The Common Thread of the left: Today Islam

Yes­ter­day we talked Hamas now lets talk Islam in our series of the com­mon theme of the left series.

Item: This story that has got­ten very lit­tle press in the three days since it did:

Four South­ern Cal­i­for­nia men have been charged with plot­ting to kill Amer­i­cans and destroy U.S. tar­gets over­seas by join­ing al-​Qaida and the Tal­iban in Afghanistan, fed­eral offi­cials said Monday.

The defen­dants, includ­ing a man who served in the U.S. Air Force, were arrested for plot­ting to bomb mil­i­tary bases and gov­ern­ment facil­i­ties, and for plan­ning to engage in “vio­lent jihad,” FBI spokes­woman Laura Eimiller said in a release.

Four men what kind of men?

A fed­eral com­plaint unsealed Mon­day says 34-​year-​old Sohiel Omar Kabir of Pomona intro­duced two of the other men to the rad­i­cal Islamist doc­trine of Anwar al-​Awlaki, a deceased al-​Qaida leader. Kabir served in the Air Force from 2000 to 2001.

The other two — 23-​year-​old Ralph Deleon of Ontario and 21-​year-​old Miguel Ale­jan­dro San­tana Vidri­ales of Upland — con­verted to Islam in 2010 and began engag­ing with Kabir and oth­ers online in dis­cus­sions about jihad, includ­ing post­ing rad­i­cal con­tent to Face­book and express­ing extrem­ist views in comments.

They later recruited 21-​year-​old Arifeen David Gojali of Riverside.

Oh Islamic men, strangely enough Al Qaeda doesn’t have a lot of luck recruit­ing Methodists. Jim Treacher opines:

Sup­port­ers of Islamic ter­ror­ism? In South­ern Cal­i­for­nia? Talk about hid­ing in plain sight.

Okay, you can now for­get this ever hap­pened. And by no means should you try to con­nect it with any other inci­dents, past or future. It’s just another in a long line of com­pletely unre­lated events, and it’ll stay that way unless you want to reveal your­self as a racist.

Any ques­tions, racist?

Yes you would be racist to bring up this just as you are intolorant if you object to gay marriage…with some excep­tions:

A female teacher of Islamic reli­gious stud­ies is caus­ing stir with her dec­la­ra­tions. As reported by Der Stan­dard, while giv­ing a les­son on reli­gion the woman allegedly declared among other things that homo­sex­u­als should be incinerated.

Note she didn’t say they couldn’t get mar­ried before they are incin­er­ated. The reac­tion of the Islamic community?

The Islamic Reli­gious Com­mu­nity pre­sumes that after hav­ing spent a whole year near Mecca, she has lost sense of what one can say in a West­ern society.”

Note that, not what is true, not what is right, what can be said.

What can’t be said is any cri­tique of Islam, no mat­ter how true.