U.S.: Muslims indulge in the whine of discrimination

Here's an interesting post which claims that anti-Muslim bias is up 70%. In it, reporter Mary Beth Sheridan offers some anecdotal "evidence" to support the claims of Muslims that they are being discriminated against. CAIR's figures are the source of the article, and Ms. Sheridan quotes them that

The biggest number of incidents had to do with employment and the refusal to accommodate religious practices.

Frankly, when I was reading the piece, I wondered if I was supposed to feel sympathy or something; instead, I was dumbstruck by CAIR's (and by extension Muslims') insensitivity to Americans. As a black woman, I don't like to be dismissive of discrimination; however, I am also aware that not every negative response occurs because of a person's race but instead may be a factor of personality and attitude. You see, when we interact across racial lines, we tend to keep race uppermost in our minds and so discount the influence of the natural antipathy strangers sometimes feel when they encounter each other. To some extent, the same holds true for religious or ideological differences. So, my official attitude to discrimination is that a healthy chunk of it is all in the mind.

Anyway, to return to my point, the whiny and self-centered attitude exhibited in this article stifles any breath of sympathy that might seek to expand my bosom. You see, whilst I read the piece, I remembered that all around the globe, Muslims are killing Jews, Christians, Buddhists, animists, and everybody else who believes differently than they do.

I see that in Saudi Arabia, Muslims not only shot up some foreign workers, but also tied the body of one behing a car and dragged it through the streets -- this follows on the murder and mutilation of four Americans who were working in Iraq to improve that country.

In Trinidad, Muslims are training to build bombs, perhaps as a house warming gift for some lucky soul.

In no Islamic country will an employer accommodate the religious practices of either a Jew or a Christian, and we know what happened to the Buddhas of Bammiyyan. It is also impossible to ignore that Muslims have destroyed churches in Serbia and elsewhere, and threaten to demolish all of them in Zamfara state in Nigeria.

I have yet to hear of any such incident as these happening to any Muslim or his place of meeting in these United States, nor do I suggest that such should, nor will I consent to it. For, acts of the type depicted here are of such incredible savagery to a fellow human and to his religious beliefs that one cannot not help but raise one's voice in protest against it. To remain silent in the face of such atrocities is to be complicit in their barbarity. In the absence of any such despicable acts, and in the face of a natural wariness given that we are a nation at war, I believe that Muslims in America have it easy, in contrast to Jews and Christians unfortunate enough to live in any Muslim country.

What CAIR seem to want is no questioning of or dissent from the clearly absurd point of view that Islam is a "religion of peace," and no examination of the fact that while not all Muslims are terrorist, all terrorists are Muslim.

Furthermore, CAIR have refused to make allowance for the natural leeriness of Americans concerning CAIR's co-ideologues, 19 of whom slaughtered approximately 3,000 Americans on 9/11 killers, and many of whom are waging jihad against Western military and civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the globe. CAIR would deny that Americans have any right to look askance at Muslims -- regardless of race and nationality, even though the threat reports of terrorist attacks point only to Muslims.

To compound their gross insensitivity, CAIR seem to want the U.S. to treat Muslims with kid gloves and raise no questions concerning their teaching, funding, affiliations, or allegiance to this country. In other words, they would demand a special treatment that no nation at war can afford to grant, especially when according such may endanger the welfare of the body politic. All of this is in defiance of custom, good sense, and national security.

Furthermore, CAIR may be attempting to use the U.S. Constitution to deprive Americans of their Constitutional right to free speech and to impose dhimmi status on the country's population, the majority of which is Christian.

This reluctance to hear and confront hard truths, coupled with the ready willingness to inhibit the individual's legitimate right to articulate conclusions based on empirical evidence, is symptomatic of the sickness of Mid-East cultures today. It is this same sickness with which CAIR would infect the American body politic such that the only "truth" spoken of Islam would be that which contradicts the evidence we receive daily from around the globe.

In the meantime, with regard to complaints of discrimination real or imagined, American Muslims would do well to suck it up and prove their bona fides by taking an aggressive and vocal stand against terrorism -- something which in almost three years since 9/11 very few have actually done. As long as Muslims stay silent in the face of gross acts of terrorism, every country's citizens will view them with disfavor because silence betokens consent.