The truly heinous thing, of course, is the horrendous loss of life taken by terrorists of any stripe, whether they’re backpack-bomb-carrying teenagers or bomber pilots in billion-dollar planes.
But there’s a subsidiary annoyance that gnaws at me increasingly: the demand when a bomb goes off – unless it’s one of ours – that all Muslims drop whatever they’re doing and condemn violence by Islamic extremists.
Are you white? Or male? Raise your hand if you’ve formally condemned the actions of Eric Rudolph. I know I haven’t gotten around to it, and Rudolph’s actions disgust me to the point that I’d find it hard to turn down an offer to compact his septum with a coal shovel. I have lived with my wife Becky for 16 years, and she’s Asian, and yet I haven’t once heard her formally denounce Aum Shinrikyo’s 1995 poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway.
We have been granted the courtesy, by society at large, of the assumption that we abhor acts of mass murder.
But mainstream liberals and racist reactionaries alike have no problem demanding ritualistic condemnations and apologies from Muslims when an extremist splinter of that massive, mindbogglingly diverse religion commits mass murder. And I have to say I expect it from the reactionaries. But I’m naive enough to be stunned when people who claim to be liberals trot out arguments that closely parallel demands for black obeisance issued by the likes of the White Citizens Councils.
And when such people – like the truly execrable “Jen,” whose rantings are displayed in the first of those links above – are presented with evidence that prominent Muslim clerics have in fact denounced the murders, and floridly, that somehow isn’t enough. The Jens of the world want Muslims to fine-tune their public statements painstakingly, carefully watching to see if they are being obsequious enough. “Dance, Muslim monkeys, dance! The purpose of your public life is to satisfy my desires!”
Somehow, the average Muslim is exempt from the presumption of innocence, not only in deed but in basic human sympathy. Somehow, the intense provocation of US foreign policy is considered off-topic. The Jens of the world ask why Muslims have not taken to the streets to protest suicide bombings. But mass protest sways only those people who are willing to be swayed. Bin Laden would see ten million demonstrators in the streets of Riyadh and wave a dismissive hand. But he’s not who the demonstration would really be aimed at, is he? The idea is to have all those demonstrators prostrate themselves, facing not Mecca but Jen.
I appreciate the round of rousing condemnation Muslim leaders have made of the bombing in London. I appreciate the fatwas issued against al Qaeda. And I know damn well they weren’t intended for my ears. Those admonitions are meant for the angry young men and women in their communities, one ten-thousandth of whom might be tempted to take up the gun. I presume that Muslims are human beings first. They owe me no apology, bowing, nor scraping, and they do not need to avert their eyes from mine when they pass me on the sidewalk. Anyone who says otherwise might as well don a white sheet.
[Also posted at Creek Running North.]
