There we go. Yawn.
“I don’t care who or what these criminals claim to be, but I can never recognize these criminals as part of my city or my faith community,” said Yusufi Vali, executive director for the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, the largest mosque in the Boston area.
Mr. Vali may want to look up the “No True Scotsman Fallacy“.
In Washington, Muslim leaders again condemned the attacks, sent condolences to the victims and said they were concerned with reprisal attacks against Muslims in the United States.
“Those responsible for the terrorist attacks in Boston must face justice,” Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, referred to as CAIR, told reporters at a hastily called news conference.
“The question will always come up if they are associated with our community,” Awad said.
“Our community and our faith detest and deplore these actions and these individuals. We do not know the motives of these individuals but our position has been consistent. Any act of violence against innocent people is deplorable and is condemned in our faith.
Isn’t it fabulous that he presumes to speak for over a billion Muslims in the world and tell them what their faith is or is not?
Or maybe it was the “heretics”:
Corey Saylor, legislative director for CAIR, said the group feared reprisals.
“Unfortunately every faith has within in it heretical elements, and unfortunately young people in general will listen to those elements.”
Well, no, Mr Saylor. In today’s world at least, levels of violence committing from Islam are not comparable to any other faith.
It gets better when they try to fool themselves and others into thinking it had nothing to do with Islam:
The suspects’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, described his nephews as “losers” who happened to be Muslims.
Tsarni told reporters outside his home in Montgomery Village, Maryland, that his nephews’ religion played no role in the attacks.
“Anything else to do with religion, with Islam, it’s a fraud, it’s a fake,” said Tsarni, who described the family as peace-loving, ethnic Chechens.
Asked what might have motivated his nephews to carry out such an attack, he said: “Being losers; hatred to those who were able to settle themselves. These are the only reasons I can imagine.”
Hmm. There are tons of losers who hate being losers but don’t use pressure cookers to kill and maim. I wonder why?
Well, here is the answer.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev appears to have become increasingly religious in the last three or four years, according to an analysis of his social media posts and the accounts of family members.
In August 2012, soon after returning from a long visit to Russia, he created a YouTube channel with links to a number of videos. Some include sermons or interviews with radical preachers.
Tsarnaev’s YouTube channel had the address “muazseyfullah,” which happen to be the names of two prominent militant leaders among Islamist groups in Russia’s north Caucasus, an area that includes Chechnya and Dagestan. Seyfullah also translates as “sword of Allah.”
One video talks about his beliefs, prayers and ablutions as a good Muslim. He speaks about leading a meaningful life; almost the very last word is “peace.” Another video is in praise of Muslim women who pray and dress conservatively.
Another video posted suggests a growing Salafist viewpoint, one common to militant Sunnis such as the Taliban in Afghanistan. It includes remarks by a Salafist sheikh, Abdul Hamid al Juhani, and references to the Salafist “brothers” from Chechnya as well as the violence in Syria. It also includes inflammatory remarks against Sufi Muslims — a frequent target of militant Sunnis.
Another video on Tsarnaev’s YouTube channel features a militant preacher, Feiz Muhammad, with a considerable online following. The video does not include overt jihadist sentiments, but the sermons of Muhammad — a firebrand Lebanese-Australian preacher — openly sympathize with al Qaeda’s worldview.
“The war on terrorism is nothing but a war on Islam and on Muslims,” he said in one widely available video, calling Americans “pigs” and “evil.” In another tape, he urged young Muslims to become martyrs.
There are other aspects of Tsarnaev’s life that suggest growing religiosity. His father, speaking from the Russian republic of Dagestan on Friday, said Tamerlan was religious but in a peaceful way. And one of his aunts, Maret Tsarnaev, who lives in Canada, said she believed he had become more religious in the past two years.
“Just recently, maybe two years ago, he started praying five times a day, which is, I don’t see anything bad in it,” she said.
Right. I am sure she doesn’t. But the facts seem clear: he wasn’t a murderer who happened to be a Muslim. He became a murderer because he was a Muslim.
So here is a suggestion for moderate Muslims. Are you guys ever going to have some backbone and get to the cause of the problem, not the symptoms? Are you ever going to stop wringing your hands, and rather than decrying violence being blamed on Islam, admit that Islamic orthodoxy has a problem? That the Koran is not literally true, every word? That Koranic literalism, while does not by itself lead to violence, greatly facilitates it? That a literal belief in the Koran, with all its anti-Semitism and calls to violence, cannot be the basis of life in a pluralistic society? If the answer to all these questions is no, then by all means whine all you want. It won’t make a difference.
