Posted by
Bill Crawford on Monday, August 01, 2011 9:04:49 PM
I think I can now speak comfortably on this subject, having personally progressed from being a Tea Party "extremist" to a Tea Party "terrorist". The phrase "Tea Party Taliban" is now entering the mainstream, I'm definitely moving up in the world.
This is just a quick note, referring to the Anders Beivik massacres in Norway recently, which the NY Times thought merited an above-the-fold "Christian Terrorist" headline. Have you read his manifesto? He's about as religious as my cat. His references to Christianity are more comparative condemnations to his target du jour: the European tolerance of Islam and his thoughts on the dangers of such. His religious views are well in line with Western European secularism.
That may have been merely a casual observation on the Grey Lady's part, but the speed with which they brought his religion into play is astounding. Two years ago, Major Nidal Hasan, a military psychologist who was in the habot of carrying business cards with fatwa references on them, shot a few dozen people in Fort Hood, shouting "Allahu Akbar" and the media here took pains not to mention his religion unless they had to. One television journalist I saw actually expressed regret that he was Muslim, and they wished they didn't have to mention it.
That dichotomy is one of the great bookmarks in the culture war here. One side regards world outreach terrorism as a criminal justice problem that only coincidentally appears in Muslim garb, while the other sees it as a declared war with a real and dangerous radical subset of one particular religion.
This latter viewpoint was easier to convey here in the days afte 9/11, but I think that since we made the decision to fight this war on the other side of the planet, it gets easier to relax a bit, stand back and chide the likes of yours truly for profiling and religious intolerance.
Well, reality is reality, and my noting that the Wahhabi war on us has not been undeclared and is still going on will still be out there, no matter who here is looking down their nose at my intolerance.
This war will get worse before it gets better, and while I think it is lamentable that there is also a war to be fought here on this subject, we can not not let up on it. Not while I still have to present a world for my children to mature in.
I didn't think I was going to get any help from the Times anyway.