This is just too good not to reprint in full.
Tim Blair
Friday, May, 24, 2013,(11:24am)
You can’t help but feel a little bit sorry for your average Muslim terrorist. They go to all the trouble of blowing up children in Boston, killing US Army personnel in Texas, detonating bars in Bali, flying jets into New York skyscrapers and now basically removing a soldier’s head in a London street, all in the holy name of Islam.
But where’s the credit?
Where’s the respect?
Following yesterday’s murderous outrage, one of the alleged killers – easily identified by blood-covered hands and two dripping knives – stood in the street and
declared to the world he’d slaughtered his victim as a direct consequence of Islamic beliefs.
There are “many, many ayat throughout the Koran,” the man said, citing the book’s ninth chapter, that encourage followers to “fight them as they fight us.”
That’s a fairly clear message. Also clear were the cries of “Allahu Akbar” as the two alleged murderers went about carving and hacking at the fallen soldier’s body, having already run him down with a car.
Then, as usual, the western media’s reflexive timidity kicked in. The default mode in any coverage of Islamic violence is a painfully cautious avoidance of Islam.
British television network ITV was among the first to broadcast the alleged killer’s speech, but neatly
edited any mention of the Koran by talking over him. “In a south London street,” a voiceover intoned, “a man with bloodied hands carrying a knife and machete approaches a camera and tries to justify what just happened.”
We then heard the fellow’s so-called justification, which made little sense without knowing anything about his blatant and declared Islamic motivation: “I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same.”
Actually, I’m pretty sure that women in “his lands” don’t usually see South London psychopaths chopping heads off in the street. The standard Islamist slaughter devices in “his lands” are
guns and bombs, such as were deployed by Muslims in Iraq over the past week to kill nearly 100 people, almost all of them sharing the Islamic faith.
Perhaps those killers subsequently delivered “political statements” about their acts. That’s how one BBC report described the alleged killer’s South London speech: “Footage has emerged showing a man wielding a bloodied meat cleaver and making
political statements.”
These “political statements” are a popular feature of Islamic communication in the UK. At a London rally in 2006, the following political statements were presented in the form of hand-printed
signs: “Behead those who insult Islam.” “Massacre those who insult Islam.” “Annihilate those who insult Islam.”
Alert readers many detect a theme here. Also, extremist Muslims now own at least one copy of Roget’s Thesaurus and have learned how to read it.
Despite these abundant warnings, literally written in black and white, the ABC yesterday described the murder as a “gruesome attack that no one saw coming.” Those signs might have been a clue. So, too, may have been unceasing Islamic attacks on western targets.
Media timidity in the face of these obvious declarations is matched by equally feeble responses from the political classes. Richard Barrett, a former United Nations co-ordinator for the al-Qaida and Taliban monitoring team, offered this insight following yesterday’s brutality: “The idea that this may be terrorism inspired by some sort of religious extremist belief is
quite plausible.”
Quite plausible, old chap? Quite plausible, you say? Well, let’s not jump to any conclusions simply because some Koran-quoting maniac carrying two bloody knives has just cut off a man’s head. Maybe he had trouble at home.
Anyway, look on the bright side. “There are always going to be these incidents and thankfully they are limited to the death of a few people,” Barrett continued, “which is clearly much better than attacking a transport system or flying two planes into the Twin Towers.”
You have to get up … in the morning to sneak anything past this bloke. Even better was Lord Carlile, a former Liberal Democrat MP who seems a perfect caricature of weak western weaseldom. “We have to learn
proportionate lessons from what has occurred,” he told the BBC a few hours after the killing.
Someone was beheaded while walking along a London street. What, exactly, is a properly “proportionate lesson” to be learned from this? Lord Carlile didn’t say, but he also provided the standard line from anyone seeking to avoid facing obvious Islamic issues: “We mustn’t rush to judgment.”
If a knife-carrying fundamentalist tells you he killed a man because the Koran told him to, the amount of time spent considering judgment should be no longer than it takes to hear the words.
Apologists for Islamic terror think that by dodging clear statements of intent they appear thoughtful and considerate, leading to the kind of
comically evasive chat yesterday between the ABC’s Emily Bourke and UK government advisor Derrick Campbell. “In fairness, we’ve listened to the statements of the individuals involved in this horrific attack and it’s quite clear they’re making political statements,” said Campbell.
There are those “political statements” again. At the same time, Campbell warned, “we still don’t know enough information to be really clear about whether it is specifically a terrorist attack.”
At this point Bourke should have realised she was talking to an idiot and ended the interview, but the ABC host was up for further deep political conversation. “Might it highlight a broader underbelly of discontent with the government?” she mused. “Perhaps broader concern about the British government’s foreign policy, for example?”
Or perhaps the killers did it because they’re extremist Islamic lunatics. Just a theory.
