'Why is Everybody Always Picking on Me?' - The United Nations, Muslims, Zionists, and 'Those People'

I started this post Friday, when I read about three particularly zealous Muslims in England, who were defending Islam from "Jewel of Medina" with a firebomb or two.

That sort of thing is simply not done in Her Majesty's United Kingdom, so now they're in trouble with British legal authorities. The incident reminded me of those few times when a Muslim in America committed a crime that seemed to be related to terrorism and got in trouble: and the drearily familiar complaints about profiling and Islamophobia.

As sometimes happens when I start writing, this post grew. In case you're interested in finding your way around, here's a set of links to the headings:

• Why is Everybody Always Picking on the Muslims?
  • Christian Persecution of Muslims in America - a Reality Check
  • Suspecting "The Whole Muslim Community"?
  • Muslims Defending Islam
• 'More Victimized Than Thou:' Probably Not the Best Attitude
  
  • A Secret Enemy Makes Life So Much Easier

I posted "United Nations Treats Islam More Equally Than Other Religions" last Friday. It's about non-binding United Nations Resolution 62/145. The resolution is called "Combating Defamation of Religion." The idea of the resolution is to stop defamation of all religions.

Particularly Islam. Because Muslims are being picked on.

It's true. They are. Sometimes, someone is picked on, just because of a "Muslim" name.

• Just last month, a couple of security guards at Ben Gurion airport in Israel made Abdur-Rahim Jackson dance before they let him out of the terminal
• Which proves that Zionists are behind the attacks on Resolution 62/145
• Or, not

I think the Jackson incident indicates that there are jerks everywhere, and that bureaucrats are almost as widely distributed.

My "Combating Defamation of Religion" inspired a comment that began, "The major push against this is actually coming from Zionists and Americans in cahoots with Zionists...."

Since I'm an American, and am dubious about Resolution 62/145, I'm probably in cahoots with the Zionists. Funny, I hadn't realized that.

And still don't.

To be fair, that 'Zionist' comment did bring up a valid point. Judging from my experience, the American education system in the fifties and sixties didn't do the best job of describing Nazi Germany's treatment of 'non-Aryans.' It was several years before I realized that Poles, cripples, and others were killed, as well as Jews.

Before blaming that on Zionists and American dupes and stooges, though, I'll consider the possibility that the focus on the mistreatment of Jews in Nazi Germany was the result of not wanting to be like Hitler, the fact that most of the Holocaust victims were Jews, and some of the Poles were Jews. What, you thought that Germany was the only European nation with Jews?

On the other hand, there's been a great deal of attention given, in academia at least, to the non-Jewish 'non-Aryans' and the Holocaust (with exceptions, of course). These days, we should be quite aware that Hitler and company targeted quite a few groups, like Gypsies (or Romanies, or whatever), homosexuals, women, the disabled. Fair enough.

Although I wonder where the author of a book on women, the Holocaust, and the Soviet Gulag, got the numbers for her assertion that 6/11^ths of the Holocaust victims were Jews.

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Why is Everybody Always Picking on the Muslims?

The United Nations resolution refers to "the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of 11 September 2001...."

Muslims are a minority in America, about 0.6% of the population, I've read. That should make them victims of religious profiling.

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Christian Persecution of Muslims in America - a Reality Check

Earlier this year the Christian Identity movement burned the Islamic Center of Columbia, Tennessee! That just shows what those Christians are like!!

Doesn't it?

As I wrote last February, the three guys who wrote "white power" and "we run the world" on the Columbia mosque and then torched it were "...members of the Christian Identity movement... arrested Saturday:

• Eric Ian Baker, 32
• Michael Corey Golden, 23
• Jonathan Edward Stone, 19

That "Christian Identity movement" isn't one organization, but a sort of network of 'a theology that is associated with several groups, such as the Aryan Nation.' ..."

Considering how much is known about Christian beliefs and practices these days, I probably need to say this: Those three bozos aren't your typical Christian, and arson isn't part of the Christian belief system.

The Christian churches in Columbia, Tennessee, are somewhat more representative of Christianity in America: Until they could raise enough money to help the Muslims re-build their mosque, they offered the Islamic community space in their churches.

Which is one reason I'd rather live here than in, say, Saudi Arabia.

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Suspecting "The Whole Muslim Community"?

It could be argued that, although some Americans aren't Islamophobic, the American government is: not convincingly, though.

It's true that Muslims have run afoul of American law. For example (I'm leaving out the 'allegedlys,' which would get pretty repetitious):

• Liberty City Seven
  • Told an FBI Agent they wanted to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago
• Naveed Haq
  • Shot up Seattle's Jewish Federation Building
  • Killed one woman
  • Wounded five others
  • Had a good reason
    • He was mad about the Jews and how they were running the country
• Houssein Zorkot
  • Posted on his Web site that he was launching a personal jihad
  • Showed up in a nearby park
    • Wearing camouflage paint
    • Holding a loaded AK-47
• Youssef Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed
  • Who were just
    • Screaming down U.S. Highway 176
    • Near the U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig and a naval weapons station
    • With explosive devices
      • Pipe bombs, specifically

These people were either:

1. Victims of systematic persecution of Muslims
2. A real threat
   • And/or, in the case of the Liberty City Seven, people with very, very little sense

My choice is option 2.

I don't see that these cases prove Islamophibic tendencies in American institutions, any more than the execution of that clean-cut American boy, Timothy McVeigh, proves anti-white tendencies.

(That list was adapted from "The "Liberty City Seven" - American Nitwits and Al Qaeda" (March 27, 2008).)

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Muslims Defending Islam

Gibson Square Books, a British publisher, was going to release a book next month, called "Jewel of Medina." (Some) British Muslims didn't like the book, since it was obviously an insult to Islam, so they had a shot at torching the publisher's house. Allegedly.

The book was written by an American, Sherry Jones, has already been dropped by Random House, but now it looks like Beaufort Books will sell it in America.

Other British Muslims said that torching someone's house isn't right, even if that person is publishing a 'disgusting' book.

The fuss over "Jewell of Medina" reminds me of the situation ten years ago, when Salmand Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" made international news. The last I heard, Mr. Rushdie is still under a death sentence, and the fatwa can't be withdrawn, since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is dead. Rules are rules. The fatwa doesn't just target Rushdie: the publishers can be killed, too. It's the duty of 'all good Muslims,' Ayatollah Khomeini said.

Remember, he said that, not me.

Mr. Rushdie is still alive, as far as I know. 'Good Muslims' haven't been idle, though. The score, so far:

• Hitoshi Igarashi, Japanese language translator of the book
  • stabbed to death
• Ettore Capriolo, Italian language translator
  • stabbed and seriously injured
  • William Nygaard, publisher in Norway
    • Barely survived an attempted assassination in Oslo
  • Aziz Nesin, Turkish language translator
    • Targeted in events leading to the Sivas massacre

From one point of view, the Sivas massacre wasn't a total wash: although Aziz Nesin survived, 37 or so other people were killed.

Then, there was Theo van Gogh, whose work on "Submission" probably had something to do his murder, Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politico who was "anti-immigration," and was shot just before national elections.

And, of course, that 9/11 incident left quite an impression.

(Movie makers don't just offend Muslims. Back in 1988, Martin Scorsese directed "The Last Temptation of Christ." Quite a few Christians didn't appreciate it at all. I'll indulge myself with a link to this review of it, from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops.)

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'More Victimized Than Thou:' Probably Not the Best Attitude

Not all Christians are white-power arsonists, not all Muslims are terrorists and/or murderers. I think that there are reasonable Christians, and reasonable Muslims.

Earlier this year, I wrote about an incident involving the Pope and a group of Muslims in Los Angeles. They were insulted by the Pope's baptizing a Muslim convert to Catholicism. The Muslim Public Affairs Council of Los Angeles raised an urbane fuss, which got most of the press coverage. As I wrote at the time, It's a relief that the Fiqh Council of North America spokesman said " 'Popes come and go, but the church is there.' " That's a level of understanding that I haven't always seen expressed by non-Islamic Americans.

That's one of the reasons I've got the Fiqh Council of North America in the blogroll.

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A Secret Enemy Makes Life So Much Easier

Then, there are the people who are convinced that They are out to get them.

Who the They is varies from individual to individual, depending on culture, beliefs, and psychiatric condition. Here are some of the dark forces that I've heard or read about:

• Communists
• Capitalists
• Hollywood
• The military-industrial complex
• All people who are
  • Black
  • White
  • Yellow
  • Red
  • Educated
  • Uneducated
• A secret cabal of
  • Oil companies
  • Zionists
  • Conservatives
  • Liberals
  • Lizard-people

I think one of the reasons that it's so popular to blame Them for what's going wrong is that it

• Eliminates uncertainty
  • And having to think
• Provides someone else to blame the problems on

Life is so much easier, when analysis of issues can be replaced by blaming it all on Zionists, capitalists, or lizard-people.

About the 'oppression' of Muslims, particularly in America, I agree that Muslims have been arrested. But not because they were Muslims. American law takes a dim view of shooting, stabbing, or blowing up people: even if it's for a religious reason.

I think that more Muslims might take a look at what some of their 'defenders' have been up to for the last several years. Make that decades. Groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban have worked very hard to associate Islam and terrorism.

These days, if a group of Muslims tell someone they think is with Al Qaeda that they want to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, it would be a little odd if the police didn't talk with people in the Muslim community, and ask questions.

Think of it this way: If a Lutheran said that he planned to blow up Saddleback Church because they didn't follow Martin Luther, it wouldn't be altogether unreasonable to ask questions in the Lake Forest, Irvine, and San Clemente Lutheran communities. That's not Luthranophobia: that's good police work.

A Minnesota imam wrote a book, in which he said, "...If I doubt and I fear my neighbor, it's not a healthy society...."

True enough. The problem, as I see it, is both that Those Non-Muslims fear Muslims, and that some Muslims have given non-Muslims a reason to fear followers of Islam - or at least be intelligently cautious.

It's human nature to be a little apprehensive about Muslims, when people who (claim to) defend Islam:

• Blow up a few embassies
• Bomb a barracks with Marines inside
• Drop an airliner on a village
• Knock over a couple of skyscrapers and kill a few thousand people

All those beheadings in Iraq didn't help Islam's public image, either.

There's no question about it: From the daft (at best) security guards at Ben Gurion airport, to those three arsonists in Tennessee, there are people who hate and/or distrust Muslims.

And, there are Muslims who feel the same way about people who wear trousers.

As a devout Catholic in a distinctly non-Catholic country, I know a little about what it's like to be a minority. In a situation like that, I think it's better to communicate what your beliefs and practices are, rather than go the 'I'm a victim' route.

I have no doubt that, if more Muslims in America did what a mosque in Fargo, North Dakota did - encouraging people to come in and learn about Islam - there would, ten years from now, still be people in this country who think that all Muslims are terrorists.

But I think there would be fewer of them.

In the news:

• "Three charged in Islamic novel attack"
  The London Daily News (October 3, 2008)
• "Charges Filed in Attack on Publisher’s Home"
  The New York Times (October 3, 2008)

A little background

• "Jews Murdered by Country in Europe"
  The Holocaust\Shoah Page
  Ben Austin's Sociology Corner
  Middle Tennessee University
• "Comparing the Nazi Holocaust and
  Genocide in Uganda"
  Melissa Black, student
  UC Santa Barbara CA
• From this blog
  • "Brit Puppy Offends Muslims - Outrage Over Police Insult"
    (July 1, 2008)
  • "Man Prays on Plane, Removed: Racial Profiling?"
    (April 17, 2008)
  • " 'By Jove, I Think They've Got it!' - Muslims Urged to Boycott, not Bomb: - The Fitna Follies Continue"
    (March 30, 2008)

Related posts, on Islam, Christianity, Religion, Culture and the War on Terror.