About a month ago, a Jihad Watch reader blurted out a typical opinion about the growing infiltration of Muslims in the West:
Plenty of shots have been fired -- how many rounds did the commando
unit of three teams of Muslims use over a week ago in the Paris attacks? Or before that, in the Charlie Hebdo attacks (then the Copenhagen attacks shortly thereafter)? Or in the Chattanooga shooting? Or Fort Hood? Etc., etc., ad Islamonauseam.
Then of course we count the London Tube bombing as “shots fired” (and the Madrid train bombing); and innumerable other attacks that we often forget about -- example, the 2011 attack in Frankfurt, Germany:
Armed with a Belgian Fabrique Nationale semi-automatic pistol and a large quantity of ammunition, the ethnic Albanian attacked a bus used to transport US military personnel outside the airport terminal. He shot dead one US airman in front of the bus before also killing the driver. Two other servicemen were seriously injured.
Then there was another incident in the same city (Frankfurt), in 2007:
In September 2007, German authorities arrested three suspected Islamic terrorists for plotting a “massive” terror attack, which posed “an imminent threat” to Frankfurt Airport and the US Air Force base in Ramstein.
It should be noted that the Muslim perpetrator, as always, intended to massacre many more than he got away with -- and so those many more count in terms of both the intent we reasonably suppose Muslim jihadists have, to inflict maximum carnage on us, and the terror and anxiety such attacks sow. And therefore, just as we should factor in the intended casualties as significant, not just the actual casualties, we should also factor in all the terror attacks that Muslims have been found out to be plotting, but which were, out of sheer luck sometimes, aborted in the nick of time. Just to pluck one example from a beret out of literally dozens of plots one could adduce over the years, the many times Muslims have plotted to blow up the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre -- or to pluck from an Italian chef's hat, the Islamic terror cell with a network of members in Italy, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain which was discovered in 2002 to have plotted to blow up a sleepy chapel in Bologna because of its blasphemous fresco of Muhammad; or in 2006 a plot to blow up the same chapel as well as the Milan subway system.
And on and on and on and on...
Furthermore, we don’t have to look merely to all the shootings, explosions, and stabbings-cum-beheadings in Europe and the UK (example, the Lee Rigby beheading), for the various polities of the West are connected to each other on many levels, and 911 in NYC, USA, had a deep, and deeply disturbing impact on the rest of the West (as have the European attacks had deep effects on Americans).
The overall psychological & cultural impact all these attacks have as they take their protracted, systemic, metastasizing toll on our collective psyche is manifold. Perhaps the main effect is that all told, they cause the Western Mainstream to deepen its Denial about the problem of Muslims. This Denial in turn is motivated by two things, two fears:
1) Fear of Muslim violence
2) Fear of ourselves succumbing to “bigotry” and “racism” -- what I have called autophobia -- if we should begin to think of doing something effective about the metastasizing Muslim violence.
The first one remains semi-conscious, suppressed through Denial -- precisely because the second fear is apparently more frightening, by far, to Western Politically Correct Multi-Culturalists, and because they think that doing something effective against the danger of Muslims will perforce entail "bigoted" and "racist" ideas & actions (remember the General Casey Doctrine). Never mind that “Islam is not a race”. It obviously doesn’t matter to the PC MCs. They still insist on thinking of this issue in racial terms, and demonize anyone who criticizes Islam (let alone Muslims) too much as “bigots” and “racists” and “haters”.
So a “shot has been fired” -- over and over again over the years. Unlike that musket ball fired at Lexington on April 19, 1775, however, this shot has not really been “heard around the world” yet -- not truly heard.
Then of course we count the London Tube bombing as “shots fired” (and the Madrid train bombing); and innumerable other attacks that we often forget about -- example, the 2011 attack in Frankfurt, Germany:
Armed with a Belgian Fabrique Nationale semi-automatic pistol and a large quantity of ammunition, the ethnic Albanian attacked a bus used to transport US military personnel outside the airport terminal. He shot dead one US airman in front of the bus before also killing the driver. Two other servicemen were seriously injured.
Then there was another incident in the same city (Frankfurt), in 2007:
In September 2007, German authorities arrested three suspected Islamic terrorists for plotting a “massive” terror attack, which posed “an imminent threat” to Frankfurt Airport and the US Air Force base in Ramstein.
It should be noted that the Muslim perpetrator, as always, intended to massacre many more than he got away with -- and so those many more count in terms of both the intent we reasonably suppose Muslim jihadists have, to inflict maximum carnage on us, and the terror and anxiety such attacks sow. And therefore, just as we should factor in the intended casualties as significant, not just the actual casualties, we should also factor in all the terror attacks that Muslims have been found out to be plotting, but which were, out of sheer luck sometimes, aborted in the nick of time. Just to pluck one example from a beret out of literally dozens of plots one could adduce over the years, the many times Muslims have plotted to blow up the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre -- or to pluck from an Italian chef's hat, the Islamic terror cell with a network of members in Italy, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain which was discovered in 2002 to have plotted to blow up a sleepy chapel in Bologna because of its blasphemous fresco of Muhammad; or in 2006 a plot to blow up the same chapel as well as the Milan subway system.
And on and on and on and on...
Furthermore, we don’t have to look merely to all the shootings, explosions, and stabbings-cum-beheadings in Europe and the UK (example, the Lee Rigby beheading), for the various polities of the West are connected to each other on many levels, and 911 in NYC, USA, had a deep, and deeply disturbing impact on the rest of the West (as have the European attacks had deep effects on Americans).
The overall psychological & cultural impact all these attacks have as they take their protracted, systemic, metastasizing toll on our collective psyche is manifold. Perhaps the main effect is that all told, they cause the Western Mainstream to deepen its Denial about the problem of Muslims. This Denial in turn is motivated by two things, two fears:
1) Fear of Muslim violence
2) Fear of ourselves succumbing to “bigotry” and “racism” -- what I have called autophobia -- if we should begin to think of doing something effective about the metastasizing Muslim violence.
The first one remains semi-conscious, suppressed through Denial -- precisely because the second fear is apparently more frightening, by far, to Western Politically Correct Multi-Culturalists, and because they think that doing something effective against the danger of Muslims will perforce entail "bigoted" and "racist" ideas & actions (remember the General Casey Doctrine). Never mind that “Islam is not a race”. It obviously doesn’t matter to the PC MCs. They still insist on thinking of this issue in racial terms, and demonize anyone who criticizes Islam (let alone Muslims) too much as “bigots” and “racists” and “haters”.
֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍
So a “shot has been fired” -- over and over again over the years. Unlike that musket ball fired at Lexington on April 19, 1775, however, this shot has not really been “heard around the world” yet -- not truly heard.
That reader's opinion seems rather typical in the Counter-Jihad, and reflects an impoverished analysis of the subtle symbiosis between the Stealth Jihad and Violent Jihad (about which I have written many times).
This was my reply to him at the time: