Intentionally misunderstanding things

There is a new website out there called Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things.  It shows pictures of Muslims in clothes other than those associated with Sharia law.  The person who started the website did so for a very specific reason:

Former NPR analyst Juan Williams, among other ignorant people, has an irrational fear of Muslims, and thinks you can identify them based on what they look like. Here I will post pictures of Muslims wearing all sorts of things in an attempt to refute that there is such a thing as “Muslim garb” or a Muslim look.

In other words, the site’s whole point is to prove that not all Muslims wear Muslim garb.  Well, duh.  Williams’ point wasn’t that he’s afraid of Muslims generally. It was that, when he sees people in traditional Muslim garb, he has a frisson of fear, because people who embrace traditional Muslim garb also seem attached to certain traditional Muslim ideas, such as violent jihad against anyone perceived as an enemy of Islam.

The website is cute, and it’s a nice reminder that a lot of Muslims around the world are assimilated and have no interesting in jihad.  But it doesn’t do anything to refute the core concern Williams was stating:  namely, that significant numbers of Muslims are committed to the overthrow of the West and the destruction of the Jews, and that there’s a strong correlation between Muslims holding those views and Muslims embracing traditional dress, if not for themselves, than for the women in their lives.

In the spirit of fairness, let me include here a very small sampling of pictures of Muslims in traditional garb who engaged in activities that might trigger rational fear:

Nidal Malik Hasan, killed 13 at Fort Hood
Khalid Shiekh Muhammad, 9/11 mastermind, 2996 dead
Anwar-al-Awlaki, Hasan's mentor & advocate of American murders
Muslim protester in London
Omar Abdel-Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing

I enthusiastically support those Muslims who embrace Western values, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association.  Only someone who is being deliberately obtuse, however, could pretend that there isn’t a strong correlation between those Muslims who embrace traditional garb and those who do not share those Western values — and who sometimes take their estrangement from Western values to extremely bloody conclusions.