As Muslim crowds dissipate and American diplomatic missions return to normal activities, here are three final thoughts on the riots that began this September 11 and killed about 30:
The movie really did matter: The Obama administration dishonestly skirted responsibility for the murder of four Americans in Libya by claiming that the attack was a protest that got unpredictably out of hand against the Innocence of Muslims video. In response, leading analysts have concluded that the video hardly mattered anywhere. Barry Rubin scorns the video as a “phony excuse for the demonstration” in Egypt. Michael Ledeen upbraids the administration for claiming “that attacks against Americans aren’t attacks against Americans at all, but attacks against a video.” “It is not about a video,” writes Andrew McCarthy, “any more than similar episodes in recent years have been about cartoons, teddy-bears, accidental Koran burnings, etc.” Hussein Haqqani dismisses the protests as a “function of politics, not religion.” For Victor Davis Hanson, the video and similar incidents “are no more than crude pretexts to direct fury among their ignorant and impoverished masses at opportune times against the United States, and thereby gain power.” Lee Smith speculates that “blaming the video is part of some complex public diplomacy campaign.” Cliff Kinkaid flatly calls the video “a diversion intended to save Obama’s presidency.”
I respect and learn from all these writers, but disagree about the video. Yes, individuals, organizations, and governments goaded the mobs — indeed, there always needs to be some instigator who mobilizes Muslims against an offending statement, text, drawing, or video. But it would be a mistake to see the mob as but a tool of clashing interests (such as Salafis vs. Muslim Brothers in Egypt) or American political imperatives. Rage directed at the video was heartfelt, real, and persistent.
~~~ Trends: As someone who’s been watching that clash since Khomeini’s time, I ascertain three main trends. First, Muslims increasingly devote themselves to the political imperative of preserving Mohammed’s sanctity. Second, Western governments and elites (i.e., journalists, lawyers, intellectuals, artists) have become increasingly timid over time when facing Islamist fury, willing to apologize, appease, and placate; for one appalling example, see the U.S. embassy in Cairo’s effusions on this September 11, as a mob raged outside. Third, Western non-elites have increasingly responded to Islamists with a you-want-to-be-insulted-well-take-this! attitude that includes Koran burnings, “Defeat Jihad” ads, belligerently offensive French cartoons, and a promised rollout of Mohammed movies.
In combination, these three points lead me to predict that the conflict over values will continue to heat up.
Read entire article in the National Review
Gee, Daniel.
Things will continue to heat up?
Ya think?
Listen, as long as there are Muslims and NON-Muslims on earth there will be real or imagined insults to Mohammad.
And real blood will flow over it.
Look at that poor child in Pakistan who is retarded and only 14 and Christian and accused under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws for allegedly burning pages of Islam’s holy book for cooking fuel.
There were 4 witnesses against her originally.
Then three of them recanted.
Now those three are RE-RECANTING!
The only real evidence is that an imam framed the teen.
The only thing that has saved the child from death for ”blaspheming Mohammad” is INTERNATIONAL OUTCRY.
What if international outcry were to cease?
Anyway, even if Muslims took over the entire planet through mass conversions the bloodshed would continue.
Al Qaeda’s Zarqawi and Zawahiri wrote back and forth until one of them was killed.
One letter found ordered the end of all in-fighting between the sects.
But not forever.
First kill the INFIDELS.
THEN, when al Qaeda takes over we kill all those Muslims who refuse to join us.
Until then USE the other Muslims, let them fight along side al Qaeda to get the infidels out.
When we see that ”Muslims” revere Mohammad to the point of insanity, we need to also see that various Muslim groups don’t agree on succession or burials of revered leaders or bloody rites or degree of how hard one must bang one’s head on the rug, or coverage of women, or right of women to work or divorce and so on and on and on.
The infidels all bowing to Islam so as to keep them all happy will never work, because they have no happiness within them.
Strife and pecking orders are built into Islam.
@Nan G:
Eli Lake of The Daily Beast is reporting that there were two previous attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, one in April and one in June, both this year. And while Daniel Pipes simply states the obvious, that these attacks against American interests will continue, and even escalate, the two previous attacks against the Benghazi consulate, one which blew a hole in a retainer wall that “was big enough for 40 men to go through” had nothing to do with some stupid YouTube movie. The 9/11 attack was just a “third time is charm” attack.
But some will cling to the “movie” meme, insisting what we now know is not true, is true. But if you want to adhere to that supposition, it is possible to apply it to any attack by Muslims on American interests; someone somewhere insulted Islam, someone somewhere insulted Mohammed, yada, yada, hence the attack. Even our own DoD is now telling our soldiers in Afghanistan that if they don’t want to be shot by Afghanis forces, which we are training, we must honor their religious culture to the point of being so monitored that all resemblance to American life is wiped from our soldiers daily lives.
It is a ruse. It has always been a ruse. Insulting Islam, and Mohammed, was a ruse that simply played to the American media, and the American president, who haven’t bothered to research history. What insult did the Austrians lob toward Mohammed that caused the Muslim hordes to march to the gates of Vienna?
We are at war and that war is a religious war on the side of our enemy. It always has been, it always will be and any excuse on the part of our enemy will do.
@retire05:
Given what we know today 10/4/12 The movie was used to drive events in Egypt and elsewhere in the Islamic World. It did not drive events in Libya. The movie however was a necessary foil to obscure the failure of the Pres. Obama’s craven Occidentialism. Moreover, the Ulema has been using such “outrages” to drive Muslim mobs to states of homicidal fury and homicidal intoxication for centuries.
Such a movie is important in the Islamic World because the Islamic World is still founded upon a sense of the Sacred in a way that the Western world has not been for perhaps a half a millennium.
Since the French Revolution at least, Western elites has found attractive the effacement of the West’s Christian foundations so it becomes difficult for many of us to perceive how the modern world was built and is founded upon accumulation of social and human capital built up by the priests and preachers over the many centuries. We do not appreciate how important the Sacred is in Archaic societies. We do not understand why the sacred is important in non-modern societies. Further, the Islamic World has not so benefited from the accumulation of social and human capital built up by Catholic priests and Protestant preachers over the many centuries. We do not understand what that means. We no longer have a sense of the Sacred in our own culture because the Gospels desacrilize culture. We do not appreciate what that means.