re: #60 freetoken

I’d argue that the shooting down MH17 was one of the bigger terror acts of late. And, acts of terrorism have been conducted this year in parts of Africa by self professed “Christians”.

The idea that “terror” and “Muslim” are synonymous is a trope of the hate-right.

Yes, there are very violent and explicitly Islamic groups operating in the world for the purpose of causing terror to civilians, but then to ascribe “terrorism” as a Muslim act would be like trying to blame all crime in the country on blacks.

Oh… wait… the hate right does that too…

That’s not what the post said. The post said that Gerald Seib’s editorial was “casual bigotry” because of its claim that there was a “morass of war and terrorism emanating from the Islamic world”, and that this was factually wrong because it was overly broad. That basically only the Middle East was involved.

But that, in its own turn, is factually wrong. And that was my point and I stand by it. And while we’re at it, Boko Haram.

Now, what I did not say and would not dream of saying is that war emanates only from the Islamic world, or that all Islamic polities are aggressive or particularly prone to terrorism. Right now, ISIS is the showiest war-and-terror story, but what is happening in the Ukraine carries higher stakes because ISIS doesn’t have nukes but Putin does. In both cases, armies are fighting and heavy weapons are involved and there are thousands of dead, and the situation in Ukraine is not emanating from the Muslim world.

But that’s a side issue here. The fact remains that such war and terrorism as is emanating from within the Muslim world comes from a much wider geographic area than the Middle East. Seib would have had to forget about Beslan, Bali, Mumbai, and Boko Haram to have written “Middle East” instead. Seib had reason to cast a wider net. It wasn’t a matter of sloppiness and failure to check facts, and it wasn’t a deliberate decision to ignore facts and go ahead with a blanket condemnation. A moment’s reflection on the course of recent history would have confirmed this, and I feel that Charles has not been fair to Seib. You don’t call somebody a `casual bigot’, and dismiss the possibility that they have thought their words through, and have some sort of case for them, without mulling the charge over and checking in your own mind twice whether there are facts that support the wording chosen.