30 December 2009

Debunking "terrorist = Islamist"

I had the TV on for something this week; I can't remember the program (probably flipping channels during football game commercials), and heard the comment "not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim" - and I thought WTF how can someone be so egregiously ignorant?

Today at Salon, Glenn Greenwald provides some factual counterpoints, while responding to this similarly erroneous statement:
"...Even though 99.999 percent of Muslims abhor attacks on innocent civilians on moral and theological grounds, 100 percent of attempted terrorist attacks on the U.S. (and, with the exception of the Basques in Spain, terrorists attacks on all Western nations) since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing have been committed by people claiming to act in the name of Islam."
Here are some of his rebutting examples:
A rocket attack on MI6 headquarters in London is believed to be the work of dissident Irish republicans...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says the evidence, including hundreds of pages of unsealed documents, proves that Dr. Ivins was the sole person responsible for the 2001 anthrax mailings...

Olympic bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph...

1997 bombings at a gay nightclub and a clinic that performed abortions in the Atlanta area...

U.S.-born Jewish terrorist suspected of series of attacks over past 12 years...

While Arab-Jewish violence is common, the attack on the 73-year-old historian has shocked public opinion in Israel because all the evidence points to it being intra-Jewish. 'I consider it an act of Jewish terrorism...

A white supremacist suspected of targeting blacks, Jews and Asians in a deadly Independence Day weekend drive-by shooting rampage...

Mountaineer Militia leader Floyd Looker, convicted in an alleged plot to blow up an FBI fingerprint complex
More examples and cogent discussion at the link.

2 comments:

  1. You are right.

    The problem is that everytime there is an attack, who would bet money is responsible? Those crazy Hindus? Those terror-loving Lutherans? Hey, what about all of those nutty animists in Africa?

    Of course you wouldn't. The chance that the terrorist is NOT a Muslim is slim indeed.

    And I do not buy that 99.9999% of Muslims abhor violence. The silence coming out of the Muslim world after every single terrorist attack is, well, deafening.

    ReplyDelete