Ben Shapiro proves yet again that he is a complete idiot.
Mosques across the globe have provided material aid to terrorist groups ranging from al-Qaeda to Islamic Jihad to Hezbollah to Hamas. Muslim terrorists use mosques as networking sites and often as recruitment centers for future terrorist comrades. There is no doubt that law enforcement should be heavily scrutinizing the membership and administration of mosques. Doing so before Sept. 11 could have prevented that catastrophe, just as scrutiny of a small, seemingly insignificant storefront mosque may have prevented major terrorist attacks in Canada. Muslim terrorists are, above all, religious. They will attend mosques, even if only to pray. Forget racial profiling—monitoring mosques is simple common sense.
So we assume that everyone who goes to pray at a mosque is a terrorist? And what, exactly, do we do after we moniter the mosques and get a list of their members — search their homes? Tap their phones? So much for the Fourth Amendment and probable cause.
These kinds of suggestions are deeply troubling. How would Ben like it if Christian churches were monitered for hate speech? I mean, we all know that gays and lesbians are often attacked because of their orientation, by people whose Christian beliefs tell them that being gay is immoral. These people probably go to church, if only to pray. And many churches are used as recruiting centers for homo-bigots. Why not spy on them?
Ben also makes the common mistake of assuming that terrorism and Islam are inextricably interwined. Islam does not create, breed, promote or foster terrorism. Terrorism is a product of feelings of anger, displacement, and powerlessness. It is reactionary, and, as McBoing points out in a fantastic post, certainly not confined to Islamic communities.
Michelle Malkin makes the same dumb mistake as she argues that Islam is the “common denominator” in terrorism. She supports her assertion by listing a series of terrorist activities perpetuated by Muslims. Now, no one is denying that many terrorist acts are done by people who believe in Islam. But her choices are highly selective, and indeed she defines certain actions — like driving a car into a crowd of people — as terrorist attacks simply because they were perpetuated by Muslims in the name of a radical ideology. Would she similarly define as “terrorism” a right-wing Christian driving his car into a crowd at a gay pride parade? I doubt it.
Further, let’s take a look at the history of ideologically-motivated bombings, killings, and other terrorist activities here in the U.S. The most obvious example is Oklahoma City. But Malkin also fails to mention the hundreds of incidents of bombings, shootings, anthrax mailings, arsons, stalkings and threats targeted at abortion clinics and abortion providers. And what about violence targeted at people of color or gays and lesbians? If driving one’s car into a crowd in the name of Islam is terrorism, then certainly beating a man, tying him to your druck and dragging him three miles until he was decapitated in the name of white supremacy is terrorism. Or how about tying a man to a fence, beating him, robbing him and leaving him to die in the name of heterosexuality? James Byrd’s murder was intended to target and terrify the black community, and to make a larger statement about race. Matthew Shephard’s murder was intended to target and terrify the gay community, and to make a larger statement about homosexuality.
You can bet that if the perpetrators of these acts had been Muslim, they’d be on Malkin’s list — but they don’t fit into her narrow formula, and so she pretends that they don’t exist, or perhaps that they aren’t “real” terrorism. And here’s where the right gets itself into trouble when it talks about terrorism: It assumes that terrorism and Islam are so intertwined that it’s nearly unable to come up with a definition of terrorism that leaves religion out of it. The fact is that terrorism is an incredibly old tactic, and has been utlized by people of all kinds of ethnic groups, religions, nationalities, and belief systems. It is not a Muslim creation, and to define it as a “Muslim thing” is itself a threat to our national security and ability to combat violence world-wide.
Further, when our conversations about terrorism target Muslims and hurl stereotypes and hateful language at them, we do ourselves no favors. See Michelle:
A Royal Canadian Mounted Police official coined the baneful phrase “broad strata” to describe the segment of Canadian society from whence Qayyum Abdul Jamal and his fellow adult suspects Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Jahmaal James, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid came.
“Broad”? I suppose it is so if one defines “broad” to mean more than one spelling variation of Mohammed or Jamal. Or perhaps, as Internet humorist Jim Treacher (jimtreacher.com) suggests, “broad” refers to the “strata” of the suspects’ beard lengths.
What, exactly, is the point in mocking their names and their appearance? This is the same woman who, justifiably, get pissed when people make Filipino-whore jokes about her or call her by her maiden “ethinic-sounding” name — so where does she get off writing this?
That and she’s a complete idiot for suggesting that just because people share a religion they aren’t from different social stratas. I (very loosely) share a religion with George W. Bush, farmers in Sudan, Serbian mountain-dwellers and missionaries in Southeast India. Are we from the same stratas of society? I would say no. Common religion does not necessarily equal common experience.
Assuming that terrorst = Muslim is incredibly dangerous. But I’m not surprised to see people like Michelle and Ben are doing it. They claim an interest in national security, when the reality is that they’re more interested in hate-mongering.