First, here's the deal: you have every right to say Jen and I are talking out of our asses. That's a perfectly valid response to anything said here.
However, calling ANY woman a cunt is NOT PERMITTED. There is no reason for that. None and I simply won't tolerate it.
SWR, you owe Jen an apology for acting so badly. You do not have to agree with her. You don't like what she has to say, but I am not going to tolerate online tantrums. The only reason I don't kick your ass off right now is that I figure you lost your head. But if you don't want to apologize for your behavior, that's fine. Perfectly acceptable. It also means you won't be posting here again.
And that applies to everyone. If you use a racial or sexual slur to attack someone, you'll join the list of banned IP's. This isn't LGF or Fucked Company.
Like I said earlier, I run this place like a bar, when you act like an asshole, I might let you know, but if you want to lose your head and act like an idiot, and we've all done it, you can either make it right or be gone.
As far as Juan Cole's comments on Friedman goes, I'll post up something Dan Gilmore is running
My friend Milverton Wallace, a London resident who's a journalist and educator, told me this morning of his day yesterday and gave me permission to post his e-mail:
I spent much of the day talking to Muslim friends. The consensus is that the bombers are home grown. If so, this is as much a failure of the education system as it is of security. How can anyone born, raised and educated in his country not know that this city cannot be cowed by bombs? One day after, life goes on; the city's back at work, the conference in Gleneagles continues.
I talked to many of the young Muslim lads I've known since they were babies, and I talked to their parents. And guess what? The parents are shocked, the youngsters gleeful. Go figure. The leaders of the Muslim Council of Britain can issue as many statements of solidarity and sympathy as they like; the facts are that many of their children rejoiced after the carnage in New York and they rejoiced after the slaughter in London yesterday.
Even if the bombers are foreigners, they couldn't operate here without the help of home-grown supporters.
Either way, this country has a big problem: to find a way to integrate a sizable number of disaffected and alienated young people so they do not attack their own country or aid and abet those who would. The political class reacted swiftly and admirably yesterday, but I'm afraid that rhetoric and resolution won't cut it.
Just to give you a sense of the scale of the problem: there are about a million Muslims in the country and they have the youngest age profile of all the ethnic/religious groups . About a third (34 per cent) are under 16 years of age compared to 19 per cent for Anglos. (Figures taken from the 2001 census).
So there you have it; a human time-bomb, just waiting to be primed.
So now what?
Why do these kids feel so isolated from their wider society? Why do they feel so powerless? It's not a matter blaiming Muslims collectively, they are no more collectively responsible than Americans are for Abu Gharaib.
But where are the institutions which support and legitimize moderates? The reason the main Muslim organizations have to play catchup is that radicals do have an influence far outweighing their numbers. TGhey can hide behind the Koran and the people who oppose them seem weak and ineffectual.
And this is far from impossible to achieve. The Palestinian Authority has managed to win elections and support those who are not Islamic radicals. They are not the only voice in Palestine Palestinians aren't killing each other to make a point, the goverrnment doesn't have to ban Hamas to survive.
Why? Because Fatah has credibility and is an institution, flawed, corrupt, but an instituion all the same.
We are ALL accountable for this. It's not just a matter of Muslims, because those bombs killed everyone. They have to speak up, so do we all. It is not acceptable to leave young muslim men prey for fanatics. Friedman is right in the sense that the Arab world doesn't support moderates, and Cole is right in that any blanket condemation is racist. But that's not what we were saying. I won't speak for Jen, but I think the problem is that you have these large umbrella groups which issue a formal statement, then nothing changes. Those kids are cheering because they feel like and have been told they are victims and need to strike back.
We know most muslims are not insane fundies. But the problem is that those folks aren't called out. They should be treated like the Klan or the Aryan Nations. They shouldn't have access to kids. That they do is a collective failure.
I'm sure that when the next attack happens, muslims will be as sorry as everyone else. But the question we ALL need to ask, because this is a collective problem, is what have WE done to blunt Islamic fundamentalism and reach out to their likely targets. Terrorism is preventable. We can isolate and shame these people the way the Klan was. But they have to be stood up to, challenged, and when that happens, we cannot wash our hands or engage in finger pointing. Nor can we give them more fuel for their hate like blanketly attacking Islam, like our friends at LGF did.
When Muslims challenge the fundies in their ranks, like Christians do theirs, we need to support them. It isn't their problem, it's OUR problem.
