There are three writers currently on the staff of Jihad Watch: Robert Spencer, Marisol, and Hugh Fitzgerald. Even when briefly other individuals joined the staff (e.g., Raymond Ibrahim), these three remained the dominant contributors.
Aside from Hugh Fitzgerald, however, they do not normally write essays on Jihad Watch -- though it seems that in the last several months, Hugh's literary output has dwindled to nearly nil. Occasionally, Spencer will write an essay for some other publication and then reproduce it at Jihad Watch (curiously, he never simply publishes an essay at Jihad Watch first). Marisol to my knowledge has never penned an essay; her primary functions at Jihad Watch seem to be (aside from unfairly banning valuable contributors) as associate editor and presenter, along with Spencer, of the gruesomely copious newsreel about Muslim evil and insanity that is the raison d’être of Jihad Watch.
Since essays are relatively rare at Jihad Watch, the main method of pedagogy there -- aside from the medium-is-the-massage (sic) mode of sheer incessant UPI-type presentation of stories about Muslims -- consists in little editorial remarks of breezily acute commentary often salted and peppered with wry, ironic, sarcastic wit interspersed amongst the data presented, or introducing it. One part of this method, additionally, employs a typographical device that has become relatively common on the Internet: namely, the bolded emphasis of certain words or phrases.
It was in just such a bolded emphasis -- or, rather, the lack of it -- where Marisol may have unwittingly revealed a glimmer of the Christian Wilsonianism that seems to inspire both her and Spencer. It involved the recent story of the Muslim woman who out of the blue (at least out of the West's uncomprehendingly naive blue) tried to kill a member of British parliament by stabbing him with a knife. In sentencing the Muslim woman to life in prison, the judge made a statement of several sentences. In her re-presentation of his remarks, Marisol bolded certain phrases as her careful way of teaching Jihad Watch readers, pointing out the more significant nuances, in her estimation.
Now, what I found interesting was one phrase Marisol chose not to boldly emphasize. Let us examine one of those judge's remarks, in which he contrasts the "values" of the Muslim woman with the "values" of England as practiced by the parliamentarian she tried to kill:
Those values are those upon which the common law of this country was founded and include respect and love for one's neighbour, for the foreigner in the land, and for those who consider themselves enemies, all as part of one's love of God.
The part which Marisol chose to bold was the first phrase:
Those values are those upon which the common law of this country was founded...
What Marisol neglected to call the readers' attention to was, in my estimation, the very crux of the moral of this news story -- the one "value" of our Western tradition listed by this judge which is part of the problem that helps to explain why the West is persisting in its irrational myopia to the problem of Islam:
... respect and love... for those who consider themselves enemies, all as part of one's love of God.
It was precisely "love and respect" for our enemies that got MP Timms stabbed. Whether one is a modern secularist or whether one is a modern Christian, the general assumption is the PC MC notion that since Muslims are human, we must accord them the same benefit of the doubt which we grant to all other humans, and we must guard ourselves from allowing the horrible data we learn about what Muslims are saying and doing around the world to cause us to collectively distinguish Muslims, as our unique enemy, from all other people on earth.
Closely related to this problematic "value" of Christian-uppropped PC MC is the other "value" mentioned by the judge: "... respect and love... for the foreigner in the land..."
While this "value" may be a virtue in a general sense, it also can -- and has -- become the spirtual/sentimental basis for a promiscuous immigration policy. Both Christian Wilsonians and more secular minded Wilsonians over the past 50 years have in fact translated their PC MC sentimentalism into the concrete open immigration policies that have led to the unprecedented infusion of millions of Muslims into the West (with no sign even now of that disastrous project being mitigated, let alone being abolished as it should be).
As Timms himself described it, he saw a Muslim woman coming toward him at a public event. She was smiling and seemed friendly, according to him. She was a "foreigner in the land" and she was smiling. Her Muslim identity, then, was not cause for wariness, let alone for exclusion from a public meeting, let alone exclusion from the land through a cessation of immigration and deportation. No, according to the New Wilsonians, we shall continue to let Muslims in, and we will do nothing about the millions already here breeding, and they will continue to stab and explode and plot mayhem and murder in our land -- or, when they are not doing that, at the very least continuing to enable their more blatantly truculent brothers and sisters and doing little or nothing to stop them.
I don't know whether it's better or worse that Marisol is apparently incoherent on this issue. She obviously is not a pacifist. So how would she interpret, and translate into policy, a statement that enshrines "respect and love for ...those who consider themselves enemies, all as part of one's love of God", one wonders? At the very minimum, with Marisol, such Christian Wilsonianism concretizes itself in unfairly banning valuable Jihad Watch readers like me from their comments fields because in her mind I crossed the line and violated the principle of that Christian love of one's enemies -- insofar as "love" in this context means continuing to regard Muslims as human. Marisol had no excuse for misinterpreting what I had meant, for I had written in that thread wherein I was banned that I do not consider "human" in that context to be ontological.
The problem may be broader than merely the managerial style on a blog. When the day comes that individuals like Marisol and Spencer become sociopolitically influential in our society's grappling with the problem of Islam, will they help push for the more effective measures of total deportation, or will they positively hinder them because it would, in their minds, violate Christian love of our fellow humans?
1 comment:
It seems to me that what you were saying is something like this:
Just because we observe that someone else (in this case, a Muslim) is human, does not mean that we can safely conclude that he thinks like us and wants the same things as we do.
Most people are not philosophers, as indeed I am not, and the word "ontological" is apt to sail right over our heads. I daresay that the first part of your original statement was misunderstood as a claim on your part that Muslims are nonhuman. Your subsequent explanation of what you actually meant was not understood either.
Sometimes it pays to be as monosyllabic as you can.
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