Here's One from the 'This Ain't Helping Your Case' Folder

Here’s are some of the community responses to this week’s raid on the radical Islamic group in Dearborn:

"Muslims had no other choice: They had to go out and talk about their faith; they had to condemn violence. It's a matter of survival for them," says Malika Zeghal, associate professor of the anthropology and sociology of religion and Islamic studies at the University of Chicago. ("Terror arrests compel US Muslims to talk about their faith").

I’m not sure why it’s a matter of survival for America’s law-abiding Muslims to have to talk about their faith. But I’m also not sure I’ve seen Islam’s spokesmen exactly condemning the violence of the recent surge of American Muslims caught red-handed plotting major violence. What we hear instead are refusals to explain Islam. The comments of Islamic spokesmen tend to follow this familiar pattern:

First, we’re told the people who did this are not “mainstream” Muslim. This shuts up discussions about how domestic Muslim terrorists express so much zeal for their Islamic mission. The Christian Science Monitor, discussing the recent arrest of two Chicago Muslims planning to blow up the offices of the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper that published cartoons of Mohammed, reports this:

Muslim groups like the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago often find they are forced to play offense whenever news of an arrest is linked to Islam. "The council rejects any association between the alleged plot and Islam," said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, the council's chairman, in a prepared statement regarding the Chicago arrests. "The two alleged plotters are not representative of mainstream American-Muslims.

This way, the so-called “mainstream” Islam of CAIR, ISNA, ADC, the Council of Islamic Organizations, and the rest have no need to be reflective about the Koran's message of violence against infidels and domination of the whole world. Their "this isn't mainstream" approach bypasses attention to the copious testimony of the terrorists themselves that they’re doing what they’re doing for Allah, for Mohammed, and for Islam.

Next, we’re reminded that all religions are violent, not just Islam. Dr. Sahloul observes, “There are criminal elements in every faith community, whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim or Buddhists. An entire faith should not be hijacked by the actions of disturbed or maligned individuals."

While it’s true that every religion has criminal elements, which is a trusim meaning nothing more than that there are Catholics who are criminals, Jews who are criminals, etc., the criminality of a Catholic or of a Jew is a mark that that person is an utter failure at his religion. It’s the rare Catholic IRA bomber who says he’s blowing up Provos because the Catechism tells him it’s right. Neither Meyer Lansky nor the infamous Jewish gang Murder Incorporated justified their misdeeds by quoting the Ten Commandments.

By contrast, jihadists who have slain innocents and committed barbaric acts of violence are commonly praised throughout the Islamic world as martyrs, heroes, and examples to the young. Luqman Abdullah was a mosque leader, and, according to Dawud Walid, a “respected imam.” He relied heavily on the Koran and the hadiths to explain his urge to kill Kafir-pig cops if they tried to pull him over.

Third, conspicuously absent from the comments of Muslim community leaders are condemnations of the violence of domestic Muslim terrorists, expressions of gratitude, and commitments to greater cooperation with law enforcement agents who risk their lives to stop these guys. Instead, Muslim spokesmen denounce succesful investigations and arrests as proof that the FBI/law enforcement is out of control. They are persecuting Muslims, we're told, because the whole country is Islamophobic.

"The FBI has shown that they consider it prudent from their point of view to be more aggressive with the Muslim community, and I think that's largely because they can get away with it and there's not going to be too much of an uproar," says Ihsan Bagby, general secretary of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). Mr. Bagby finds the practice of sending informant agents into mosques without any provocation "well past acceptable."

In Detroit yesterday, 25 Muslims leaders met with federal officials in Detroit to hear explanations about the circumstances of Luqman Abdullah’s death:

Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said agents told him Abdullah was killed after firing on an FBI dog that died.

"(We're) not accusing the FBI of using excessive force, but there needs to be some answers," he said. (“Muslims, FBI discuss death during raid”).

Of course Walid is accusing the FBI of using excessive force. That’s why he’s ringing the bell. A diversion might be welcome to him right now, in view of an allegation in the federal complaint that the Windsor mosque attended by Abdullah’s son and co-suspect, Mujahid Carswell, is “affiliated with CAIR.”

Walid says that is “bogus.”

Walid said Abdullah was never a board member or employee of CAIR, nor did he have any business dealings with CAIR.

"No one in that mosque has ever been a board member, or a staffer, or even a dues-paying member for that matter," he said. (“Muslim leaders caution against hasty judgment”).

Okay, I partly believe Walid about that, but only because CAIR has no dues paying members.

The point is, these protests get stronger as the cases of domestic Islamic behavior get worse.

Why?