Unharmed?

I’m glad the Fox News reporters were released. At least they’re alive. For now. Just wait until they try to check out of the Roach Motel of Religions.

Unharmed?

You idiot! You total blistering (sic) idiot! Being forced to convert is a harm. It might be the oldest harm short of death – being forced to renounce your faith and your god. Millions of people – literally millions – have died rather than deign to utter words that would force them to give up their faith. No wonder liberal journalists are utterly baffled by fully half of the United States – they don’t think having to give up your religion is harmful. We are beyond certain that if Muslim prisoners at Gitmo were forced to convert away from Islam as a condition of their release, the New York Times would not be putting the phrase “released unharmed” into their lede.

Let’s say you have no faith to deny, and that you’ll say anything to be released. I can buy that. But unharmed? I don’t think so.

NB: He probably meant “blithering”. But some malapropisms are an improvement.

Fauxtography and al-Reuters

I’ve got a theory. Karl Rove is actually in charge of photo editing at Reuters, and is making them look like incompetent, biased morons just to ruin them. Probably so he can let Haliburton buy up their old office furniture for pennies on the dollar.

How else to explain this? More here and here.

[Note: This is an old post that somehow got saved as a draft rather than getting published. Just in case you think I’m behind on the news. Which I may be.]

Multiculturalism Alert

Geneive Abdo writes of her interviews with America’s Muslims.

Ismahan recalled similar experiences. In elementary school, she had tried to fit in. As an adult, though, “I know I don’t have to fit in,” she said. “I don’t think Muslims have to assimilate. We are not treated like Americans. At work, I get up from my desk and go to pray. I thought I would face opposition from my boss. Even before I realized he didn’t mind, I thought, ‘I have a right to be a Muslim, and I don’t have to assimilate.’ “

The article goes to desperate lengths to spin this as an upsurge in faith, and being different from “those” Muslims in Europe who have started killing their own countrymen. It may be true. But this should be raising all sorts of red flags.

Lack of assimilation is bad, even if the group in question isn’t part of a culture with violent, fascist tendencies. No matter how benign on the surface, multiculturalism, or the failure to culturally assimilate, is malignant. It is corrosive to the national fabric and destructive to peace.

Multiculturalism is death.

Update:

To the charge that American Muslims aren’t so well assimilated, one answers Yes, we are. He makes some fair points.

The whole issue of identity is really not as critical as that of modernity. Its reconciling tradition with modernity that is tricky. We all have multiple identities and we rarely “choose” one over another, but the conflict between modernity and tradition is sometimes trickier to navigate.

I think any kind of group identity can be a problem, but failure to modernize is really why goatherders are flying airplanes into skyscrapers. I don’t know how much I buy all of his apologetics (I haven’t followed all the links yet) but it seems worth a look. Ditto for the comments on that page.

Blue Helmet Hypocrisy

The UN likes to insist that it’s neutral. Being “neutral” to the UN seems to mean about what being “bipartisan” means to Democrats. For one thing, it means revealing troop movements on its web site.

Which troops?

Take a wild guess.

Martyr for Multiculturalism

A headteacher in England had his life ruined because he dared criticize multiculturalism – twenty years too soon.

Mr Honeyford had made the mistake of espousing anti-multiculturalism before it was socially acceptable to do so, just as it was once wrong to be an anti-communist before everyone became one. He lost his career because his tone was wrong, and he did not subscribe to the then “correct” views of a very thorny subject. Hell hath no fury like a bien pensant contradicted.