Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of
Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, is available now from Regnery Publishing, and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller)
forthcoming book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (
).
On Monday morning a reporter contacted me to remonstrate with me for my treatment of the reporter in this video, in which I respond to a biased and misleading question by the Swedish reporter Per Gudmundson. The reporter thought I was too hard on Gudmundson, despite the “when did you stop beating your wife” quality of his question; however, I am finished with playing along with the grand pretense that reporters are objective, neutral observers of events, and not the relentless and viciously unfair ideologues that they are. Also on Monday, a minor Associated Press piece about some minor jihadists in Toledo, Ohio, offered a case in point as to why mainstream media journalists deserve no professional respect whatsoever.
Look first at the headline: “Federal judge in Toledo sentences 2 terror plotters.” Two “terror plotters” were sentenced. So far they could be anyone. Islamic jihadists? Maybe. Could also be “Christian extremists” (who will surely be along in a minute to bear out every well-indoctrinated schoolgirl’s desperate and paranoid fear of them). Or maybe Tamil Tigers. Maoist fanatics. You never know. So let’s read on.
TOLEDO — Two Chicago-area cousins who pleaded guilty to taking part in a plot to attack American soldiers overseas have been sentenced to prison terms by a federal judge in Ohio.
Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. They were “Chicago-area cousins.” That seems to be the most important bit of information about them, because that’s what the AP reporter chose as the lead identifier for them. So did they take part in a “plot to attack American soldiers overseas” — maybe lazy recruits in a sleepy, outmoded, and no longer necessary Cold War outpost in Germany, for all we know from the story so far — because they were from the Chicago area? Is Chicago in rebellion against the United States government? Or is it that this is some sort of weird cousins’ plot, a Manson-family type thing?
Prosecutors say the two men were training to kill soldiers and had ties to three men in Toledo who were convicted of organizing the plot.
Ah. They were “men.” And they had ties to three other “men.” So maybe the problem here is males, the source testosterone. Extra screening for men in airports! Now!
Toledo federal Judge James Carr today sentenced Khaleel Ahmed of Chicago, to 8 years, four months, and Zubair Ahmed of suburban North Chicago to 10 years. Both pleaded guilty in January 2009 to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.
Hmmm. Khaleel Ahmed and Zubair Ahmed. What an odd coincidence: both names strongly suggest that these two are adherents of the Religion of Peace™! Yet Barack Obama and John Brennan tell us that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. Brennan said in May that “describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie propagated by al Qaeda and its affiliates to justify terrorism, that the United States is somehow at war against Islam.” He said that using Islamic terms to describe the enemy “would actually be counterproductive. It would play into the false perception that they are religious leaders defending a holy cause, when in fact they are nothing more than murderers, including the murder of thousands upon thousands of Muslims.”
But of course, they portray themselves as religious leaders defending a holy cause, and they are widely perceived as such among Muslims, and have Islamic texts and teachings to establish their case. Is it really wise to pretend that that isn’t the case? Nonetheless, as this is the prevailing dogma to which all must adhere, AP doesn’t even come close to mentioning the possibility that it could have had anything to do with their motivations.
Authorities say the men once traveled to Egypt with the intent to commit violence and that they met with an FBI informant and talked about learning to shoot machine guns and sniper rifles.
Egypt, eh? How odd. One would think that one of the many peaceful adherents of Islam in Egypt would have stopped them there.
In any case, the AP story, like all other mainstream media stories, leaves the reader thoroughly unequipped to understand why the Ahmed cousins got involved in this plot, and what they hoped to accomplish. No wonder the state of awareness about the jihad threat in America is so abysmally low today.