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[bryant]

The sniper seems to have been caught, which is great news. Not so great news: he recently changed his last name to Muhammad, and reportedly converted to Islam some years ago. Inevitably, some people are rushing to point out how dangerous those Muslims are.

I thought about it. In the last ten years, if we look at domestic terrorism, the score is American Christians 2 and American Muslims 1. Kaczynski and McVeigh beat Muhammad. Clearly -- very clearly -- Christians are bad news and very dangerous.

You heard it here first. Muslims make better Americans.

The danger is that we'll ignore the real cognate, which is terrorism and membership in Al Qaeda. The latter happens to have a prerequisite. You need to be Muslim. That doesn't speak to the terroristic tendencies of Muslims; it speaks to the prejudices of Osama bin Laden. He was in a position to leverage his hatred, but that says nothing about the likelihood that the Muslim on the street will be a terrorist.

It is dangerous (I'm tempted to say treasonous, but that would be wrong) to sweep all this under the generic rug of "Islamic terrorism." There's no such thing as Islamic terrorism, just as there's no such thing as a black quarterback or a woman rock star. There are quarterbacks who happen to be black, there are rock stars who happen to be female, and there are terrorists who happen to be Islamic. None of those adjectives have a material effect on the nature of what they do.

Comments

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

There's no such thing as a black quarterback or a woman rock star. There are quarterbacks who happen to be black, there are rock stars who happen to be female.... None of those adjectives have a material effect on the nature of what they do.

On "black quarterback," I'll agree. On "woman rock star," I don't -- mainly because rock'n'roll music is so tangled up with sexuality that gender does have an influence.

[bryant]

Touche -- an excellent point.

Let's replace woman rock star with gay politician. Or for snide points, gay political commentator...