Terrorism, Islam, and dhimmitude in City Hall

The Examiner had this Oliphant cartoon today

Local bloggers and journalists have been strangely quiet in the wake of the Boston bombing by the Jihad Bros. Nothing in Fog City and only muddled, solitary items on the Bay Guardian's political blog and on SF Weekly's blog. BeyondChron had a piece that only used the bombing as a hook for a media critique.

The Chronicle this morning has an op-ed ("Ideological impairment over Islam") by the conservative Michael Gerson recognizing that 

the threat of terrorism is real...A number of attacks have been prevented. Until the one in Boston that wasn't. It was the arrival of a long-held fear: decentralized violence against 'soft' targets---as soft as the spectators at a sporting event.

Gerson is worried that the war on terrorism will become a war on Islam. But a significant part of the world's Muslims already consider themselves at war with the United States.

Pamela Geller's anti-jihad ads on our Muni buses put local progs in a dither about alleged "hate speech," even though Geller and Robert Spencer were warning about the very thing that happened in Boston. 

The worry seems to be in part that American Muslims will increasingly become targets for hatred and discrimination, but discrimination and hate crimes against Muslims are still way behind those against blacks, Jews and gays. (See a National Review analysis and the FBI's Hate Crime Statistics.)

People seem to be relieved that so far the brothers don't have any connection to international jihadists, though the older brother's Chechen connections are still unclear.

But this lone wolf type of terrorism is actually encouraged by international jihadist leaders, as Andrew Bostom wrote the other day. It's called "individual jihad":

...the member of the Resistance, practices individual jihad on his land, where he lives and resides, without the jihad costing him the hardship of traveling, migrating, and moving to where direct jihad is possible. The enemy today is one, and he is spread everywhere...This is done by targeting human crowds in order to inflict maximum human losses. This is very easy since there are numerous such targets such as crowded sports arenas, annual social events, large international exhibitions, crowded marketplaces, sky-scrapers, crowded buildings…

A recent Chronicle editorial ("The final turns of madness") told us that "It's very important for all of us to remember that...incidents like this are incredibly rare, and that we need to proceed cautiously before taking action in response."

In fact these incidents are not rare at all. In the last few years, to mention only a few of the more prominent, we had the underwear bomber who tried to blow up an American airliner; the Times Square bomber whose plot was only foiled by an alert city worker; and the Fort Hood shooter who shot and killed 13 people. These incidents were by men who made their Islamic motivation explicit.

San Francisco liberals and progressives should familiarize themselves with the term "dhimmitude," which refers to non-Muslims appeasing and surrendering to Muslims when threatened or attacked.

City Hall provided a textbook example of dhimmitude during the kerfuffle over Pamela Geller's anti-jihad ads, which I've blogged about here, here, and here. After the latest Geller ads, which highlighted Islam's homophobia, the mayor, the district attorney, and the board of supervisors all got into the act, condemning Geller and her ads.

During the controversy, Board of Supervisors' President David Chiu promised to draft a resolution condemning Geller and the ads. When there was nothing in the local media about the resolution, I contacted Chiu's office to see what happened to it. 

Turns out there was a resolution passed unanimously by the Board of Dhimmis on March 19. Chiu's office sent me a link to the resolution, which makes an interesting study in bogus tolerance and pseudo-multiculturalism.

The resolution is riddled with inaccuracies, like the claim that the ads targeted "members of the Muslim and Arab communities" and refers "to Muslims and Arabs as savages." Well, yes, if you include violent jihadists as members of those communities, which they surely are. 

But the ads don't mention Muslims or Arabs, just jihadists. Why can't progs make that simple distinction? And, just as important, why can't the "Muslim and Arab communities" in San Francisco make that distinction and condemn violent jihad, along with the accompanying homophobia and anti-Semitism?

The truth seems to be that Muslims see any criticism of Islam as ipso facto intolerant. They are mistaken, since under that pesky First Amendment we Americans are free to criticize and mock Islam just like we already mock the other major superstitions.

The resolution claims that "while advertisements may have First Amendment protections, they have no value in facilitating constructive dialogue and are contrary to the values of diversity and inclusion that San Francisco prides itself on."

I like that "may have"! Is there any doubt that the First Amendment is correctly applied here?

What "dialogue" are they referring to? Local Muslims and their dhimmi collaborators get their knickers in a twist when violent jihad is even mentioned. They don't want to talk about it, though the same people won't hesitate to condemn Christian extremists who shoot abortion doctors or bomb abortion clinics.

The resolution asks that the proceeds of the ads pay for a "study of the impact of discrimination and hate on the Arab and Muslim communities." The Human Rights Commission confirms this on page 21 of their annual report. Can we look forward to a report that focuses on discrimation against Muslims in San Francisco, not a cut-and-paste job of incidents from around the country? Don't count on it.

Another great moment in the city's multicultural history: A Board of Supervisors' 2005 resolution that calls for a new trial for cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black convert to Islam who killed a white cop in Philadephia.