"I honestly have no pity for them"

Following the criticism of some BBC coverage of the Fort Hood killings, credit is due to the BBC’s Gavin Lee for including in his report this morning the following interview with a young Muslim from the same mosque attended by Major Hasan (the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen) :

Duane : I’m not going to condemn him for what he did. I don’t know why he did it. I will not, absolutely not, condemn him for what he had done though. If he had done it for selfish reasons I still will not condemn him. He’s my brother in the end. I will never condemn him.
Gavin Lee : There might be a lot of people shocked to hear you say that.
Duane: Well, that’s the way it is. I don’t speak for the community here but me personally I will not condemn him.
Gavin Lee : What are your thoughts towards those that were victims in this?
Duane : They were, in the end, they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them. It’s just like the majority of the people that will hear this, after five or six minutes they’ll be shocked, after that they’ll forget about them and go on their day.

The full segment from which this was taken can be heard here.

I wonder if this is the same Duane from the same mosque quoted in the New York Times (my emphasis):

Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it.
“He said he should quit the Army,” Mr. Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”

PC PR

Mark Mardell:

The alleged murderer was clearly a Muslim, but there is very little to suggest that he adhered to a hard-line interpretation of his religion or that he had political or religious motives.

Really? How about this, Mark?

A US officer who killed 13 soldiers in a gun rampage at a Texas army base shouted a triumphant Islamic proclamation before opening fire, it was claimed today.
Army spokesman Lieutenant General Bob Cone said witnesses heard Major Nidal Malik Hasan cry “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is great” – before opening fire at the Fort Hood complex.

And this?

He gave a Grand Rounds presentation. . . You take turns giving a lecture on, you know, the correct treatment of schizophrenia, the right drugs to prescribe for personality disorder, you know, that sort of thing. But instead of giving an academic paper, he gave a lecture on the Koran, and they said it didn’t seem to be just an informational lecture, but it seemed to be his own beliefs. That’s what a lot of people thought.

He talked about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire. And I said well couldn’t this just be his educating you? And the psychiatrist said yes, but one of the Muslims in the audience, another psychiatrist, raised his hand and was quite disturbed and he said you know, a lot of us don’t believe these things you’re saying, and that there was no place where Hasan couched it as this is what the Koran teaches but you know I don’t believe it. And people actually talked in the hallway afterwards about ‘is he one of these people that’s going to freak out and shoot people someday?’

[snip]

“A source tells NPR’s Joseph Shapiro that Hasan was put on probation early in his postgraduate work at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. He was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues, according to the source, who worked with him at the time.”

It’s not as if Mark Mardell hasn’t had time to read the internet today:

But for some, nothing less than a conspiracy will do as an explanation. On the website of a respected newspaper, I see one poster has blamed Barack Obama, whom he calls “that Marxist thug”. It’s not that it’s hard to follow the logic; it’s that there isn’t any.

Mardell would rather recount the idiotic comments of one goofball he’s read on a website somewhere than concede that the motives of a Muslim mass murderer could be down to his religion. Never mind the killer, check out this fruitcake instead; right wing nutters are the real problem here in America, nudge nudge.

He concludes:

Still, searching for patterns and for answers is part of what it is to be human. I loathe cliche, but perhaps, for once, this is a “senseless tragedy”, devoid of deeper meaning.

Nothing to do with the Religion of Peace! Repeat – nothing to do with the Religion of Peace!

Here’s another cliché for you Mark – wake up and smell the coffee.

Update:

In the morning, neighbors said Hasan handed Qurans and donated his furniture to anyone who would take it.

Update:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people and wounding 30 others at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas, regularly described the war on terror as “a war against Islam,” according to a doctor who was in a graduate program with him.

While studying for a masters degree in public health in 2007, Hasan used a presentation for an environmental health class to argue that Muslims were being targeted by the U.S. anti-terror campaign, said Val Finnell, a classmate.

THE ISLAMIC ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM..

Interesting interview here this morning on the issue of the booming British population. Is it me or does Mr Humphyrs entirely miss the central issue – namely that the predominant reason for a booming UK population is due to “foreign born” mothers (Mostly Muslims) having way above replacement level birth rates whist the indigenous population birth-rate falls below replacement level. I found this a curious interview in the fine BBC tradition of ignoring the Islamic elephant in the room. Across the European Nations, the birth-rates of the indigenous people is below population replacement level, with Spain being perhaps the lowest in the world. (Perhaps the real tragedy of Andalusia awaits?)This devastating demographic is sidelined in BBC coverage of this topic and instead Humphyrs witters on about us having 2.5 children as if we were back in the 1960’s. I would like to see the BBC tackle the more substantive aspects to this topic but suggest they would run a mile from doing so lest it offend certain multiculti sensitivities.

THOSE PESKY "MILITANTS"

I see that the BBC is suggesting that “at least 10 militants have died after missiles were fired by a suspected US drone aircraft at a Taliban target in Pakistan, intelligence officials say. “ Finally, a strike that doesn’t involve a “wedding party.” Go USA. Of course the thing that gets me is the use of politically correct language at play here. Those killed weren’t “militants” – they were Islamic Jihadists. Why not SAY it? Why imply that the Taliban and Al Queda are some sort of professional army when in fact they are merely opportunistic and cowardly killers driven by the mad pathology of Islam? I wish we could speak a little more truth but then again the BBC has contorted and bent so many words out of all recognition.

BBC TRADITIONS

Hey Soap opera fans – good news!

“EastEnders is to tackle one of the last taboos left in soap, with a storyline featuring a Muslim character embarking on a gay love affair. MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal that the plot, which will hit screens in mid-June, will see Syed Masood, a Muslim property developer with a girlfriend who arrived in Albert Square six weeks ago, fall for openly gay Christian Clarke. The pair will share an on-screen kiss.

The BBC has billed the storyline as a “traditional love affair, albeit with a modern multicultural twist”. The BBC1 soap’s production team researched the plot, which is bound to prove controversial with some viewers, contacting academics, gay Muslim support groups and members of the Muslim Council of Great Britain.

So, in BBC world, gay love affairs are “traditional” – and any effort to give the multiculti Muslim twist has been handled sensitively as the dialogue with the MCB indicates. I am sure Britain’s Muslims will take the gay Islam kiss in the spirit the BBC intends, or at least I hope so.

ISLAM AND CIVILISATION

I wonder what being Muslim in name only means?

The BBC has an item on Today asking if Islam is not compatible with modernity, can Islam ever comfortably conform to Western society? Ali Allawi, former cabinet minister in the Iraqi post-war governments, argues in his new book The Crisis of Islamic Civilisation that Muslim modernisers have been seduced by a certainty in scientific knowledge to the extent that they are now Muslim in name alone.

Not sure where this one goes. It seems to me that for some Islamics their interest in “scientific knowledge” does not extend much beyond wiring up an explosives belt or planting a road site bomb. Or maybe piloting a plane or two. To express such a view on the BBC, as I have done on a few occasions, is to invoke the wrath of the Beeboids. It strikes me that Muslim modernisers is an oxymoronic term, a bit like principled politician or balanced BBC. Why can we not challenge Islam, just as every other faith is challenged? Might it be that whilst all religions are equal, some are more equal than others?

Just simple preachers.

In the comments to David’s recent post on Jacqui Smith’s list of people denied access to Britain, Not A Sheep has pointed out an example of BBC bias that achieves a sort of holy perfection.

Take a look at this BBC effort to inform the public: Who is on UK ‘least wanted’ list?. What do Abdullah Qadri Al Ahdal, Yunis Al Astal, Safval Hijazi and the wonderfully named Wadgy Abd El Hameid Mohamed Ghoneim all have in common? That’s right. They are all preachers. Of something or other. Mike Guzovsky, however, is a Jewish militant.

Oops, sorry. I got that wrong. Amir Siddique is the fourth preacher-of-no-particular-message. Wadgy Abd El Hameid Mohamed Ghoneim is actually a “speaker and writer”. He speaks and writes about we know not what.

As Not A Sheep says:

…there are eight Muslim “extremists” on the list (four of whom are described as preachers) but only one is identified as a follower of Islam, there is one Jew on the list and his religion is identified in the first word of his description, the American pastor’s religion is not directly named but as he is a “pastor” of a “Baptist church” that is not too tricky to deduce.

So my question to the BBC is this: why is it relevant to identify the religions of the one Jew and the one Christian (couple) on the list but in the majority of cases to leave the religion of Muslims on the list unidentified?

WHAT THE BBC WON’T COVER…

BBC bias by omission is much their preferred route. A news story which combines the twin dangers of Islam and the EU is not one that the State Broadcaster is interested in considering. So, instead we get to read about Berlusconi’s matrimonial disputes. It’s always a question of conformance to the narrative.



It depends where you start from…

There is room for a whole thesis-worth of discussion in this on-the-face-of-it stark raving lunatic headline from the BBC in this article:

‘Some Imams ‘biased against women”

What I say is this just points out the need to work harder at increasing the number of female Imams. Oh. Wait a minute…

The BBC- not p.c. at all, oh no.

Hat tip to DumbJon.