So let’s say that some very zealous, very strange missionaries arrived in a complex, multifaith city — perhaps even Mumbai, India.
Let’s say that they wanted to save souls. But, in addition to preaching to Hindus and Muslims and all kinds of people who live in India in large numbers, they went out of their way to preach at a highly symbolic Jewish location — perhaps even the Chabad House. It didn’t even seem to matter to these missionaries that there would be very few people at this location. They had to preach to Jews.
I’m making all of this up, of course.
But what would the press say about the motives of these very strange missionaries? Could we, based on their actions, assume that they believed they had a unique mission to preach to Jews? What would it mean to single out Jews in a city of this kind? Journalists would almost certainly report that these missionaries had an unhealthy obsession with converting Jews. Correct?
So what does it mean when you read the following Washington Post language in yet another report about the massacre at the Chabad House in Mumbai, where this highly trained, highly skilled team of terrorists focused on Americans, Brits and, yes, Jews?
Speaking in London, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that American and British citizens had been “singled out” for attack by the assailants. Officials in Washington, meanwhile, said they had independently corroborated Indian intelligence that links the attacks to Lashkar-i-Taiba, a Pakistan-based extremist group with roots in the disputed Kashmir region. …
It is not known how the attackers seized on the low-key Chabad House, along with high-profile hotels and a train station, as one of their 10 targets.
How did the killers seize on Chabad House? Perhaps they entered “Mumbai,” “Jews” and “center” into an Internet search engine? Is it really a mystery why they went out of their way to send a team to kill a handful of people at Chabad House, instead of another public target where more people would be sure to die?
If you still doubt that the killers had cultural and, dare we say, religious reasons to target Jews — some unique obsession with Jews — that doubt should end with the following report from the Telegraph. Reporter Damien McElroy offered this strikingly candid lede:
Jewish victims made up a disproportionate number of the foreigners killed after 10 Muslim fanatics stormed a series of sites in the Indian financial capital.
Muslim? Isn’t this a case where we need to use “Islamist” or some other more specific term?
And later we read:
Doctors expressed horror at the condition of the bodies recovered from the Nariman Building, which housed the Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch retreat.
“I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was traumatised,” a mortician said. “It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood.”
So the leaders of this death squad, for mysterious reasons, assigned a team to go kill Jews where they knew Jews could be found. It also appears that these victims were tortured. Were victims tortured elsewhere?
This raises an obvious question. The killers targeted Jews in a unique manner. It appears that they may have singled out Jews for torture. And, as Julia Duin just noted in a blog post over at the Washington Times, it does not appear that the leaders of American newsrooms are as willing to report many of these hellish facts as journalists in Europe and, yes, Israel.
Surely this strange equation adds up to something. I am not sure what. But it adds up to something.
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Comments (12) |
December 2, 2008, at 3:09 pm
The actions of terrorists stand out for barbarity and hatred of other “People of the Book”. But we should keep in mind the larger context of relations between Muslims and Christians & Jews.
Lighting up the blogosphere is the offer by the King of Saudi Arabia to build a Mosque in Moscow and the counter request to build a Church in Saudi Arabia. It’s related because it it speaks to the feelings between the religions, at least on the official level.
December 2, 2008, at 6:32 pm
The Mumbai terrorists were after more than mere Jews. They wanted to kill Israeli Jews, the primary population served by the Mumbai Chabad center - which the terrorists surely knew.
Killing Israeli Jews is the big prize for Islamist terrorists. It satisfies their lust for vengeance against Israel while allowing their sympathizers an added measure of justification for the brutality.
Note that none of the terrorists has been identified as Palestinian, or Arab of any nationality. So far as we know the terrorists were all Pakistani, or at least South Asian, Muslims. None had a direct connection to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Yet they choose to go after Israeli Jews.
That says something about the degree of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred across the Muslim world.
December 2, 2008, at 10:43 pm
Are there two closer religious groups than the children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael? Yet, certain discrete elements, not all, but some, adherents to Islam are inheritors of the Nazi modus operandi to classify Jews with vermin, to blend and confuse the two.
It is not an easy thing to undo this association and certainly “not upon us to finish the work.” But “neither are we free to desist from it.”
Clearly we have a lot of work to do and “anihilate all adherents to Islam” is far from the answer. Anyone have a plan? Anyone know a place to begin?
December 3, 2008, at 9:07 am
Exactly what is meant by ‘Islamist’over and against ‘Muslim’?
December 3, 2008, at 9:08 am
[…] If the terrorists in Mumbai intended to foment hostility between Hindu India and Moslem Pakistan … why locate, torture, and kill Jews? […]
December 3, 2008, at 9:08 am
[…] If the terrorists in Mumbai intended to foment hostility between Hindu India and Moslem Pakistan … why locate, torture, and kill Jews? […]
December 3, 2008, at 9:09 am
DAVE G:
“Islamist” is a word that the media started using for those who are creating a complete and violent fusion between politics and their interpretation of the Muslim faith. The key is violence against those — including other Muslims — who do not share their approach to living as a Muslim in the modern world.
December 3, 2008, at 9:11 am
[…] If the terrorists in Mumbai intended to foment hostility between Hindu India and Moslem Pakistan … why locate, torture, and kill Jews? […]
December 3, 2008, at 12:55 pm
Exceptionally informative story in the St Louis Post Dispatch today about the Chabad community centers. It’s by Michele Munz.
She not only describes the movement and its history, but also attends a speech by the local Chabad director of Greater St Louis to the kids at the local Yeshiva High School about the events in Mumbai, with a few words from the school’s principal. And there are bits about the local Mahatma Gandhi Cultural Center’s reaction and the gesture of good will it received from the local Islamic Foundation.
Great story. “Jews told to turn tragedy into goodness”
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/religion/story/81DA8B1D45E0684B8625751400162CC7?OpenDocument
December 3, 2008, at 5:24 pm
Equally strange is when the media does report on an attack and notes the Jewish identity of the target, but the information still fails to register upon the public consciousness. In the period following the July 2006 attack by Naveed Afzal Haq on Seattle’s Jewish Federation Center, in which he shot six, one fatally, I was amazed that my fellow Christians would give blank looks when I would ask if they had heard about the incident.
December 3, 2008, at 5:55 pm
Really? Sounds like the media got that one wrong. “Islamist” applies to those who want to return to a strict interpretation of Islam and http://www.answers.com/islamist agrees with me.
December 4, 2008, at 7:07 am
Jerry, who says Answers.com is right? Look at Wikipedia on Islamism and you’ll find lots of sources that agree with the way the media uses the word. In fact, the media began using the words Islamism and Islamist because experts on Islam created it to make the distinction between Islam as a religion and Islam as a political ideology. It’s an important distinction and our reporting would be poorer without it.