If you’re a believer don’t take this the wrong way, but some days I wish Osama bin Laden and other terrorists currently plaguing the world were Christian rather than Muslim. If it were Christians who had planned 9/11 or Christians who were beheading people in Iraq or Christians who murdered filmmakers for pointing out the absurdities in their religion, then the Leftists and the liberal media would have no problem whatsoever dwelling on the evil Christian terrorists. If they were Christians, you’d see the terrorists referred to as evil fanatics rather than as resistance fighters. If the terrorists were Christians, you’d see calls for all-out crackdowns on them instead of calls for more cultural sensitivity.
Don’t believe me? Lets just look at that piece-of-s— rag The New York Times. This week, Muslim fanatics in the Netherlands murdered filmmaker Theo Van Gogh because Van Gogh had dared make a provocative film criticizing the Koran’s and Muslims’ treatment of women. These terrorists first shot Van Gogh then cut his throat with a butcher’s knife and left a pro-Muslim, anti-Semitic five page rant pinned to his body.
Because the killers were Muslim, the New York Times view is that this is simply at best some sort of cultural misunderstanding that is the result of the Dutch government’s failure to better manage the large influx of Muslim immigrants there.
Urgent efforts are needed to better manage the cultural tensions perilously close to the surface of Dutch public life. The problem is not Muslim immigration, but a failure to plan for a smoother transition to a more diverse society. One very real danger is that the public trauma over the van Gogh murder may lead to a clamor for anti-Muslim policies that could victimize thousands of innocent refugees and immigrants.
The challenge for Dutch political leaders is to find ways to reverse this disturbing trend of politically motivated violence without making it harder to achieve cultural harmony.
A crackdown on Muslim extremists would just be wrong because it might end up affect non-extremist Muslims as well. Instead, the New York Times seems to think that what the Netherlands needs is some sort of national sensitivity training to “achieve cultural harmony.”
Now what about my thesis — what if Van Gogh’s murderers had been Christians? Thankfully the New York Times provided that answer in 1998, after the equally despicable murder of abortion provider Dr. Barnett A. Slepian by an anti-abortion terrorist.
Here’s what the New York Times had to say about how the U.S. should react to Slepian’s murder (emphasis added),
But a principled commitment to provide a constitutionally protected service could not stop the assassin’s bullet that tore through his kitchen window and into his back Friday night. His death shows again how tentative the right to abortion has become in the face of terrorism by anti-choice fanatics. Their repeated acts of terrorism must be met with the severest possible crackdown by law-enforcement authorities. If an armed police officer has to be stationed outside every abortion provider’s home and office, 24 hours a day, let it be done. This is an assault not only on individual doctors, but also on the rights and liberties of all Americans.
. . .
It is bad enough that conservatives in Congress and in state legislatures are working to dismantle reproductive rights by banning certain procedures, such as so-called partial birth abortion, and by requiring waiting periods and parental consent before an abortion can be obtained. But those restrictions are at least imposed by the normal give and take of political and judicial struggle in a democracy. What is outrageous is the attempt to shut down abortions by illegal means — by shooting the doctors or bombing the clinics or harassing the women seeking to exercise their constitutional right. Some anti-abortion groups, to their credit, have denounced the bombings and shootings, but others seem reluctant to issue the strong condemnations that are warranted. Indeed, one particularly virulent anti-abortion Web site lists the names of doctors it says perform abortions, or “crimes against humanity,” with a code indicating whether they are “working,” “wounded” or a “fatality.” Such incendiary rhetoric, and frequent accusations by some anti-abortionists that abortion providers are committing murder, can only fuel more terrorism.
The increase in anti-choice laws and ongoing campaigns of harassment by protest groups, even short of murder, have worked to make abortions harder to obtain. More than 80 percent of counties in this country have no abortion provider. In 45 states, the number of doctors who performed abortions declined between 1982 and 1992. Dr. Slepian was among those who took a stand against restricting reproductive freedom and paid with his life. Unless these brave doctors are better protected, fewer doctors in the next generation will be willing to place themselves and their families in such danger. That is what the terrorists want. They must not be allowed to succeed.
So when an anti-abortion terrorist murders a doctor, the New York Times had no problem calling for “the severest possible crackdown” and had no qualms about linking the activities of the mainstream anti-abortion movement with terrorists who murdered Slepian.
But when Muslim extremists brutally murder a filmmaker, The New York Times says any legal crackdown would be a mistake and appears to call for some sort of nationwide cultural senstivity training to achieve more cultural harmony and transitions to a diverse society.
Too bad Van Gogh wasn’t murdered by pro-life Christians — then the New York Times might have actually taken his murder seriously.
Sources:
Violence Against Abortion Doctors. Editorial, New York Times, October 26, 1998.
Deadly Hatreds in the Netherlands. Editorial, New York Times, November 5, 2004.