Saturday, September 29, 2007

Islam in Profile

Islam in Profile

By Michael Devolin
Jun 29, 2007

I've never understood the meaning of the term 'profiling' in the negative context as bandied about by the politically correct, especially when this same politically correct crowd is defending the millions upon millions of supersensitive Muslims of this world from those of us who, driven by conscience, voice publicly our concerns about the self-evident patterns of violence constantly associated with the religion of Islam.
I was recently accused of "racial and religious stereotyping" by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission after I presented to them in writing my concerns about Muslims hailing from certain playful Islamic androcracies in the Middle East being given access to McMaster University's Nuclear Reactor located in Hamilton, Ontario. Even worse, in the employ of the CNSC some of these Muslims have been given the responsibility of security at the site of McMaster’s nuclear reactor. My anxieties concerning these placements were, sadly for all Canadians, deemed by CNSC to be irrelevant and irrational.
Apparently the violent and racist profile Islam's very own zealots have for centuries been inadvertently conjuring up for the non-Muslims of this world to delineate goes unnoticed by those of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission whose responsibility it should be, in a post 9/11 world, to evaluate. Have they not noticed, as recounted by Edward N. Luttwak (Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington), the "Muslim-Hindu violence in Kashmir, Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim-Buddhist violence in Thailand, Muslim-animist violence in Sudan, Muslim-Igbo violence in Nigeria, Muslim-Muscovite violence in Chechnya, or the different varieties of inter-Muslim violence between traditionalists and Islamists, and between Sunnis and Shiites"? Luttwak's observations are not in any sense "racial and religious profiling" but rather a picture of veridical Islam - the real Islam. Anyone see a pattern here? I know I do.
In one day in one newspaper I read about the Sword of Islam being bestowed upon Osama bin Laden by Muslim clerics of the Pakistan Ulema Council, death threats (fatwas) issued and angry protests on the streets of cities around the world in reaction to Salman Rushdie being knighted by England's Queen, Hamas and Fatah gunmen of Gaza killing each other (and anyone who happens to be in the line of fire), suicide bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan. The list just keeps growing. No one is profiling Islam more than Muslims themselves. And I'm committing "religious profiling" because I'm discomposed about the fact that adherents of Islam, who emigrated from countries where all this hell-raising is taking place, are working on McMaster University's nuclear reactor? My fear is unjustified? I think not.
The ever prescient Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair, writing in defence of Salman Rushdie’s character and distinguished writing career, points out that "our media regularly make the assumption that the book burners and fanatics really do represent the majority, and that assumption has by no means been tested. (If it is ever tested, and it turns out to be true, then can we hear a bit less about how one of the world's largest religions mustn’t be confused with its lunatic fringe?). As I've written in other articles, one can properly judge a religion, not by its exceptional personalities, but only by how that same religion manifests itself within the masses of those who adhere to its tenets. In this sense, in my opinion, Islam has failed mankind and has proven to be a lethally insalubrious religious ideology. Such a threatening reality corroborates the veracity of the Yiddish proverb, "A crooked light casts a crooked shadow."
Indeed. This media assumption noted by Mr. Hitchens I happened to convey to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. But to no avail. Their measure of my fear of Islam and Muslims being conterminous to a nuclear reactor in my country - in my neck of the woods! - is that "allegations based on religion or race, without any supporting evidence in connection to issues, have not and will not be taken into account by the Commission in its consideration of any matter before it." And with that the CNSC granted McMaster University a licence to operate a nuclear reactor on its campus for another seven years. And so with utter exasperation I now ask those members of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, How much evidence do you need?
Written by Michael Devolin© Copyright 2002-2007 by Magic City Morning Star

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