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Muslims call it Jihad, we call it road rage
The FBI’s maddening reliance on euphemism in discussing the motives of the Muslim killer of two El Al passengers at Los Angeles International Airport is part of a long-established pattern, writes Daniel Pipes. Several other murderous attacks by Muslims on Americans and Europeans in recent years were clearly manifestations of the larger Islamic war against Jews and the West, yet U.S. and European authorities have employed such terms as “work dispute, hate crime, road rage, derangements, post-traumatic stress, industrial accident,” and so on to characterize these crimes and their motives. Pipes says that it’s time for the government “to catch up with the rest of us and call terrorism by its rightful name.”
We should not hold our breath. Consider the fact that ever since September 11th, Pipes has complained about the U.S. government’s insistence on describing our enemies as generic terrorists rather than as Islamic militants. But now the government, as Pipes indicates, is speaking of our enemies as mere victims of post-traumatic stress and work disputes (one of the FBI’s proffered motives for the LAX killer) rather than as terrorists. Far from catching up with the truth, our leaders seem to be falling further and further behind.
Comments
This fits the current trend of our liberal elites kowtowing to Islam. Consider the current trend to repackage the word jihad as a term denoting an asetical resistance to make it more palatable. Nevermind, that jihad has always meant waging aggressive military war against infidels because we all know how tolerant Islam is to differing religions. Posted by: Jason Eubanks on July 9, 2002 6:05 PMI must admit I liked the “road rage” concept. I wouldn’t have thought of it. So far as I can tell in government agencies and a lot of other places coming out the wrong side on a diversity issue is a real career killer. Anyone who shows you mercy is suspect himself, and multiple acts of mercy or even moderation means institutional bigotry. In any event the whole idea is that you have to turn your actual brain off and substitute the way of thinking you’d have if e.g. being a recent Muslim immigrant had no relevance whatever to likeliness of engaging in terrorism. It’s a kind of AI exercise. Posted by: Jim Kalb on July 12, 2002 3:31 PMFor anyone who hasn’t read the linked article by Daniel Pipes, here is his discussion of the incident that the FBI classified as road rage: Rashid Baz, a Lebanese cab driver with a known hatred for all things Israeli and Jewish, armed himself to the teeth in March 1994 and drove around the city looking for a Jewish target. He found his victims—a van full of Hassidic boys—on the Brooklyn Bridge and fired a hail of bullets against them, killing one boy. And how did the FBI classify this crime? As “road rage.” Only because the murdered boy’s mother relentlessly fought this false description did the bureau finally in 2000 re-classify the murder as “the crimes of a terrorist.” Posted by: Lawrence Auster on July 12, 2002 4:22 PM |