 1993. Islamist Ramzi Yousef had, with the help of his uncle (via cellular telephone) Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Iraqi bomb maker Abdul Rahman Yasin, and (also via cellular telephone) Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Yousef was introduced to his local compatriots at a Brooklyn mosque. He produced a $300 1,300 lb bomb and detonated it. He took a jet to Pakistan later that day. Two weeks later, an Associated Press dispatch reported that “Muslims Fear Backlash in Wake of Bombing.” Citing numerous prank phone calls, M.T. Mehdi, president of the American Arab Relations Committee, was quoted as saying, “It’s very unfortunate and disappointing that this open society is not quite as open and protective. There is a chill thrown upon our freedom of expression because we are Muslims.”

In late 1996, the Taliban government gained absolute power in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden moved into the country the same year. The Taliban was diplomatically recognized by the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, and set about imposing Shari’ah, and banning all western influences, including television, radio, music, and sports. The regime would kill at minimum 15,000 Shia Muslim men. Their women were enslaved and sold to Pakistan. On November 4, 1996, the Press Association in Britain sent out a wire report claiming that “British Muslims Fear Backlash Over Taleban.” A single spokesperson for Britain’s 1.5 million Muslims reported that “[t]he Western world loves to hate Muslims and Islam. We are being increasingly demonised.”

The second attack on the World Trade Center and other targets was September 11, 2001, and were perpetrated by 19 Islamists. 2,986 were killed that day. A week later, Osama bin Laden gave an interview to Pakistan’s Ummat newspaper, in which he said, “As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks.” And two days after the attacks, on September 13, the Associated Press dispatched to the wire “Arab-Americans and Muslims fear backlash,” which quoted Fuad Sahouri, chairman of the Arab-American Business and Professional Association in Washington, as saying, “It’s very important right now for Arab-Americans that their loyalty never be brought into question.”

On the same day, the Harvard Crimson printed a story, “Campus Muslims Fear Backlash, Stereotyping in Wake of Attacks,” and such reports continued almost daily in other papers for weeks after 9/11. One year later, a terror cell was located outside Buffalo, New York. Upon arrest, the Buffalo News for its lede interviewed Bayram Arman, treasurer of the American Muslim Council, who said, “you always worry about a backlash. A lot of it depends on how the media handles this.”

In 2002, a series of sniper shootings were terrorizing Washington, D.C. CBS News reported on the incidents in “Muslims Fear Sniper Backlash.” The day after Christmas in 2003, the foreign intelligence community had picked up alerts which indicated the possibility of a terrorist attack. The threat level was raised. ABC News reported in “Muslims fear backlash with increase in terror threat level.” In early August of 2004, an Islamist terror plot was uncovered in the capital of New York, Albany. It, like that which supported the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, was based out of a local mosque. Federal agents captured the terrorists and uncovered plans to obtain a shoulder-mounted missile. The San Francisco Chronicle reported, “Albany Muslims fear backlash after mosque arrests .” In late 2004 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi took a British man hostage. The Guardian reported on the situation in “Muslims fear backlash.” After Islamists detonated a series of 10 bombs on a Madrid train on March 11, 2004, killing nearly 200, Agence France-Presse dispatched “Spain’s Muslims fear backlash after bomb attacks” to the wire.

Last Summer, a series of synchronized Islamist terrorist attacks across London killed 56 people and injured 700. Three bombs on the London Underground exploded within one minute of each other. An hour later, a double-decker bus exploded. Two weeks later, another series of bombs went off in London, each from suicide bombers attempting to duplicate the first round of attacks. Two days after the first wave of attacks, the Associated Press dispatched “London Muslims Fear Backlash After Bombs.”

On October 2005, Australian federal authorities uncovered and dismantled a local Islamist terror cell. World News Australia filed the report “Aust. Muslims Fear Backlash.” In it, Kuranda Seyit, leader of the Forum on Australia’s Islamic Relations, was quoted as saying that the terror arrests, “are creating the impression that there are Muslim baddies crawling all over the place.”

This history seems quite clear: ‘backlash’ is a serious, extant, and deadly problem. For Westerners.

With the cartoon jihad, which has already torched two embassies, there is finally the simultaneous comingling of terrorism and offense-taking, extremist Islam’s two primary moda operandi. In fact, as thousands of outraged Muslims rage in every corner of the world, it is becoming clear that offense-taking is itself a form of terrorism. To defend freedom of speech, countless intrepid European newspapers have reprinted the infamous cartoons. Some of the most entrenched stalwarts, meanwhile, have refused to broadcast them out of ‘respect,’ though respect of what is not yet known. Certainly not respect for what is now being done to and said of Denmark. The United States Department of State took a spot on the fence, along with the world’s inestimable other jellyfishes, while Western Europe, finally coming to realize what we have for many years, is firming its upper lip.

As I have written several times in this space, the iconic picture of the cartoon jihad is this one, of a hand among many holding a placard among many. The man’s sign reads, “Europe. Take some lessons from 9/11”

Exactly which lesson will be taken is yet to be seen.