The New York Times continues to hide the ball from its readers
I’m less interested in “Little Mosque On the Prairie,” a new Canadian show aiming to take a humorous look at how stressful it is to be a Muslim in the West (which is entirely different, of course from the stresses placed on Christians living in Muslim dominated countries), then I am in the subliminal reporting about the flying Imam’s incident. Let’s start with the charming, light-hearted opening to the New York Times review:
The handsome, clean-cut young man of evidently Pakistani or Indian origin is standing in an airport line, gesticulating emphatically as he says into his cellphone, “If Dad thinks that’s suicide, so be it,” adding after a pause, “This is Allah’s plan for me.”
As might be expected, a cop materializes almost instantly and drags the man off, telling him that his appointment in paradise will have to wait, even though the suicide he is referring to is of the career kind; he’s giving up the law to pursue a more spiritual occupation.
The scene unrolls early in the pilot of a new Canadian comedy series called “Little Mosque on the Prairie.”
Yet that fictional moment is an all-too-possible occurrence, as witnessed when six imams were hauled off a US Airways plane in Minnesota in November after apparently spooking at least one fellow passenger by murmuring prayers that included the word Allah. (Emphasis mine.)
Can Neil MacFarquhar, the man who wrote the above, really be so misinformed about what happened in Minnesota? Does Mr. MacFarquhar truly sit tight in his little Manhattan office and think the imams were tagged because they “murmured” prayers?
The actual report about the imams conduct, a report that was available by the time MacFarquhar wrote those sardonic little words, described much more extreme and scary conduct, both in the airport and on the airplane. Debra Burlingame, whose brother died on 9/11 piloting one of the planes, summarizes what actually happened:
The reality is, these passengers endured a frightening 3 1/2-hour ordeal, which included a front-to-back sweep of the aircraft with a bomb-sniffing dog, in order to advance the provocative agenda of these imams in, of all the inappropriate places after 9/11, U.S. airports.
“Allahu Akbar” was just the opening act. After boarding, they did not take their assigned seats but dispersed to seats in the first row of first class, in the midcabin exit rows and in the rear–the exact configuration of the 9/11 execution teams. The head of the group, seated closest to the cockpit, and two others asked for a seatbelt extension, kept on board for obese people. A heavy metal buckle at the end of a long strap, it can easily be used as a lethal weapon. The three men rolled them up and placed them on the floor under their seats. And lest this entire incident be written off as simple cultural ignorance, a frightened Arabic-speaking passenger pulled aside a crew member and translated the imams’ suspicious conversations, which included angry denunciations of Americans, furious grumblings about U.S. foreign policy, Osama Bin Laden and “killing Saddam.”
No wonder so many Democrats discount the dangers we face against an implacable enemy. Their secular Bible — the New York Times — assiduously works at all levels to keep them not just ignorant, but actively misinformed. No wonder NY Times readers keep castigating the rest of America for overreacting. I’d think we were overreacting too if we got up in arms when a few men quietly murmur to themselves in the corner of an airport. However, I think anyone who downplays what the imams actually did — and they certainly did these acts both to create a cause célèbre and to deter American travelers and airlines from reporting such conduct in future — is an idiot.
del.icio.us
digg it
