By Andrew L. Jaffee

Instead of speaking of reform, Muslims are once again frantically denying, perhaps attempting to cover up, the fact that their religion has been taken over by ultra-violent, radical extremists. This happened during the Danish cartoon controversy. Canadian Muslims refused to believe that their young people plotted to blow up Toronto. British Muslims blamed the UK’s policies for a plot to bomb airliners. Mohammed Atta’s father, whose son was a 9/11 ring-leader, displayed the same willful ignorance, projection, and denial. What’s the beef this time? Some Muslims are angry because Fox’s popular series “24″ features Islamic terrorists. Talk about denial: 3,709 Iraqis were killed in Sunni vs. Shiite sectarian attacks during October 2006 alone. Just why shouldn’t we see Muslims as terrorists?

Is Fox’s “24″ engaging in racial stereotyping? Not by a long-shot:

In a written statement issued late Wednesday night, the network said it has not singled out any ethnic or religious group for blame in creating its characters.

“24 is a heightened drama about anti-terrorism,” the statement read. “After five seasons, the audience clearly understands this, and realizes that any individual, family, or group (ethnic or otherwise) that engages in violence is not meant to be typical.

“Over the past several seasons, the villains have included shadowy Anglo businessmen, Baltic Europeans, Germans, Russians, Islamic fundamentalists, and even the (Anglo-American) president of the United States,” the network said. “The show has made a concerted effort to show ethnic, religious and political groups as multidimensional, and political issues are debated from multiple viewpoints.”

The crux of the matter is that Anglo businessmen, Baltic Europeans, Germans, Italians, Jews, Buddhists, etc., are not engaging in terrorist acts. Islamic fundamentalists are. They are beheading, burning, looting, raping, shooting, blowing up — engaging in thousands of unspeakable horrors.

In fact, Hollywood has been unnervingly silent about Islamist terrorism. When Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh had his throat slit by an Islamist thug in downtown Amsterdam, Hollywood was silent. It said and did nothing after losing one of its own, Syrian-born Hollywood producer Moustafa Akkad, in the al-Qaeda Amman atrocity.

What happened to Mel Brooks’ adage, “Without Jews, fags, and gypsies, there is no theater?” Where is the leftist outrage to these, their supposedly boilerplate issues? No concern for Arab/Muslim youth having to grow up in Orwell’s 1984, never tasting freedom of expression? No grass-root protests against Muslim-produced images like this (from the ADL and CNN.com):

Original links:
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/WORLD/europe/02/06/london.cartoon.protests/vert.london1.ap.jpg
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/WORLD/europe/02/06/london.cartoon.protests/vert.london2.ap.jpg
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/WORLD/europe/02/06/london.cartoon.protests/vert.london4.ap.jpg
Images cached for posterity.

When Kamau Kambon, visiting professor at North Carolina State University, called for the extermination of all white people on the planet, it didn’t even make the mainstream media’s headlines.

Islamism is a distortion of religion, turning belief into a death cult; a desire for absolute power on Earth, using G#d’s word as a justification for mass slaughter, and the erasure of all things non-Muslim from human culture.

Let us not forget what Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iranian President Ahmadinejad — the Islamic extremists — represent. Islamists massacred 344 civilians — half of them children — in Beslan, North Ossetia. They killed 174 in Mumbai, India; murdered 50+ in Turkey; and have killed tens of thousands in Indonesia, Algeria, and Nigeria. Al-Qaeda slaughtered 88 innocent Egyptians last July 23.

1,095 innocent Israelis have been killed by Palestinian terrorists since September 2000. Thirty-thousand Iraqis, mostly Muslim, have been slaughtered by Islamist terrorists since the country’s liberation.

9/11 (3000 dead). Madrid (200 dead). London (50 dead). Bali (200 dead). Amman (57 dead). Three-hundred trampled to death in last year’s Hajj; 1,426 killed in the 1990 Hajj; 251 in 2004; etc. Sudanese Muslims have slaughtered 180,000 black Africans. Kuwaitis ethnically cleansed 400,000 Palestinians in 1991.

Even though the show “24″ has gone out of its way to portray non-Muslim terrorists, we hear the usual persecution complex from Muslims:

Watching the show’s characters talk about detonating a nuclear weapon a few blocks from where she works unnerved Sireen Sawaf, an official with the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, and a self-described “huge 24 fan.”

“It’s a great show, and I do realize it’s a multidimensional show that portrays extreme situations,” she said. “They have gone out of their way to have non-Muslim terror cells.

“But I’m concerned about the image it ingrains in the minds of the American public and the American government, particularly when you have anti-Muslim statements spewing from the mouths of government officials.”

Sohail Mohammed, a New Jersey immigration lawyer who represented scores of detainees caught up in the post Sept. 11, 2001 dragnet, watched the episode depicting the nuclear attack with an Associated Press reporter.

“I was shocked,” he said. “Somewhere, some lunatic out there watching this will do something to an innocent American Muslim because he believes what he saw on TV.”

Engy Abdelkader, a member of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee from Howell, N.J., launched a campaign Wednesday to encourage Muslims offended by the program to complain to Fox.

“I found the portrayal of American Muslims to be pretty horrendous,” she said. “It was denigrating from beginning to end. This is one of the most popular programs on television today. It’s pretty distressing.”

Dear Muslims: You might gain a little credibility and avoid a true backlash by admitting that your religion is in turmoil, at war with itself as much as it is at war with Western civilization, and actually do something to change the path your people have chosen. Silence and denial about Muslim atrocities will only prove the terrorist stereotypes to be true — if you don’t take responsibility for your own religion.

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Related: United States, Islam, War Against Islamo-fascism, Media/Blogsphere

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