From Zandar Versus the Stupid, an astute observation on the world Mark Steyn inhabits.
Over at the National Review, Mark Steyn is clearly upset that we haven’t declared September 11th to be “National Take A Swing At A Muslim Day” and finds the world’s lack of dedicated Islamophobia to be disturbing.
“How are America’s allies remembering the real victims of 9/11? “Muslim Canucks Deal with Stereotypes Ten Years After 9/11,” reports CTV in Canada. And it’s a short step from stereotyping to criminalizing. “How the Fear of Being Criminalized Has Forced Muslims into Silence,” reports the Guardian in Britain. In Australia, a Muslim terrorism suspect was so fearful of being criminalized and stereotyped in the post-9/11 epidemic of paranoia that he pulled a Browning pistol out of his pants and hit Sgt. Adam Wolsey of the Sydney constabulary. Fortunately, Judge Leonie Flannery acquitted him of shooting with intent to harm on the grounds that “‘anti-Muslim sentiment’ made him fear for his safety,” as Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported on Friday. That’s such a heartwarming story for this 9/11 anniversary they should add an extra panel to the peace quilt, perhaps showing a terror suspect opening fire on a judge as she’s pronouncing him not guilty and then shrugging off the light shoulder wound as a useful exercise in healing and unity.”
And this:
In Mark Steyn’s America, you’re supposed to live in mortal fear of anyone who’s not a white, evangelical Christian because they’ll kill you, your family, your pets, your neighbors, the nice lady at the office who brings donuts every other Friday and then they’ll raise from the dead with their weird religious magic and kill you all over again.
The notion that all over America, we treated millions of American Muslims as enemies of the state for the last ten years simply hasn’t occurred to Steyn, because if it did happen, it was just prudence or something.
“And so we commemorate an act of war as a “tragic event,” and we retreat to equivocation, cultural self-loathing, and utterly fraudulent misrepresentation about the events of the day. In the weeks after 9/11, Americans were enjoined to ask, “Why do they hate us?” A better question is: “Why do they despise us?” And the quickest way to figure out the answer is to visit the Peace Quilt and the Wish Tree, the Crescent of Embrace and the Hole of Bureaucratic Inertia.”
Or, as Rumproast so succinctly puts it:
Despite my unaccustomed lack of a firm opinion on the meaning of this day, thanks to Mr. Mark Steyn of the National Review, I have a pretty good idea of what an inappropriate reaction looks like. In paragraph after paragraph, Steyn waxes contemptuous about any 9/11 observance that includes public service, expresses a desire for peace or acknowledges the existence of non-terrorist Muslims.
And finishes with this:
That’s as fine an illustration of the global distribution of hate-based politics as you’re likely to encounter. And yet we endure.
Meanwhile, militant western Christian conservative terrorists are swallowing this bit of Steyn bait, building their arsenals even further, plotting just what innocent citizens they seek their revenge for the US having ‘rolled over’.
