I received the following rather bigoted editorial as a
Forward along with the tag "No comment necessary." As if this Florida
editor states the simple truth and one needn't say more. I think the opposite
is true. Some remarks follow the text. --E.
* * *
Below is an editorial from Sunday's edition (April 4, 2004)
of a Florida newspaper located in the Florida's panhandle. Someone who
reads this paper thought that the editorial was worth a wider distribution and
retyped it to send out over the Internet.
Phil Lucas, the paper's Executive Editor, wrote this
article published in The News Herald, Panama City, Florida, Sunday April 4, 2004. His email
address is plucas@pcnh.com. The News Herald web site is found at http://www.newsherald.com/
By Phil Lucas, Executive Editor, Panama City New Herald
If straight talk of savagery offends you, if you believe in ethnic and gender diversity but not diversity of thought or if you think there is an acceptable gray area between good and evil, then turn to the funny pages, and take the children, too. This piece is not for you.
We published pictures Thursday of burnt American corpses hanging from an Iraqi bridge behind a mob of grinning Muslims. Some readers didn't like it.
Mothers said it frightened their
children. A woman who works with
Muslim physicians thought it might offend or endanger them. Well, we sure don't want to frighten,
offend or endanger anybody, do we? That's just too much diversity to
handle. I mean, somebody might get hurt.
We could fill the newspaper every
morning with mobs of fanatical Muslims. They can't get along with their
neighbors on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain,
Morocco, India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc. etc. etc. Can anybody name three ongoing
world conflicts in which Muslims are not involved? Today, where there is war,
there are fanatical Muslims.
We might quibble about who started
what conflicts, but look at the sheer number of them.
One thing is sure. Muslim killers
started the one we are in now when they slaughtered more that 3,000 people,
including fellow Muslims, in New York City.
Madeleine Albright, the former
secretary of state and feckless appeaser who helped get us into this mess, said
last week Muslims still resent the Crusades. Well, Madam Albright, if
Westerners were not such a forgiving people, we might resent them too.
Let's recap the Crusades. Muslims
invaded Europe, and when they reached sufficient numbers, they imposed their
intolerant religion upon Westerners by force. Christian monarchs drove them
back and took the battle to their homeland. The fight lasted a couple of
centuries, and we bottled them up for 1,000 years.
Now, a millennium later, Muslims
have expanded forth again. Ask France. Ask England. Ask
Manhattan. Two-and-a-half years ago fanatical Muslims laid siege to
us. We woke up to the obvious. Our president announced it would be
a very long war, then took the battle to the Islamic homeland. Sound Familiar?
Let's consider the concept of a
"long war." Last time it was 200 years, give or take.
Anybody catch Lord of the Rings? You know, the good part, the part that wasn't
fiction, the part that drew us to the books and movies because it was the
truest part: the titanic struggle between good and evil, between freedom and
enslavement, between the individual and the state, between the celebration of
life and the worshipping of death.
That's the fight we are in, and it
never ends. It just has peaks and valleys.
There may be a silent majority of
peaceful Muslims - some live here - but that did not save 3,000 people in the
World Trade Center, the million gassed and butchered in the Middle East, the
tens of thousands slain in Eastern Europe and Asia, the hundreds blown to bits
in the West Bank and Spain, or the four Americans shot, burned and hung like
sausage over the Euphrates as a fanatical minority of Muslims did the joyful
dance of death.
Maybe we are so tolerant, we are
so bent on "diversity," we are so nonjudgmental, we are so wrapped up
in our six-packs and ballgames that our brains have drained to our bulbous
behinds. Maybe we're so addled on Ritalin we wouldn't know which end of a gun
to hold. Maybe we need a new drug advertised on TV every three minutes,
one that would help us grow a backbone.
It doesn't take a Darwin to figure
out that in this world the smartest, the fastest, the strongest, and the most
committed always win. No exceptions.
Look at your spouse and
children. Look at your self in the
mirror. Then look at the pictures from the paper last
Thursday. You better look at them. Those are the people out to kill
you.
Who do you think will win?
You? Or them? Think you can take your ball and go home and they
will leave you alone? Read a little history. Start with last week,
last month, last year, and every other year back for half a century. Then
go back a thousand years. Nobody hides from this fight.
Like it or not, that's the way it
was and that's the way it is. But many Americans don't get it.
That's why we published those
pictures.
If they jarred you off the sofa,
if they offended you, if they scared your children and sent you into a rage at
mass murderers or heartless editors, then I say, it's a start.
---------
Lucas' article is a good example of the
kind of shoddy thing that passes for political commentary in the U.S. recently. The editor is against fanaticism, but
his own writing exhibits a particularly virulent fanaticism. Many who read his article may not see
this at first. But only consider a
few paragraphs closely, and things become clearer. Are this writer's assertions founded? Is his stance against fanaticism
genuine?
Lucas writes: "Madeleine Albright . . . said last week
Muslims still resent the Crusades. Well, Madam Albright, if Westerners were not
such a forgiving people, we might resent them too.
"Let's recap the Crusades.
Muslims invaded Europe, and when they reached sufficient numbers, they imposed
their intolerant religion upon Westerners by force. Christian monarchs drove
them back and took the battle to their homeland. The fight lasted a
couple of centuries, and we bottled them up for 1,000 years."
----In these sentences Mr. Lucas reaches his irresponsible
peak. I begin with these sentences
because they are the clearest example of willful deception. Lucas is intentionally distorting
history here. He is intentionally
lying to his reader.
He writes about the Muslim period in Spain. It's a fact that Muslim monarchs ruled
much of Spain for centuries and that they were finally driven out by Christian
monarchs. What Lucas implies,
however, is that the Muslim monarchs in Spain imposed their religion on their
subjects by force and that things changed after the Christians drove them
out. Unfortunately, both Muslim
and Christian historians will tell you otherwise.
The Muslim monarchs of Spain were certainly not tolerant by
modern standards: they imposed a separate and discriminatory law code on
Christian and Jewish subjects, and in the course of their centuries of rule
there were other excesses (slavery, for one). But the fact is that in general the Muslim rulers tolerated
the existence of these other religions under their rule, which is something
that cannot, unfortunately, be said for the Christian monarchs who
"liberated" Spain from them.
Have readers ever heard of the Spanish Inquisition?
The judgment of historians, in this instance, is clear: The
Muslims and Jews of Spain suffered more under the Christian monarchs than
Christians and Jews had suffered under the Muslims. The Christian monarchs proved more, not less, intolerant
than their Muslim precursors.----
Lucas writes: "If straight talk of savagery offends
you, if you believe in ethnic and gender diversity but not diversity of thought
or if you think there is an acceptable gray area between good and evil, then
turn to the funny pages, and take the children, too. This piece is not
for you."
----Well, well.
I myself do believe in ethnic diversity. I suppose this Florida editor doesn't.
As regards the question of good and evil, I think it was
demonstrated repeatedly over the last century that one of the greatest evils is
that which divides the world into a moral black and white. Because it is always "They are the
black and we are the white."
And soon after the black and white hats are distributed, the pogroms
begin. This is how the Nazis
worked, this is how Stalinism worked, this is how both Mao and Pol Pot
worked. Our Florida editor
apparently wants to praise this tradition of clear "black and white"
thinking.
But also: Have you ever noticed that it's usually stories
for children that divide things clearly into black and white? Like the first Stars Wars movie? So why is it that people--adults--who see the world mainly
in shades of grey are asked to turn to the funny pages?
One of the great things about the U.S. and Europe is that
our humanism and democracy make it possible for us to have ethnically diverse
societies: societies where there may be tensions between different ethnic and
religious groups, but where getting along is the norm. If most people in America had the kind
of knee-jerk desire to generalize and label others that this Phil Lucas has,
our ethnic diversity wouldn't be possible. We'd break apart into the kind of feuding, mutually
hate-filled ethnic blocks that, say, Iraq is divided into.
But also: on black-and-whitists like Lucas, and why such
thinking is un-Christian, I invite you to check
http://www.necessaryprose.com/blackandwhite.htm
----
Lucas writes: "We published pictures Thursday of burnt
American corpses hanging from an Iraqi bridge behind a mob of grinning
Muslims."
----Notice how this writer sticks doggedly to the term
"Muslims." He could have
called them "grinning Iraqis," as a responsible journalist might, but
instead he calls them "grinning Muslims." Why?
I myself am a Christian, but I can see
that this is tendentious rhetoric designed to lead the reader to hate Muslims as
such. If a writer wanted to make Christians
look bad, he or she could do this with Western history too. Consider how easy it is: "In the
18th century, Christians set up a brutal and inhuman system whereby Africans
were captured in their homeland, then dragged across the ocean and worked to
death. During World War II the
Christians incinerated millions of Jews in the most horrible case of genocide
the world has known. It was only
in a Christian country that such an atrocity could happen, as is proven by the
fact that the only other time something similar happened it was also in a
Christian country (i.e., the Spanish Inquisition). The Christians developed nuclear weapons, the most destructive
weapon on the planet. In Christian
laboratories chemical weapons were first developed. Christians preach peace and love, but they work overtime on
the science of death. The
Christians. . . ." Etc.,
etc.
Such blanket identification of historical mayhem with one of the world's major religions is unfair, whether one does it to Christians or Muslims. The sentences I've just penned above are the kind of thing that might appear in the hate-filled propaganda favored by followers of Osama bin Laden. There is nothing praiseworthy in an American journalist who resorts to this kind of shoddy rhetoric.----
Lucas writes: "We could fill the
newspaper every morning with mobs of fanatical Muslims."
----This is undoubtedly true. As it is true that we could fill the newspapers every
morning with news about environmental destruction, or with news about people
doing good. It is always, with the
news, a matter of what editors consider newsworthy.----
Lucas writes: "They can't get along with their neighbors
on much of the planet: France, Chechnya, Bosnia, Indonesia, Spain, Morocco,
India, Tunisia, Somalia, etc. etc. etc. Can anybody name three ongoing world
conflicts in which Muslims are not involved?"
----This certainly has some truth to it. But how is it that France and Spain are
listed? Are there wars going on in
France? And then Chechnya, which
the Russians have imperialized--is it really true the Muslims there are in the
wrong to fight against the Russians?
And then Morocco--what is the battle now in Morocco? I didn't know there was one. And in Bosnia? Didn't the Christian Serbs begin a
campaign of ethnic cleansing which then galvanized the Muslims to fight
back? In short: this list is
shoddy. The writer wants to imply
that Muslims everywhere are warlike, that they are always causing wars. But in many of the "battles"
mentioned in this list it is a case of Muslims defending themselves against
attackers. Rhetorical lists like
this, long lists that sound impressive, tend to fall apart when you look at
them closely.----
Lucas writes: "One thing is sure. Muslim killers
started the [battle] we are in now when they slaughtered more that 3,000
people, including fellow Muslims, in New York City."
----How does the following sentence sound? "One thing is sure: Christian
killers started the battle we are in now when they invaded our
country." This sentence, with
its evocation of "Christian killers," sounds quite repulsive, doesn't
it? And yet it is a sentence that
could be used by a Muslim explaining how Christians invaded then occupied his
country as part of an imperialist program. Muslims in most countries in the world could use this
sentence because most of their countries have been imperialized by one Western
power or another. A fanatical
Muslim who would be likely to use this kind of sentence is showing a
regrettable inability to separate religion from politics. A fanatical American editor who writes
this kind of sentence is doing the same thing.
I don't like the phrase "Muslim killers," just as
I don't like the phrase "Christian killers." It is a phrase intentionally designed
to promote hatred of a religious group.
In history there have been murderous Muslims and murderous Christians,
but that doesn't mean we should extend the epithet to the whole of Islam or
Christendom. To do so only spreads
hatred; it only makes things worse.
"This battle was begun by Christian killers who
invaded our land and slaughtered thousands of our people." Such a sentence is a slur on Christianity
as such, yet the fact remains that this sentence is ultimately just as logical
as the one used by the bigoted editor who wrote the above editorial.
To Summarize--
Mr. Lucas' rhetorical aims are clear. But are such things praiseworthy in our
journalists? This editor proves
himself willing to distort basic historical truth in service to his goal:
making his readers join him in a chorus condemning Muslims as such; making his
readers accept his obvious theory that something in Islam makes its followers
evil, whereas we Westerners are "a forgiving people,"
"tolerant," even "too tolerant."
Eric Mader
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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This page is at http://www.necessaryprose.com/