Another Setback On A Related Battlefront

Submitted by Yonason (United States), May 27, 2005 at 15:07

This just in from Powerlineblog:
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"Dhimmitude, Hollywood-style

Diana West (//www.washtimes.com/op-ed/dwest.htm) writes about how the television show "24" knuckled under to pressure from the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and, if I'm reading Diana's piece correctly, converted a plot line about an Islamic terrorist cell into a tale of moral equivalence in which ex-U.S. military personnel are the bad guys. Perhaps they were afraid that the Professor Hinton's of the world would complain about euphemisms, stereotyping, and desensitization.

Posted by Paul at 08:10 AM | Permalink(//powerlineblog.com/archives/010572.php)"
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Do NOT underestimate the Islamist fifth column in the USA.

We normally only see a tiny fraction of their activity, and so we assume it isn't extensive and organized, ...but it is.

They are, and have been since well before 9/11, very agressively pursuing their agenda on every possible front. They lobby elected representatives, arrange informal meetings with FBI and other law-enforcement officials to address Mulsim "concerns," engage in campaigns of slander of other groups, elicit sympathy by posturing as victims, present falsified statistical data to support their claims, have writers in newspapers who advance their agenda, intimidate by feigning righteous indignation to gain a perceived moral advantage, etc., etc.

I exchanged some letters about this with Dr. Pipes shortly after 9/11, expressing my concern that we had a lot of catching-up to do in order to neutralize their ominous gains. But to date I can't say that the gap has narrowed. If anything, it may even have widened. There just doesn't seem to be enough awareness of, and/or interrest in the problem. I hope I'm wrong about this, but my sense is that the required sense of urgency appears lacking, as does the necessary organization.

I really thought, for example, that after seeing the suffering under Islamic law, the calls on some of their websites for advancing legislation that "reflects Islamic values" would give us more cause for concern than it has. The fact that it doesn't worries me.

Perhaps, if people had been aware that before 9/11 many, (more than 95% of those I looked at then), Islamic websites either advocated or had links to sites advocating violent jihad, they could see how pervasive the threat is? Unfortunately, in a post-9/11 world, you don't usually find them openly espousing world conquest and domination by any means. The result is that those who have 'tuned in late' are more likely to be mollified by Islamist propaganda, and less likely to perceive the threat.

As they say in the movies, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

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