We'd Know It If We Heard It

(A correspondent from Kabobfest has posted a rebuttal in the comment section of our yesterday's posting of the Mark Steyn article, “Silence = Acceptance.” The rebuttal, written by Sama Adnan, takes Thomas Friedman to task for complaining in a recent column that everyday Pakistanis are not showing sufficient outrage over the Mumbai attacks, in effect, as Adnan accuses him, " raising the bar for. . . Muslims in general in how loud they must condemn their own extremists until the western intelligentsia is satisfied." ("Friedman Watch: Thomas Friedman Gone Wild").

Some of you may recall Friedman is a liberal who went his own way and supported the liberation of Iraq, in total defiance of his less free brethren amongst the commentariat. He's much more sanguine than I am about what the average Pakistani can reasonably be expected to do. But he makes some good points in his article nonetheless. And as Adnan's article makes clear, Left or Right, if we criticize Islam, we're all the same.

Anyway, following are thoughts on the rebuttal that I didn't want to cram into the comments section.--T.R.)

The rebuttal misses Steyn’s point, and Friedman’s, both of whom have commented on the failure of large numbers of Muslims to protest the Mumbai attacks, all the more telling when, as Friedman put it, “We know from the Danish cartoons affair that Pakistanis and other Muslims know how to mobilize quickly to express their heartfelt feelings, not just as individuals, but as a powerful collective.”

Exactly. Large street gatherings of Muslims summoned out by their leaders--whether in massed demonstrations, or as rioting mobs--have become such a commonplace, and we’ve been watching them in action more or less continually ever since the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, that the absence of large Muslim protests under these circumstances can't help but signify--what? Acceptance? Indifference? Support?

I found this quotation of interest in Adnan's article:

“Perhaps what is most interesting is that Friedman gave no examples of other people who marched in outrage of their fringes committing terrorism. Did the Irish or the Basques march out in protest every time a bomb blew up in Belfast or Madrid?”

The comparison with the Irish and the Basques isn’t helpful, because it compares genuine fringe groups that operate in extremely limited, local, geographic regions, with the truly worldwide phenomenon of Islamic jihadist attacks that take place with depressing regularity on every continent on Earth, and against citizens of every nation.

Moreover, the individual jihadist attacks, and the leaders who ordered them, like al Qaeda, like Hezbollah, like Hamas, like the PLO, like the Mahdi Army or the Quds Force, have consistently received widespread praise and support from a significant percentage of the world Muslim population, such that even the lowest estimates realistically have these numbers of sympathizers with radical Islam reaching into the tens of millions. It doesn't matter if these same numbers show that the statement every Muslim supports terrorism is manifestly false; what matters is that no one can truthfully say 100% of Muslims renounce terrorism--(even though we're being told that constantly)--look, we're just not that stupid, and it just isn't true. Tens of millions is no fringe.

When the IRA was at its most violent in the 70s and 80s, you’d look in vain for Irish Catholics in Boston, New York, or Sydney turning out to wave the Irish tri-color while shouting that “Gerry Adams is our leader!”, as Lebanese Muslims right here in Dearborn have done towards Nasrallah to show solidarity with the terror group Hezbollah. I was born into a farflung Irish-Catholic clan that spans the entire political, religious, and cultural, spectrum, but I've never heard anyone breathe a word of support for the Irish Republican Army.

Also, the Irish have been marching out in protest, since the very beginning of these troubles in the late 1960s. From the onset of the troubles Catholic and Protestant churchmen, the Vatican, national and international western leaders, and the Irish citizens themselves have complained and denounced the IRA so consistently that the IRA is reduced to a minimal, spent force on the verge of being disarmed and extinguished.

Then from a comparison with the IRA and the Basques, who are at least terrorists, Adnan's rebuttal then takes this illogical turn:

“Did Israelis and American Jews come out in protest every time a new settlement was built in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank?”

But this makes a tortured comparison between Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and jihadist terror attacks on population centers hoping to maximize fatalities. (Even given that there may be legitimate differences amongst peace-loving people whether or not Jewish settlements in Israel’s biblical capital of Jerusalem are the best idea, or just, it still remains only a territorial dispute: so it's beyond ludicrous to make the Jewish settlements the equivalent of deliberately-planned, internationally funded, religiously justified mass murder operations in a foreign capital carried out as an act of praise to the Muslim deity. The Mumbai attacks weren’t a settlement construction operation. The Mumbai jihadist murderers trained for a year for the sole purpose of killing as many innocent people as possible, including specially targeted Jews, with cold deliberation.

And then Adnan presses the same argument further:

“Did Americans go out in mass protest when it was published that as many as a million Iraqis and perhaps many more have died since the invasion of Iraq by the ‘coalition of the willing?’”

If Americans like me didn’t go out in mass protest over publication that a million Iraqis died during the liberation of Iraq, it’s because Americans like me never believed those wild numbers were true, (which they most certainly are not. See (“Truth and myth on the death toll in Iraq”) and (“Data Bomb”). The death toll in Mumbai is true.

Second, this writer makes a false comparison between, on one hand, deliberate terrorist murders and, on the other, Iraqi deaths that, while incidental to the Iraq war, were NEVER intended by the coalition. (Not to mention how many coalition lives were lost trying to save innocent lives, because of coalition rules of engagement designed to limit harm to innocents.)

And it’s extremely unfair to blame coalition forces for every violent death in Iraq: like deaths by murder of Sunnis by the Sadrists on the Shia side, and the murders of Shias and Sunnis by al Qaeda in Iraq, policemen and police recruits murdered by car bombers, the murders of Chaldeans by Islamist radicals, or the bombings, terror attacks, or just plain murders committed by Islamic insurgents, Iranian agents, Syrian agents, Baathists, and other assorted bad guys seeking to regain power or revenge.

None of the deaths in Mumbai, or on 9/11, or in Bali, Madrid, London, and on and on, were accidental or incidental or, yes, even collateral damage from the jihadists’ point of view, including their own, nor were any lives spared because the jihadists had concerns for sparing the innocent.

You see, it just isn’t the same thing.

The point, again, isn’t why Americans don’t storm out and protest things Adnan doesn't like or support, but why Muslims don’t storm out and protest things he wants us to believe they don’t like or support, like terror attacks on Westerners, or the imposition of sharia law.

If the majority of a billion Muslims were condemning these things, we’d hear it, there'd be nothing to argue about. If the Muslim protests Adnan claims are so universal are going unheard, then wouldn't it make more sense, (as Friedman and Steyn are demanding) that Muslims protest louder, longer, and in a more convincing fashion?