[lit-ideas] Non-Muslims at the Philharmonic & 9/11
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 10:23:05 -0700
Your right, John. I am amazed. You don't see any Muslims protesting
against Israel at the Concert and Judy sees only Jews. Well, I'm glad
that's cleared up.
Moving smartly along now, a friend sent me the following article by Mark
Steyn on the 9/11 commemoration:
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/roll-316321-let-mark.html -- here are a
few excerpts:
"I bumped into an old BBC pal the other day who's flying in for the
anniversary to file a dispatch on why you see fewer women on the streets of
New York wearing niqabs and burqas than you do on the streets of London. She
thought this was a telling indictment of the post-9/11 climate of
"Islamophobia." . . .
"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.
"What of the 23rd Psalm? It was recited by Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer
and the telephone operator Lisa Jefferson in the final moments of his life
before he cried "Let's roll!" and rushed the hijackers.
"No, sorry. Aside from firemen, Mayor Bloomberg's official commemoration
hasn't got any room for clergy, either . . . In Shanksville, Pa., the zoning
and permitting processes are presumably less arthritic than in Lower
Manhattan, but the Flight 93 memorial has still not been completed. There
were objections to the proposed "Crescent of Embrace" on the grounds that it
looked like an Islamic crescent pointing towards Mecca. The defense of its
designers was that, au contraire, it's just the usual touchy-feely
huggy-weepy pansy-wimpy multiculti effete healing diversity mush. It doesn't
really matter which of these interpretations is correct, since neither of
them has anything to do with what the passengers of Flight 93 actually did a
decade ago. 9/11 was both Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid rolled into
one, and the fourth flight was the only good news of the day, when citizen
volunteers formed themselves into an ad hoc militia and denied Osama bin
Laden what might have been his most spectacular victory. A few brave
individuals figured out what was going on and pushed back within
half-an-hour. But we can't memorialize their sacrifice within a decade. And
when the architect gets the memorial brief, he naturally assumes there's
been a typing error and that "Let's roll!" should really be "Let's roll
over!"
"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."
COMMENT: What a relief. I was beginning to think I was the only one who
could see Radical Muslims and might be hallucinating, but look. I found one
more.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John Wager
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2011 7:59 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Muslims (plural) disrupt Israeli philharmonic
concert for Dutch Queen
I'm amazed at how the human mind succeeds in seeing what it wants to see, no
matter what the evidence. Those of us who are paranoid about fundamentalist
Christians taking over the U.S. see lots of things through that filter, and
see a minor internecine squabble among fundamentalists as grounds for
something much bigger. Those of us who think most of the tea party
supporters are nuts see anything said by a Republican as equally nuts.
Those of us who are afraid of Muslims see a disruption by what most YouTube
posters called "yobs" as a disruption by "Muslims."
I just looked at several versions of the disruption on YouTube and for the
life of me can't make out anything that would identify those yobs as Muslim,
Christian, or secular. Yes, they are protesting against the treatment of
Palestine, and yes most Palestinians are Muslim, but there are a lot of
Christian Palestinians and even quite a few non-religious supporters of
Palestine who might have been among the "yobs."
I don't usually respond to political posts here, one way or the other,
because I'm trying to sift through my own prejudices and filters and know
that they are very difficult to eliminate. I probably have MORE filters
than most people; I think almost everybody is just trying to get through
life as well as they can, and that most conspiracies and planned assaults on
society are just as ill-conceived and ill-planned and exaggerated in power
as the stupidity of the society the attacks are aimed at.
Thankfully.
Lawrence Helm wrote:
One can find a fuller description of what happened at
http://yourjewishnews.com/10666.aspx Muslims around the audience popped up
at different times.
Other related posts:
