I can remember the outrage when muslim schools were set afire in the Netherlands after Theo van Gogh was butchered by a muslim. And rightly so, ofcourse.
Nothing has been mentioned on our news, or here, at the SDMB, but I read on the UK news that at least a 170 attacks on muslims were made after the bombings.
They covered “everything” from verbal abuse and spitting to arson.
Nine mosques had been attacked, a garage firebombed, people assaulted in the street, and homes had had their windows broken.
And three days after the 7 July bombings, Kamal Butt, 48, from Pakistan was murdered outside a corner shop in Nottingham.
So, Do we act the same across the globe when faced with terrorism?
Why limit it to terrorism? It’s group mentality thinking. Ever see a baseball fight breakout? One guy from each team gets into a quarrel. And after that, it doesn’t matter who gets a punch to the face, as long as it’s someone from the other team.
The first two sentences of the OP create a quasi-dangling-modifier that should be rephrased.
Rightly so that there was outrage when muslim schools were set afire? Or rightly so that Theo van Gogh was butchered by a muslim? I’m sure the former is the desired reading.
You mean, do we all turn into a howling mob, baying for muslim blood? Apparently not, as evidenced by the fact that while there may have been a recent increase in attacks on persons percieved as muslims in the UK, the vast majority of its citizens are NOT carrying out such attacks, and those who do are being arrested and prosecuted.
I haven’t felt any particular compulsion to randomly attack muslims after any perticular terrorist incident. Perhaps some idiots around me do; if so I don’t know about it.
hehehehe, Bricker, I knew something like your reply would happen as soon as I submitted the darn thing.
Outrage over the schools, yes.
FriarTed, Well, that was said more or less the same about the Netherlands.
We had some idiots reacting on van Gogh’s murder, but no-one was hurt.
Foreign papers were full of ‘those so called tolerant Dutch are racists’.
[Which I know isn’t true.]
Now more than a 170 attacks have occured and someone dies and I hear nothing?
Not one thing?
Could that be because the DUTCH papers and news were FULL of condemnation about the muslim schools, so it was easier for foreign papers to pick it up?
Are we more open about our faults?
I think its a few fringe idiots who probably would have been beating up/murdering someone else (gays maybe) if they hadn’t instead latched on to muslims instead. I certainly don’t see howling mobs of folks in the UK rampaging around the country side stringing up muslims…nor did I see anything like that in the US post-9/11.
I suspect that most people in most places have similar reactions to terrorist attacks. What changes is whether one or two individuals in a particular place escalate the reaction to an extreme.
Note that in the BBC story, they mention nine “attacks” on mosques, but do not elaborate on whether those attacks were graffitti, spitting, or insults and jeers. The only firebombing was directed against a garage. In contrast, some individuals in the Netherlands burned multiple schools–and mutliple burned schools is a much bigger story than spittings and insults. As in Britain, there were two murders (or one murder and one attempted murder) in the U.S.–and, of course, the U.S. haters were so stupid they attacked a Hindu and a Sikh and failed in picking the “right” targets.
That was pretty big news, but it did not go on for months and, aside from some law enforcement types roughing up people they detained, there was no widespread violence against Arabs or Muslims.
In other words, in three separate countries, we find a large population targeted by terrorists, from which some tiny segment decides to launch “retaliatory” attacks that generally are limited to insults although there are three individual incidents of murder. In the case of the Netherlands, some equally tiny segment of fools latch onto a rather highly visible demonstration of their hatred and stupidity, leaving a larger and longer media memory of the reaction. However, in none of these countries have the Muslim or Arab citizens and immigrants been forced to seek shelter from hordes of roving mobs. The vast majority of people, whatever they mutter in the pub or post on a messageboard, do not actually go out and take action against the people from whom the terrorists drew their members.
To me, the reactions, both overall and specific to fools, are about the same.
thanks, **tomndebb[/]! I was composing similar thoughts when you posted.
There’s one more issue, though: The OP seems to be looking for hypocrisy in the way we ignored the muslims who were murdered , while emphasizing the westerners who were murdered.
But there is no moral equivalency here.
Nobody in western culture is screaming bloodthirsty calls for jihad and mass murder of all infidels.
Actually, you really need to read Ann Coulter’s early remarks on the subject.
In the days following the WTC/Pentagon attacks, there were a number of posters on this board who talked about turning Afghanistan–or the entire Middle East–into a sea of radioactive molten glass and it is not hard to discover people who still champion that idea (although you would need to go to a different message board to find them).
There are quite a few people who have called for just that sort of extreme overreaction. I would agree that our society has done a moderately effective job of placing such calls outside the bounds of propriety, so that they are not given wide play in the media, but Western society has its full share of haters.
There’s a difference here:
In the days immediately after 9/11 there was good reason to fear that the same terrorists had released anthrax in Washington, and they had started a full-scale war on American society.(There was no reason to assume that the only 18 terrorists in America had all killed themselves in one single attack, that there were no more terrorists in the USA, no further attacks planned, no more anthrax supplies,etc. )
So comments by Anne Coulter may have been extreme and premature–, but if our enemies ever succeed in actually using weapons of mass destruction, then turning their lands into radioactive molten glass will be unforturnately be an idea worthy of discussion. That isn’t just blind hatred, it is hatred based on a logical (but desperate) tactic for survival, targetting societies who have already targetted us.
I still stand by my post ( “there is no moral equivalency–nobody in the West is calling for mass murder of all infidels.”)
The OP asked specifically about retaliation killings of muslims , and implied a moral equivalency by claiming hypocrisy that we care more about Van Gogh’s innocence than a British muslim’s innocence. Van Gogh’s murderers are dangerous to all of western civilized values. They live freely in the Middle East, glorified by political leaders as heros. The skinhead punks who murdered in Britain will be arrested by the leaders, not treated as heroes.
First, your timeline is off: the anthrax scare was months later.
There was never a (legitimate) reason to fear a “full-scale war on American society.” More terrorist attacks, but no"full-scale" war.
You admit that Ms. Coulter’s remarks were extreme and premature, yet you find a way to deny equivalence. I do not. Her remarks and the remarks of many others are exactly equivalent to the remarks that you condemn.
I deny this, as well. To argue for the total elimination of a people because some faction within their society succeeds in wreaking havoc is immoral. In fact, you have just justified bin Laden’s attacks on the U.S. and the Japanese attack on the U.S. to bring us into WWII. bin Laden perceives a threat to his society and culture and we had actually taken steps that would have hamstrung Japanese industry and neither of them have taken steps to eliminate the U.S. as an entity or a people.
Until such time as you get clarification from gum as to her actual meaning, I think you are reading more into her statement than is advisable. In fact, I think that you are making a wholly separate comparison that is off-topic to her discussion. She was comparing reactions among the people of the U.K., the U.S., and the Netherlands and I did not see any comparison to people in the MENA region in her post, her vague use of the word “globe” notwithstanding.
I’d really would like to understand how you make this statement
How on earth do you belive the entire society targetted you? Do you honestly believe that the entire Muslim community is out to get you? And if not, is the response to terrorism collective punishment? Collective murder? Come on, this point is not even worth discussion. You should know better.
And, another sweeping statement
What???
To keep you updated, Egypt was the most recent target of such extremists. The attackers were not glorified, first because they attacked booming tourist resorts. Tourism is the second largest source of income for Egypt. Such a blow does enormous damage to the economy. Second because terrorists are seeking to impose their own extreme, sick version of Islam. Nobody would be happy about that; they’ve seen Saudi and don’t like it. Third, most their victims were Egyptian.
Algeria suffered from years of terrorism. Extremists murdered thousands of Algerians during the nineties. It was sparked by the cancellation of the results of an election in which Islamists won.
Saudi Arabia has suffered tens of attacks, in which, as of February, a hundred Saudis had died since 2001. The kingdom is making efforts, though insufficient, to fight the terrorists. The inefficiency comes from the inctricacies of Saudi, and not from its leaders’ endorsement of terrorism.
Jordan has clamped down on militants for years, and continues to do so. Recently, a plot was uncovered where terrorists planned to use chemical weapons in Amman. Jordanian police estimated that up to eighty thousand deaths could’ve ensued.
I could go on, but I assume I’ve made my point. How the fuck are these people glorified by Middle Eastern leaders? Or by the people they murder??? How are they not dangerous to the Middle East too?
Perhaps one would care to analyse the lack of coverage of such incidents, and compare it to coverage given to attacks in the West.
I would disagree with both these statements. They had hardly scratched the surface recovering bodies from the WTC when the anthrax scare started. It was absolutely part of the timeline involved in any expected backlash against Muslims.
And your assumption that there “was” never a legitimate reason to fear a full-scale war on American Society is conceptually misguided. There “is” every reason to fear an economic attack against the United States. The 9/11 attack was designed to cause political, economic, and military chaos. Although it was only partially successful on an economic basis there are a number of very important points to consider:
It was not designed as a war of conquest. It was aimed at dismantling Western power and influence .
It required minimal funding by using publicly accessible assets AGAINST commercial and political assets.
It was poorly planned (required little skill or timing).
The few numbers of “soldiers” involved in 9/11 WANTED to die.
The planning for this was done over a period of years and involved sleeper cells.
There is a difference (in war) between neutralizing your enemy and taking his land. The former involves little investment in time, money, and personnel and the latter does not. The techniques used in 9/11 should be feared.
You are right that the first Anthrax attackwas in September. For some reason my memory had it in December.
On the other hand, regardless how much damage they may have inflicted on the economy, it cannot be considered full-scale war. With our fields and factories and infrastructure intact, we could find a way to get past economic hardship. Full-scale war (at least since the middle of the 20th century) leaves a nation physically unable to recover.
You’re thinking in terms of a structured war that kills people and breaks things. Think further out of the box. The 19 people involved in the 9/11 attack were virtually unarmed by military standards yet they destroyed the WTC complex of buildings, damaged the Pentagon and shut down the entire airline industry for a day. 19 people caused a URL=http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/aug02/homeland.asp]half trillion dollars in economic damage with nothing more than a box knife. It is easily the most cost-effective attack ever carried out.
If you look at a country like Iran (with an active nuclear weapons program), it is not inconceivable that a political group known for chanting “death to America” at convened sessions of parliament might give such a weapon to 19 more terrorists. Pick 19 of your favorite cities and then imagine who lit the fuse of a nuke because you won’t have anything except a hole to work with as evidence. A WMD with no return address is a war with no enemy to fight. 9/11 was the stuff of Hollywood myth. Now it’s recorded history.
Though the increase in racial attacks in UK is diplorable, it is not clear that the murder of Kamal Butt though racist was not outside the ordinary number of racially motivated murders you might expect in the UK over a 4 week period.
So the attack on 9/11 was poorly planned, requiring little skill or timing. Yet this alleged poor planning took place over a period of years, involving sleeper cells of men who spent considerable time in the United States putting together their plan.
These sleeper cells contained men who took the time and effort to learn how to fly large passenger aircraft (no easy task), and who boarded four different planes, from two different airlines, at three different airports. Those planes all departed their respective airports within a space of 12 minutes. During the following hour, all four were successfully taken over, and in the hour between 8:46am and 9:45am two flew into the World Trade Centers and one into the Pentagon. The only failure was the final plane, which crashed 25 minutes later after an attempt by the passengers to retake the plane. (timeline here)
