Apparently not. I saw this on Matthew Yglesias’ blog a bit ago and didn’t immediately do anything with it as I was curious whether it would ever be widely reported. Much to my dismay it wasn’t and had it not been for Yglesias’ report on it, I unfortunately would not have seen it at all. What its lack of reporting means to us makes it all the more unfortunate.
Jacksonville Florida was the site of the latest terrorist attack on this country. No, it wasn’t one of these almost-an-attack-but-failed-at-the-last-minute affairs like recent related events, this one actually happened. A building, targeted likely because of who the occupants were, was bombed but thankfully no one was injured. Why aren’t we seeing Rudolph Giuliani getting red-faced and choking for air between bursts of “9-11″? Why don’t we see President Obama making a speech and visiting the site to meet with those targeted? Why aren’t new calls being made to target the race or religion of those who would perpetrate such an ugly attack?
Oh, because it was a mosque that was bombed while Muslims inside held services.
When someone manages to almost start a fire in their car in New York City the whole country panics, but when people of color are targeted with an attack that actually works (though again, no one was injured), it disappears. Our “War on Terror” has done nothing but demonize Arabs in particular and people of color in general. I know this is a theme I harp on a lot but add this to the list of ways the ruling classes seek to separate us from each other: Religion. If that church had been Christian you wouldn’t be able to stop hearing about it for weeks.
If we weren’t so caught up in worrying about which fairy tales our neighbor believes versus which fairy tales you or I believe then we could finally come together on conquering the crimes committed against us by those in power. When a man runs into a mosque screaming, “stop this blasphemy”, how can he (assuming he is of sound mind) possibly think he is doing anything other than terrifying innocent people? What good does he even think will come of harassment and violence against innocent people?
We have an ecological disaster unfolding the likes of which we cannot fully comprehend; a financial “reform” package that amounts to criminal inaction; and an upcoming election in which, once again, our leaders will be hand-picked for us; but instead we’re worrying about things like whether the Miss USA winner (who happens to be Arab and Muslim) is a Hezbollah Spy.
4 Responses to "If A Mosque Is Bombed and No White People Are Hurt, Does It Still Make A Noise?"
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good catch
the concept of “terrorism” has always been about the fears and anxieties of elites, not about those who have historically been subjected to violence, whether by state or non-state actors
as you may recall, I make a conscious effort to avoid even using term on my blog for that reason, among others
.-= –Richard Estes’s last blog post: The Pathology of Zionism =-.
Thank you Richard! While I hadn’t noticed your refusal to use the term on American Leftist, it now seems really apparent to me. I think your reasoning is sound and I’m going to try to follow suit with that. There’s no reason why I should help secure the frames that ruling classes try to establish and by doing so I only perpetuate the mythos they have created around the term “terrorism”. Thanks for your comment.
the term “terrorism” is used to mystify the fact that the real issue is violence, who engages in it and to what end
which is why I use it, and not “terrorism”, because an emphasis upon violence pushes one into recognizing the ubiquity of state violence around the world, something that is effectively normalized for most by the use of the term “terrorism”
it also has the tendency to conceal that a lot of what goes by the term “terrorism” is, in fact, something that would be considered self-defense once state violence is exposed
.-= –Richard Estes’s last blog post: The Pathology of Zionism =-.
You’re absolutely right, Richard. When we get used to using a term like “terrorism”, we separate what defines it from the acts of ruling agents around the world. It isn’t as if the acts of violence we see defined for us as “terrorism” are some new sort of human act that previously did not exist and hence a new name was needed, but rather it is another sensationalized dividing line that denounces not the act but the perpetrator.