GINA COBB

More Violence at the Hands of the Religion That Is Never Named

Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters writes:

Imagine that there had been a series of three incidents in which members of a [invented for present purposes] fanatical Jewish sect had attempted to bring down airliners from Arab countries.  

In reporting on the latest attempt and describing the previous ones, do you think the New York Times might have mentioned the religion of the perpetrators? So do I.

But with the legerdemain required to describe a spiral staircase without using one's hands, the Gray Lady has managed in its article today to report yesterday's attempt to bring down a NWA airliner, and the earlier attempts by Richard Reid [the "shoebomber'] and the those who plotted to bring down as many as ten jets leaving the UK for the United States, without using the word "Muslim."

Here's something else the New York Times -- and most of the print media and media on the left -- never mention:

That's not 14,578 dead people. That's the total number of attacks.  (Note: That number of attacks has already gone up since I posted this, because the "religion of peace" has continued attacking and killing people on a daily basis.)   The body count of innocent men, women and children slaughtered by Islamic terrorists is much, much higher.  For example, just in the last few days, here are some of the "latest offerings" from Islamists:

2009.12.24 (Mogadishu, Somalia) - Six civilians are killed during an attack by Hizb al-Islam fundamentalists.

2009.12.24 (Rawalpindi, Pakistan) - A 6-year-old girl is dismembered by a suicide bomber.

2009.12.24 (Kirkuk, Iraq) - Four Iraqis are gunned down by suspected al-Qaeda militants.

2009.12.24 (Hilla, Iraq) - A crowded bus station is the target of Sunni bombers, who leave twenty-five Iraqis dead and nearly one hundred more in agony.

2009.12.24 (Kandahar, Afghanistan) - A Shahid suicide bomber on a horse car murders eight innocent people.

2009.12.24 (Einav, Israel) - An Israeli father of seven is shot to death in his car by Palestinian terrorists.

Nice, eh?

I'm beginning to sense a pattern here.  It's subtle.  It's nuanced. 

But apparently it's a little too nuanced for the editorial board of the New York Times. 

You can only ignore the real needs of your fellow citizens and your world for so long.  Choosing to sugarcoat violence in the name of Allah is one of the many glaringly bad decisions that has poisoned the New York Times.

One Year Ago Today on GINA COBB: AP Finally Notices George W. Bush's Amazing Grace That Was There All Along

Originally published on November 11, 2008:  AP Finally Notices George W. Bush's Amazing Grace That Was There All Along

"Fort Hood: Let's Drop the Political Correctness"

David Warren, RealClearPolitics:  Fort Hood: Let's Drop the Political Correctness

This deadly enemy of the West -- the Islamist ideology which holds all Jews, Christians, other non-Muslims, and a considerable number of Muslims, too, to be human filth in need of extermination -- is well infiltrated. Events like that at Fort Hood prove this, and from what I can see, the problem can only grow with the passage of time.

Getting at Islamist cells, to say nothing of lone, self-appointed jihadis within our society, means getting over the false sentimentality that turns a terrorist incident into an "incomprehensible tragedy" when it is not incomprehensible, and not a theatrical event.

It also means ripping through the politically-correct drivel that is put in the way of investigators.

More here.

Another Must Read: 'They Kill Us and We're the Ones to Blame'

Daniel Greenfield, They Kill Us and We're the Ones to Blame

Hardly had the final shots been fired at Fort Hood and hospitals were filling up with the wounded that the media rushed to assign blame for the massacre, not of course to Nidal Malik Hassan, who had opened fire aiming to kill as many soldiers as possible, but on the US Army and on his fellow soldiers.

Completely ignoring his Islamic ideology and Palestinian Arab background, the media speculated that he might have been suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, even though he had never served in a combat zone, that he was angry over being deployed to Iraq, even though he had a history of pro-terrorist postings predating that, and finally that he had been bullied by other soldiers for being a Muslim, a claim that has since emerged as completely baseless. All of these however were ways of shifting the blame from Nidal Hassan and his Islamist ideology, and onto his victims, the men and women he had tried to kill, and the United States Army itself. Once again the media apparatchiks had decided that blame for a Muslim killing spree rested not with the perpetrator, but with his targets.

If Muslims follow a predictable pattern in their homicidal attacks, their Western Dhimmi apologists follow an equally predictable pattern, always willing to shift the blame onto anything and anyone, but the killers themselves and their hatefilled ideology. It’s never Islam. Never the Koran. Instead it’s always the general unfairness of our foreign policy, our flagwaving and our obstinate refusal to let Muslims have whatever part of the world they have their sights on today.

Once again, they kill us and yet somehow we’re the ones to blame. Because we didn’t love and nurture poor Nidal Malik Hassan enough. We didn’t install enough foot baths, respect his religion hard enough and worst of all we presumed to make war on his brothers who had murdered thousands of us on September 11. That of course is our original sin, fighting back.

I've been reading that Nidal Hassan's car was keyed at his apartment complex by someone who took exception to Hassan's Muslim faith.  Of course it was wrong.  The wrongdoer was not only reported to the police but evicted from the apartment complex.

But imagine that the same thing had happened to a Christian.  Can you even imagine a true Christian shooting and killing numerous fellow soldiers because of one act of religious persecution by an unrelated individual?

At risk of overgeneralizing, what the Muslim faith apparently lacks today is forgiveness.  From unwillingness to forgive comes a multitude of evils -- including murder itself.  And hence we have this horrible statistic:

NOW Obama Tells Us He's Got Muslim Roots and "Experienced Islam on Three Continents"

Told ya so.  A White House aide has announced that Obama has Muslim roots and "experienced Muslim on three continents."

ABC News' Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report: The other day we heard a comment from a White House aide that never would have been uttered during the primaries or general election campaign.

During a conference call in preparation for President Obama's trip to Cairo, Egypt, where he will address the Muslim world, deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough said "the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to -- or before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world -- you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans (are) a key part of Illinois and Chicago."

Update 1:  It gets worse.  Obama has now announced that the U.S. could be viewed as one of the largest Muslim countries in the world:

As President Obama prepared to leave Washington to fly to the Middle East, he conducted several television and radio interviews at the White House to frame the goals for a five-day trip, including the highly-anticipated speech Thursday at Cairo University in Egypt.

In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.”

Talk about distortion!  America is still 75% to 80% Christian, according to pollsters.  Muslims represent less than 1% of the population.  For comparison purposes, 11% of Americans still think Elvis could be alive (according to a 2002 poll taken 25 years after Elvis died).  So I guess by Obama's definition, America is still one of the largest Elvis-afterlife-believing nations in the world. 

Update 2:  From Michael Goldfarb: 

 Eight million Muslims seems to be at the high end of estimates of America's Muslim community. That number barely puts the United States in the top 40. There are more Muslims in tiny Jordan than there are in the United States, and twice as many in Syria.

Obama is undertaking a very significant reorientation of American foreign policy, and one hopes that he isn't doing so on the very mistaken belief that the United States is one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. Actually, if you look at the number of Jewish Americans, we'd be the largest Jewish country in the world after Israel. And America is the largest Christian country in the world. This context might be useful to the president as he tries to help the Muslim world better understand the United States.

As I wrote last September when the mainstream media were dismissing out of hand the possibility that Obama is Muslim, When Obama Refers to 'My Muslim Faith,' Slip or Not, It's Fair to Ask Questions.  My lengthy post from September 8, 2008 is suddenly very relevant again.  For those interested, it is reprinted in full below.

As a Christian, yes, it bothers me that we've elected a president whose professed Christian faith often seems tenuous.  Of course I believe that America's blessings flow partly from its religious faith in a forgiving, loving God.  In this 9/11 world, I also have some qualms about the wisdom of putting a man with Muslim roots in the highest office in the land.  If Obama otherwise came across as a patriotic, America-loving, tough-on-defense president, this might be less of a concern.  But as he is, taking all of his weakness in matters of national security into account, Obama is a worrisome president.

Will Obama's newly-rediscovered Muslim roots help him with Muslims in the Middle East?  No, because (a) Obama officially renounced Islam to join Rev. Wright's anti-American Chicago church, and hence is an "apostate" worthy of death, as far as most Islamists are concerned and (b) Islamists who are committing murder and mayhem around the world in the name of Allah simply cannot let go of their real and imagined grievances.  If they did, they would have to stop killing people, and where's the fun in that?

To illustrate the point, al Qaeda's number two leader Ayman al-Zawahri is already scoffing at Obama's goodwill overtures:

In an audio message posted on a radical Islamist website, al-Zawahri said:

"His bloody messages were received and are still being received by Muslims, and they will not be concealed by public relations campaigns or by farcical visits or elegant words..."

"...[Obama is] that criminal who came seeking, with deception, to obtain what he failed to achieve in the field after the mujahideen ruined the project of the crusader America in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia..."

"...The White House said that Obama will send a message from Egypt to the Islamic world, but they forgot that his messages have already been received by the Islamic world when he visited the Wailing Wall, put on his head the Jew's cap and prayed their prayers, though he claims to be Christian."

The good news is that according to the AP piece citing the AQ quotes above, "some analysts believe [this] indicates the terrorist organization is worried [President Obama] will be effective in improving the U.S. image in the Muslim world." While I think it would be a very good thing if some of the edge was taken of off the attitude of many Muslims toward the U.S., I just can't quite imagine al-Zawahri and his colleagues staying up late at night in caves or huts in the FATA region of Pakistan clutching their worry beads.

Easter Blessings

I hope you're having a happy and peaceful Easter weekend.

One of my favorite Easter hymns is "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," which I especially enjoy  for the amazing, drawn out "Alleluia" at the end of each line.

Here it is, as sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir -- still one of the best choirs around:

And here's an updated arrangement (it starts off slow and picks up the tempo):

Happy Easter, everyone!