In a bizarre and vicious attack, a drunken young civilian recently returned from filming a documentary in Afghanistan – and one who apparently freelances for a company supporting the Ground Zero Mosque – has stabbed a taxi driver in the neck after asking him whether he was a Muslim.
Horrible and senseless as the crime is in itself, it is also sure to become yet another log tossed on the fire of our newest battle in the Culture War. Left wing sites and the legacy media will bewail this as a “hate crime” enabled by right wing opponents of Project51, while – if history is any judge – right wing sites will point out the attacker’s questionable antecedents or ignore the story altogether. Forgotten will be a working class stiff trying to get by in the world in favor of convenient cudgel with which to bash one’s partisan foes.
Hate crimes, everyone agrees, are hateful, although it’s an open question whether a cabbie that is stabbed in the neck because of his faith is any more wounded than one stabbed for the $20 bill in his pocket. And it is probably useless to point out that while there are approximately 5 million Jews in the US and around 7 million Muslims, the number of hate crimes against the former outpaced the latter about seven-to-one in the five most recent years for which the FBI has data following 9/11.
| Year | Anti-Jewish | Anti-Muslim |
| 2004 | 954 | 156 |
| 2005 | 848 | 128 |
| 2006 | 967 | 156 |
| 2007 | 967 | 133 |
| 2008 | 1013 | 105 |
| Total | 4749 | 678 |
| Aggregate | 5427 | |
| Percent | 87.51% | 12.49% |
It doesn’t fit the narrative.
So, color me unimpressed by the incipient media frenzy surrounding this tragic crime, while very much regretting that such a thing could happen. In New York City, of all places.
And get back to me when the archbishop of the New York diocese is forced to ruefully admit that, well: maybe the cabbie had it coming to him.
I’d like to see the anti-Jewish numbers broken down into sub-categories of race and religion. I’d bet a pot of coffee that we’d see a startling fact emerge, one which the Muslims wouldn’t want made public. Regardless, as stated, hate is hate and is unacceptable.
When someone states for the record that they see the U.S. as an accessory to wholesale massacre, I can’t help but feel the need to move from being an accessory to a principal. Talk about throwing a bucket of fuel on the fire, and this from a Muslim representative. Not good.
I saw similar numbers a few days ago and was quite surprised by them. Given 911 and the current hype and histrionics surrounding the current mosque debate, I would have thought the ‘delta’ would not be so great between the two religions. (Of course hate crimes against Black Americans outstrips them all.)
Of course one hate crime is one too many.
The Cordoba house project has been around for some time, but initially nobody seemed to care. Then a blogger made it an issue, it subsequently became political, and now has gone viral. Hate speech is not a crime. It is protected by the 1st Amendment. But as this issue keeps rising to a fever pitch, we see ever increasing bits of hate speech across the blogs, as we have not seen before. We even see bits of it here. And the reasonable person could surmise that hate speech may indeed spur a fringe criminal element into hate crimes in the future.
Hate speech is the gateway drug to hate crimes.
Finally, we lose whether the mosque is allowed, or is precluded from ever being built.
Who wins? The fanatical radicals in Yemen and Somalia, recruiting young and impressionable prospective terrorists. They can point to the hypocrisy of the US, which was founded on freedom of religion, but is really at ‘war’ with Islam, not only in Muslim countries, but also in the land of the free. Fertile ground for more Jihad, of our unintended making.
With respect, fliterman, I think you may give our adversaries too much credit, believing that they give a fig what we think, or do. I honestly don’t think it’s about us, not in any meaningful way. Nor what we stand for.
It’s that we have been relatively successful, and they have been less so. To their core the Islamists truly believe that they are supposed to be the top rail, with everyone else on bottom. It was promised them.
If not now, then eventually. So long as they “struggle” in the path of Allah.
It is good that we try to understand what angers them… whoever “they” are.
If they are the enemy – and I truly believe the radicals are an existential and mortal threat – we must try to understand their motivations if we are ever to ‘defeat’ them, or just merely co-exist, instead of encouraging Jihads. I think Sun Tzu had something to say about knowing your enemy in order to defeat them.
I am not experienced or intelligent enough to know all their motivations. Nevertheless, I do try to get into their shoes, to empathize with them sometimes. Not that I agree with them. No. I abhor them. But if we can understand them, understand why they want to kill us; maybe we can take specific actions to kneecap them in their endeavors.
Whatever they think is irrelevant, if our correct tactics are employed to defeat them. So far, our tactics have only increased their strength, rather than having diminished it. We keep poking and taunting a beehive of terrorists, without much accomplishment. And this mosque problem only adds fuel to the fire, while we gain nothing.
Flit..I think we “understood” the Axis powers in WWII, and I believe we truly understand these people. The muslims don’t appear to want to co-exist with anyone, ultimately. We get it Flit..
Ok, dwas… what do you suggest we do?
Well Flit..I don’t have a clue, that is what we elect and pay our wonks to solve..As for me..We have given 3000+ people here, and 5000 of our sons and daughters, and almost one trillion dollars in treasury..I am tired of their ‘in your face’ BS..We have saved what 60 million of them, to choose their own futures..I am finished with all of this “understanding” crap..We have more than established our ‘good will’ toward these people..I say “Enough” !!!
Me too!!!!
Perhaps I don’t have a sufficiently nuanced view of things, but the way I see it, once I understand that someone has declared and acted upon an intention to kill me and mine, I really know everything I need to know once I have axis, range, and elevation.
The niceties of motivation can be left, like forgiveness, for that ample time after the enemy is dead. That being a for-sure method of negating pretty much ANY motivation.
I suggest that it is enough that we just kill our enemies and rue the fact that we failed to understand them.
Your first paragraph exposes your bias. It’s all our fault, and especially those who oppose the victory mosque. We’re responsible for hate crimes and stirring up jihadis abroad as well.
Just too funny.
By the way, if “hate speech” is protected by the first Amendment, how can you be opposed to it? We’re not supposed to be against the mosque because it is protected by the first Amendment
LOL, you obviously haven’t been reading left wing blogs for the past 10 years or so, flit. The hate, intolerance, and bigotry posted in them, and carried over into the main stream like Air America, comes close to putting the Klukers to shame.
“CLOSE???”
Do they Flit? Really? Got yourself the numbers and proof and everything? Or are you like a global warmist warrior armed with facts not in evidence?
Why don’t you just graph out white on black violent stats?
black on white stats?
black on black stats?
go ahead and toss in the black on brown stats and black on asian stats? Just to be fair and all.
start with Hutus and work your way up the spectrum.
Race Hatred. Small little world ain’t it?
Yup. White-on-Black rapes are pretty rare. Black-on-White, not so rare.
We need to do away with this “hate crime” crap.
If a white man assaults a white man, it’s assault. Plain and simple.
Now, if a white man assaults a gay/minority/other ethnic group or what have you…it’s a hate crime.
It’s placing more value on a person based on race/creed/color/religion/whatever than another person.
Aren’t we all supposed to be equal? Did I miss something?
Yes Flit we do indeed understand them. More and more of us…
What do I suggest we do? We need to be(come) willing to do what that knowledge requires. Else, we need to accept the inevitable.
“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” Winston Churchill
A recent article/interview by Mr. Totten on the ME is relevant to this topic: http://bit.ly/9MP1Gg
IMO there are very few reasonably intelligent and informed people who do not understand that we are under attack, culturally and physically, and who our enemy is. There are some who project their personal desires or bias into the topic, some who support our enemies: very few who do not understand, or who willingly choose to play the “three monkies” game.
Over the past month or so I’ve re-read a few books by or about Reagan, Truman, Churchill, Feynman, Heinlein, Asimov, E.B. Sledge, Manchester, Netanyahu and others. (o.k., also some Nero Wolfe by Rex Stout -a guys gotta have some fun, right?) I continue to hope that November will bring sufficient change to make the critical difference. If not, things will be most unpleasant. Just my nickel’s worth.
I wish I had bookmarked it last night when I ran across it. Seems the “crazy” has an internet trail linking him to a charity that supports peace and love and anti-Israel, and other such left wing causes, for some many years now.
Funny….all of a sudden he’s “one of us” on the conservative side that has made this decision. Maybe “one of them” trying to leverage off the current conflict as a “double agent.”
If I find it (I think it was from a twitter post), I’ll post it.
Found it at BigPeace.com: Alleged Anti-Muslim Attacker Works for Pro-Cordoba Initiative Company.
Some slight of hand at work here? Just who are the bad guys, when it has become “unroutine” to pretend your’ a loyal member of some organization/rally/protest, but you’re really an infiltrator, with camera people staged to catch your bad acting….
The phrase “hate crime” is redundant in most instances.
What if the left wing wack job stabbed him because the muslim did not support the mosque?
The saudi wahhabi radicals are building huge mosque compounds across america, silently. Plus have given hundreds of millions to our schools and are having in appropriate input to the text books and curriculum.
Kagan at harvard took tens of millions from the saudis while dissing the military so we have our first sharia compliant justice and Harvard just sold their investments in Israel.. We better wake up.
VERY good points, dwall
7 million Muslims? Why did you pick the Muslim Brotherhood’s number? The Pew number of 2.9 million is generally regarded as most accurate.