@layman,
layman wrote:
Quote:The defense of Muslims is a knee-jerk progressive reaction which is entirely unnecessary if the fear is that reasonable people will start thinking that every Muslim is a terrorist.
I can't figure out why they even think that's relevant.
Your apocryphal tale was very amusing and I would love to discover it was true because it is precisely what the broader outcome will likely be for those progressives who, for Jihadis, bend so far over backward that they can stick their heads where it, metaphorically, so often is.
So many think it is relevant because they also think they are the anointed Defenders of Diversity and shining paladins for oppressed
victims everywhere.
Likely because so many of them were small, frail nerds in grade school and targets of the neighborhood's popular bullies, they have a unique understanding of what it is to be a powerless victim of mean-spirited and ugly power, and if they weren't they are, of course, blessed with greater creative imaginations that you or I have, and therefore they have incredible empathic powers that compel them to defend the downtrodden. Whereas conservative who are devoid of any empathy whatsoever and are, without exception, focused only on that which will personally enrich them in terms of wealth and power, couldn't care less about "victims," except to assure their numbers are sufficiently high enough that their continued fleecing will line their pockets to the degree to which they become accustomed.
Once a group can be invested with the sacred status of victimhood (for which Muslims throughout the world qualify due to the colonial and imperialistic predations of the
popular bullies of the West: Europe and, as respects colonialism, by some history defying vote, America) it doesn't matter if they engage in behavior that is actually
underestimated when it is called bullying. Nothing causes these aggressive
victims to forfeit their victimhood. Not murdering innocents, not blowing up cities, not even violently preying on minorities within their own spheres who, by any decent standard, should be defined as "victims" themselves: Coptic Christians in Egypt and Ethiopia, Syrian Christians, Yazidis, and other groups.
Of course all Muslims are not engaged in act of heinous barbarity, (There's no need to argue this tired point) and no one needs to call for us to ignore acts of violence against all Muslims to prove that they do not endorse the ways of ISIS and similar barbarians, but neither is there a compelling reason to instantaneously call, with the fervor that is always displayed, for the cessation of a backlash that, broadly, doesn't exist.
Bobsal and others will now likely festoon this thread with links to and the full texts of news articles that report incidents of violence against innocent Muslims, and most of them can probably be connected to the hatred and fear ignited by Islamist terrorism, but these will be, by definition, anecdotal evidence and they will not amount to a tiny fraction of the injuries, deaths, and misery meted out by groups like ISIS.
I'm going to save bobsal the bother and link an article related to this matter from the NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/us/politics/crimes-against-muslim-americans-and-mosques-rise-sharply.html?_r=0<br />
We can be certain that the Times is going to (and did) take the most alarmist of positions (perhaps second only to CAIR) and no one can objectively call the subject of this report "only the tip of the iceberg"
The NYT and any other source that wishes to take the most alarming of positions is going to report that the number of "hate crimes" directed at Muslims in the US "has tripled" since the Paris and San Bernadino attacks. I'm not questioning their figure or their math. If you start with an average of 12.6 attacks per month and you end up with 38, the number has tripled. I'm also not going to suggest that 38 such incidents are acceptable, because they are not. However, we should view this development in a rational perspective.
First of all, the increase was immediately after the two most recent attacks. Again not acceptable, but what you would expect? If people are going to react in anger to heinous deeds, they are not likely to wait 6 months or spread them out evenly over the ensuing year. I'm sure everyone will agree that if the rise is maintained and the rate becomes 38 per month for an extended period of time we may be facing a bigger problem than an almost immediate reaction to specific events.
Secondly, we need to examine what is being included under the broad heading of "hate crimes:"
1) Relatively moderate property damage to mosques: broken windows, overturned furniture and graffiti
2) Threats: Both death threats and less specific ones.
3) Relatively moderate assaults - a single punch thrown at one man, a single kick leveled at a woman's leg, stones thrown at a woman's car, etc
4) 20 people, some of who were armed, demonstrating outside of a mosque in Texas.
5) Placing a pig's head outside of a mosque
6) Sending "hate mail" to CAIR - one letter containing
white powder that proved to be harmless
7) Verbal abuse
Of course these actions, with the possible exception of #4, are uncivil at best, and criminal at wort, and any in which it is proven that a law was violated, the perpetrator(s) should be prosecuted and appropriately punished. These are not excusable reactions to any Islamist attacks and American Muslims should not have to suffer even the slightest of offenses, because of deeds for which they share no guilt.
However, they are not even remotely comparable to the crimes committed by Islamist terrorists. Getting screamed at and kicked by a stranger on a train is no small thing, and it, undoubtedly upset the victim very much, but it is not the equivalent of rape, sexual slavery, being burned alive, thrown from the top of a building, tortured (as is now being reported happened to the victims in the Paris theater, shot, or beheaded.
This is not to say that these "hate crimes" must rise to the level (or sink to the depths) of the heinous deeds of barbarous Jihadi in order for us to take them seriously, but at their current severity and frequency they are not even in the same city, let alone the same ballpark with those of ISIS, and they certainly don't provide the chief law enforcement official of the country with reason to be as
or more concerned about them than by possible attacks by ISIS. It's simply hysterical (and by this I don't mean "funny") to suggest they do.
Thirdly, there were far more "hate crimes" directed at Jews than Muslims in 2014. 71% more to be precise. According to the FBI there was an average of 15.4 hate crimes directed at Muslims in 2014 (If this and the number cited by the NYT are correct, it means the rate went down in 2015 over 2014). During the same time period, there were 54 per month directed against Jews.
That there are significantly more hate crimes in American that are directed towards Jews than there are those where Muslims are targeted, does not make those against Muslims insignificant or any less of a problem, but it does make one wonder where all the progressives wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth about Jewish hate crimes may be, and why the Attorney General of the US doesn't think they are of more concern than Muslims hate crimes, which in her mind are more disconcerting than Muslim terrorist attacks. For that matter there are significantly more hate crimes directed at blacks than Jews so if hate crimes were more worrisome that terrorist attacks, one would have expected her to focus on those targeting people for their race rather than their Muslim faith. Of course she can be concerned about all of them but she deliberately highlighted those made against Muslims and to the exclusion of all others.
Earlier in December of 2015 Ms. Lynch spoke at the annual Muslim Advocates dinner and informed the audience calling for action against Islamaphobes that since 9/11 the Feds have investigated over 1,000 alleged hate crimes against Muslims and as a result there have been 45 prosecutions. Unfortunately she didn't report on the results of these prosecution, but one can reasonably surmise that the Feds didn't have a 100% success record (not only on the basis of historical win rates but because had their record been perfect, it is highly likely the Attorney General would not have highlighted it in her talk). Never-the-less, this means that (using the minimum of 1,000 as the total) only 9.5% of the investigations resulted in prosecution (let alone conviction). If prosecution alone is considered "success" then a rate of less than 10% suggests that either the DOJ is pretty ineffectual or that there are a plethora of false claims made or least ones where there is insufficient evidence, that they did occur, to warrant prosecution.
So the question, I can't answer at this time, is whether or not the 38 since the two ISIS led attacks in France and the US where simply reported incidences or cases where prosecution had been undertaken. Considering that the "bombshell" report on these incidents came out shortly after the attacks, I think it's reasonable to assume they are all still under investigation or only a minimal amount have actually led to prosecution. Now, from a relative standpoint, I don't think 38 is anything like an unthinkably high number, but if we apply the DOJ's historical "success" rate to them, only 4 will result in prosecution, and less to conviction.Those are not the numbers of an epidemic of hate caused threats and violence.
There is a reason progressives (including progressive politicians) are fixated on the bogeyman of an anti-Muslim back-lash to the extent that it supercedes their concern for Muslim terrorist attacks and it's extremely difficult to imagine it has to do with anything other than politics and ideology.
It is not a coincidence that groups like CAIR and progressive news sources like the NY Times, in reporting and/or discussing this supposedly earth-shattering revelation, almost immediately draw a connection between the "hate filled" rhetoric of candidates for the Republican nomination for president, and specifically name two, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz...who just happen to be the current leaders in that political race.
And some people can't figure this out either.
