Saturday, January 22, 2005

Newsday, Which Is More Important?

The Hat Tip of the Day goes to Little Green Footballs for their summary of this article, which appeared yesterday in Newsday (New York). Because this is the third time that a story has come out of Jersey City about Muslims plotting, executing, or cheering a terrorist attack either in Jersey City or in neighboring New York, Newsday ought to be ashamed of itself for consistently missing what's really important.

They focus on anti-Muslim sentiment in Jersey City, and have a totally one-sided set of interviews from Muslim leaders and selected Muslim respondents. All of them say that they are suffering unfairly from guilt-by-association--first with Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who planned the first World Trade Center attack; then with Mohammed Atta and his crew of hashshasheen (latter-day Assassins) who brought down the World Trade Center more than four years ago, and now with the still-at-large murders of Hossam Armanious and his family.

This case is already over a week old. Just one day of research on the Web would definitively identify incriminating passages in the Koran and the Hadith that say that Islam has everything to do with all three acts. In the case of the Armanious murders, the specific motives are already three in number:

  1. Hossam Armanious posted some comments in an Internet chat space that are unflattering to Islam.
  2. Hossam Armanious' cousin worked as a translator for the prosecution of Lynne Stewart, Rahman's lawyer who went beyond client advocacy and became his go-between to other members of his terrorist cell. And finally:
  3. from a family friend we now learn that the Armanious family had reached out to Muslims and attempted to win them to Christ. Perhaps a number of such Muslims only pretended to be converted long enough to gain entry into the Armanious house and carry out the killings--which, BTW, bear all the hallmarks of a ritual execution.
With regard to that last: are the Jersey City cops even looking for the last few people to whom the Armanious family reached out? Inquiring minds, concerned for national security, want to know.

"Fight and slay the infidels wheresoever ye find them"--it couldn't be any clearer. I repeat: maybe the FBI will get on the case for keeps after Mel Gibson turns up dead--though you can be certain that he won't go in the cowardly way that Theo van Gogh went.