Andrew McCarthy Gets It Right
Andrew McCarthy gets it right on NRO:
In my world, militant Muslims, capitalizing on the respectful deference of others, have been known tactically to desecrate the Koran themselves: by rigging it with explosives, by using it to secrete and convey terrorist messages, and, yes, even by toilet-flushing parts of it for the nuisance value of flooding the bathrooms at Guantanamo Bay. Just as they have used mosques as sanctuaries, as weapons depots, and as snipers' nests.
There's a problem here. But it's not insensitivity, and it's not media bias. Those things are condemnable, but manageable. The real problem here is a culture that either cannot or will not rein in a hate ideology that fuels killing. When we go after Newsweek, we're giving it a pass. Again.
Like many others, I fell prey to the partisan joy of having an organ of the Left, Newsweek, get some comeuppance. But McCarthy brings us back to ground: just like the riots in Los Angeles were not caused by the Rodney King beating, but were convulsions of a dysfunctional urban sub-culture using the beating as an excuse, so too are the riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan not the result of the Newsweek article, but spasms of irrationality from a dysfuncational Islamist sub-culture using "flushing the Q'uran" as an excuse. A free press that makes mistakes is one thing; a culture that condones terrorism and murder in the name of religiou is another.
In my world, militant Muslims, capitalizing on the respectful deference of others, have been known tactically to desecrate the Koran themselves: by rigging it with explosives, by using it to secrete and convey terrorist messages, and, yes, even by toilet-flushing parts of it for the nuisance value of flooding the bathrooms at Guantanamo Bay. Just as they have used mosques as sanctuaries, as weapons depots, and as snipers' nests.
There's a problem here. But it's not insensitivity, and it's not media bias. Those things are condemnable, but manageable. The real problem here is a culture that either cannot or will not rein in a hate ideology that fuels killing. When we go after Newsweek, we're giving it a pass. Again.
Like many others, I fell prey to the partisan joy of having an organ of the Left, Newsweek, get some comeuppance. But McCarthy brings us back to ground: just like the riots in Los Angeles were not caused by the Rodney King beating, but were convulsions of a dysfunctional urban sub-culture using the beating as an excuse, so too are the riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan not the result of the Newsweek article, but spasms of irrationality from a dysfuncational Islamist sub-culture using "flushing the Q'uran" as an excuse. A free press that makes mistakes is one thing; a culture that condones terrorism and murder in the name of religiou is another.
posted by PDB at 2:04 PM
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