"Among the weblogs, the best coverage of the Churchill controversy has been in View from a Height..." -Dave Kopel, Rocky Mountain News

"In Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Alliance of Blogs is covering the hot GOP primary between beer magnate Pete Coors and former Rep. Bob Schaffer with a great deal more insight than the Denver newspapers." -John Fund, OpinionJournal.com

"The Rocky Mountain Alliance offers the best of what the blogosphere has to offer." -David Harsanyi, Denver Post
 contact
Joshua Sharf
 search


 notify list
to receive email when this site is updated, enter your email address:
 archives
 recent posts
 categories
Blogging 27 entries
Book Review 13 entries
Business 109 entries
China 2 entries
Colorado Politics 57 entries
Decision 2008 1 entries
Finance 8 entries
Flying 3 entries
General 86 entries
Higher Ed 28 entries
History 2 entries
History 2 entries
Israel 16 entries
Jewish 15 entries
Judicial Nomination 6 entries
Katrina 13 entries
Media Bias 7 entries
Movies 8 entries
Photoblogging 2 entries
Road Trip 5 entries
Social Investing 1 entries
Vote Fraud 7 entries
War on Terror 70 entries
 links
 blogs
my other blogs
Three-Letter Monte
Oh, That Liberal Media
Blogcritics.org
Newsbusters.org
Rocky Mtn. Alliance

Friends of the Alliance

other blogs
Powerline
One Big Swede
American Thinker
Meryl Yourish
Instapundit
NRO Corner
Little Green Footballs
No Left Turns
A Constrained Vision

business blogs
800CEORead
Carnival of the Capitalists
Catallarchy
Cold Springs Shops
Commodity Trader
Coyote Blog
Different River
EconLog
Fast Company Blog
Financial Rounds
Footnoted
Freakonomics Blog
Lip-Sticking
Management Craft
Trader Mike
Carnival of the Capitalists Submission

business data
Inst. Supply Mgmt.
St. Louis Fed Economic Data
Nat'l Bureau of Economic Research
Economic Calendar
Stock Charts
colorado blogs
Boker Tov, Boulder
Colorado Pols
Jeff Sherman

<-?Colorado BlogRing#->

sites, not blogs
Thinking Rock Press
 help israel
Israel Travel Ministry
Friends of the IDF
Volunteers for Israel
Magen David Adom
 1939 World's Fair
1939: The Lost World of the Fair
The New York World's Fair: 1939-1940
The Last Great Fair by Jeffrey Hart
Iconography of Hope (U.Va.)
Images From the '39 Fair
 google ads
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64

July 10, 2005

London Attacked - Local Cleric Seeks Victim Status

Even as the British authorities try to find the perpetrators of the attack, and even as speculation grows that the terrorists were - surprise! - home-grown rather than imported, the local Denver Imam is making sure to cover himself. After all, the real victims of the attacks aren't the dead and maimed. No, the real victims are the Muslims, who will be made to worry that someone might blame them for failing to help out the police ahead of time, rather than after the fact.

He added that when people stereotype any group, such as linking all Muslims to a terrorist incident, "people react with irrational behavior."

No doubt this also includes asking local religious leaders why exactly they're sharing afternoon tea with their bretheren who say one thing in Arabic on Friday and something rather different in English the rest of the week. One shouldn't, of course, look at a Muslim and assume he harbors any sympathy for murder. But these harder, community and institutional questions are simply called out of bounds, when in fact, they offer the only excuse for not lumping all Muslims together.

The two men - who have been working together on the church's Abrahamic Initiative, a project designed to build relationships among Jews, Christians and Muslims, for nearly a year - condemned the attacks and cautioned anyone against linking those responsible to any particular group.

When they spoke, it was not clear who was behind the London attacks; a previously unknown group called the Secret Organization of al-Qaeda in Europe had made an unverified claim of responsibility.

Funny, though, that no rabbis were interviewed in the writing of this article. I wouldn't expect them to say anything different, but still, it would have been nice. I have an email in to Ms. House asking about that.

In fact, though, it's the linking of the bombing to a general group, not a particular one, that poses the greatest threat to truth. Just as we wouldn't want to assume that any given religious Muslim is hosting light-rail bombing planning sessions in his apartment, it's most important for Muslims to identify - and tip off the police - other Muslims who are spending the weekends testing out blasting caps and poertable timers.

Then again, perhaps the second paragraph insists on a little too much specificity. We may not yet have the names and addresses of the bombers, and the locale of the mosque whose imam gave them his blessing, but I think it's pretty clear who in a philosophical and political sense was behind this.

While Eaton said he was as "surprised and shocked as anybody," Kazerooni said the war in Iraq may have been a motivation for the attackers. Britain and the United States don't appear to be seeking a resolution, Kazerooni said.

"The longer the occupation continues, the more it becomes a hotbed of terrorism," Kazerooni said.

Ah yes, maybe 9/11 was just a pre-emptive attack in case Iraq was invaded, then. Well, if they're teaching that sort of prophecy down at the mosque, I'd imagine you'd see some pretty hot action down at the sportsbook window at Caesar's.

Left unsaid is that Kazrooni, while a Shiite refugee from Saddam's Peaceable Kingdom himself, opposed the invasion from the beginning, and that London has looked like a pretty jiucy target since well before April 2003. Sure, they may be trying to pry Britain loose from the coalition, but that's tactics, not strategy. My guess is that this has more to do with the 10th anniversary of Srbenica than with any brothers-in-arms in Fallujah who've gone on to Eternal Disappointment.

Both men said reports that British Muslims were encouraged to remain at home were disturbing.

"It focuses this on a group of people who have no relation to this act at all," Eaton said.

What they didn't say was that the people doing the encouraging were something called the "Islamic Human Rights Commission," whose main contribution to Islamic Human Rights was the unconditional support of Palestinian terror, and whose best friends seem to be the Noturei Karta, a group of a couple hundred Orthodox Jews who think Israel was a grand cosmological mistake.

It's no trick as to why they'd be peddling this line. A group whose whole means of support comes from a siege mentality is going to do their best to put their own people under seige, even if they have to bring in the battering rams themselves.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again. Until we demand that the Muslim community begins taking collective responsibility as eagerly as it files for collective greivances, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Posted by joshuasharf at July 10, 2005 11:40 PM | TrackBack



A Civil War


Supreme Command


The (Mis)Behavior of Markets


The Wisdom of Crowds


Inventing Money


When Genius Failed


Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking


Back in Action : An American Soldier's Story of Courage, Faith and Fortitude


How Would You Move Mt. Fuji?


Good to Great


Built to Last


Financial Fine Print


The Balanced Scorecard: Measures that Drive Performance


The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action


The Day the Universe Changed


Blog


The Multiple Identities of the Middle-East


The Case for Democracy


A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam


The Italians


Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory


Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures


Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud