When Islamists tell us the truth, can't we just listen?

Submitted by Jeff (United States), Mar 5, 2013 at 13:01

After a bomb almost exploded in Times Square in 2010, our press and public servants swung into action.

Mayer Bloomberg had a solid theory, though not quite on the mark: "Homegrown maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything."

And, with blatant wishful thinking, news outlets reported a security picture of a "white man" leaving the area. In fact, no one could tell the race of the person in that grainy picture.

After his arrest, NPR talked about Shahzad's stress level, having had his house foreclosed upon. They didn't bother to explore how many other of the thousands of Americans who faced foreclosure at the time had not responded by trying to blow up busy city intersections.

The rest of us generally had a different (and correct) theory as to the motivation behind the attempted mass murder.

One person was willing to clear all this up, Faisal Shahzad himself, who said, at his sentencing, "This is but one life. If I am given a thousand lives, I will sacrifice them all for the sake of Allah, fighting this cause, defending our lands, making the word of Allah supreme over any religion or system."

And, "Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the flood that will follow me."

And "We do not accept your democracy or your freedom because we already have Sharia law and freedom."

And when he was sentenced to life in prison, he replied, "Allahu akbar."

So Shahzad could be perfectly honest, but we can't. And, we can't even discuss the implications of what he honestly said. Once he said what he said, he just disappeared into prison. If only he had yelled that the foreclosure made him do it, or that he'd faced racism amidst the horrors of living in Connecticut, we'd probably have had about a dozen prison interviews by now.

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