What to do? Gaffney proposes Americans boycott Citgo gas stations (owned by the Venezuelan government) and switch over to FFVs (flexible fuel vehicles). He’s right. The telegram has been replaced by the e-mail and the Victrola has yielded to the iPod, but, aside from losing the rumble seat and adding a few cupholders, the automobile is essentially unchanged from a century ago. Yet as long as industry “reform” is intended to force Americans into smaller, less comfortable, less safe vehicles, it’s hard to see anyone taking it seriously. (As a world-class demography bore, by the way, I don’t think it’s coincidence that the only western country with healthy birth rates is also the one that drives around in the biggest vehicles: the nanny state can’t mandate bulky child seats and then require a young family to drive around in a Fiat Uno.)
After 9/11, Bush told the world: you’re either with us or with the terrorists. But an America that for no reason other than its lack of will continues to finance its enemies’ ideology has clearly checked the “both of the above” box. It’s hardly surprising then that the other players are concluding that, if forced to make a choice, they’re with the terrorists. I get a surprising amount of mail from Americans who say, aw, we’re too big a bunch of pussies to kick Islamobutt but fortunately the Russkies and the ChiComs have got their own Muslim wackjobs and they won’t be as squeamish as us wimps when it comes to sorting them out once and for all. Dream on. Muslim populations in the Caucasus and western China pose some long-term issues for Moscow and Beijing but, in the meantime, both figure the jihad’s America’s problem and it’s in their interest to keep it that way. Hence, Russo-Chinese support for every troublemaker on the planet, from Iran’s kooky president to Chávismo in America’s backyard. The meaning of Chávez in just about any language is “opportunity”.
According to Khurrum Awan, Muneeza Skeikh, Naseem Mithoowani, Ali Ahmed and Daniel Simard, the authors of Maclean’s Magazine: A Case Study Of Media-Propagated Islamophobia, the above is “Islamophobic” because of the following assertions:
1. South America is filling up with Muslim terrorists; there is a “Latino Jihad” underway against the United States.
2. There exists an alliance between Muslims and Hugo Chavez which is analogous to the alliance between Hitler and Stalin, and which can cause much damage to Western world.
3. Saudi Arabia is funding radical and extremist Islamic schools in Ontario, meaning that extremism and radicalism is prevalent in Ontario.
4. There is a clash between Islam and the West; American taxpayers are funding third parties to this clash such as Venezuela.
5. American [sic] are not being as vigorous in the process of kicking “Islamobutt” as they should; the Russians and Chinese also have problems with Muslims, but they will not be too concerned about human rights in “sorting them out once and for all”.
THE ISLAMOPHOBE RESPONDS:
On the matter of whether “extremism and radicalism is prevalent in Ontario”, I wonder whether Mr Awan & Co would regard this as “radicaclass="underline"
Person 3: What happens, what happens at the Parliament?
Person 1: We go and kill everybody.
Person 3: And then what?
Informant: And then read about it…
Person 1: We get victory.
That’s not in the Sunni Triangle, that’s in Toronto: Young Muslims who’ve spent virtually their entire lives in the Province of Ontario. That’s a police transcript of the conversations of an Islamist cell subsequently arrested for plotting to behead the Prime Minister. The wife of one, a graduate of Meadowvale Secondary School in Mississauga, wanted her husband to sign a prenuptial agreement requiring the marriage to be dissolved if he failed to commit big-time jihad. That is one serious prenup, but is it “extreme”?
How about this? On the long trail of jihadism stretching back to the rapid growth of the Ontario Muslim community in the Nineties, we find Mahmoud Jaballah, who was banned from unsupervised communications with the outside world after he was discovered to have relayed messages for al-Qaeda before the 1998 African embassy bombings. Is that “extreme”? Apparently not. His bail conditions were somewhat carelessly breached in 2008, when a City of Toronto program for needy families installed a new high-speed Internet connection in his home.
That’s always handy. In September 2007, three Muslims were arrested in Germany and accused of plotting to blow up the Ramstein Air Base and Frankfurt Airport. Later that same day, Salman Hossain, a Canadian – actually, make that “Canadian” – student in Mississauga, Ontario, went on the Internet and posted the following:
I hope the German brothers were gonna blow up US-German bases in their country. We should do that here in Canada as well. Kill as many western soldiers as well so that they think twice before entering foreign countries on behalf of their Jew masters… Canadian soldiers in Canadian soil who are training to go to Afghanistan or Iraq are legitimate targets to be killed…
When do I get to shoot a few Jews down for attempting to blow up dozens of mosques in America right after 9-11… why fucking target the Americans when the Jews are better?
An “extreme” reaction to the sad news of the thwarted carnage? Not at all. The National Post reports that Mr Hossain does this on a regular basis. As he likes to say, “A merry 9-11, and I wish y’all many more merry 9-11s.” He is treasonous and incites murder against Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Yet, as he crows on the website, “You can’t charge me for possessing a thought.” Which would appear to be true. In Canada, you can charge me and Ezra Levant and Maclean’s for “possessing a thought”, but the “human rights” commissions are totally cool with his urge to “shoot a few Jews”. The Canadian Jewish Congress and “human rights” crusader Richard Warman, both so zealous in rooting out the last white supremacist in Moose Jaw, are entirely relaxed about Mr Hossain’s multiple postings about “the filthy Jews”. Ezra and I are “radical and extremist”, but not the wannabe Jew-shooter champing at the bit.
In a way, I agree with the CIC’s objections: How can the views of Messrs Hossain and Jaballah be described as “radical” or “extremist” when, in the former case, they’re accepted by the Ontario “human rights” regime, and, in the latter, disseminated at the expense of Ontario taxpayers?
EXHIBIT #6
The little mosque that couldn’t
THE OTHER day I was giving a speech in Washington and, in the questions afterwards, the subject of “Little Mosque On The Prairie” came up.
“Muslim is the new gay,” I said. Which got a laugh. “That’s off the record,” I added. “I want a sporting chance of getting home alive.” And I went on to explain that back in the Nineties sitcoms and movies began introducing gay characters who were the most likeable and got all the best lines, and that Muslims were likely to be the lucky beneficiaries of a similar dispensation. And, just as the sitcom gays were curiously desexed gays (butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, never mind anywhere else), so the Muslims, I reckoned, would prove to be curiously deIslamized Muslims. In both cases, the intent is the same: to make Islam, like homosexuality, something only uptight squares are uncool with.