Return of the Root Cause
- 11.28.2008 - 10:06 AMThe Chief Minister of Mumbai, Vilasrao Deshmukh claims that “British citizens of Pakistani origin” were among the armed terrorists who took over various sites in the city. If true, this puts a new twist on Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement that “external forces” were responsible for the attack. Time and Newsweek can publish all the articles they want about a “mounting sense of persecution” among Muslims in India, but if Indian businessmen (and foreign tourists) are being slaughtered by loyal subjects of the Crown, I’d say the media’s emphasis is a little off-base.
Islamic terrorists don’t need a regional excuse; Western journalists do. Nothing demonstrates this better than the shell game playing out in India this Thanksgiving weekend. One of the terrorists who seized the Oberoi Trident hotel told an Indian news station by phone, “We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?” and then his colleagues went and set off bombs to kill all the neglectful Indian lawmakers in . . . a Jewish outreach center.
Yet, the terrorist’s claim of injustice will launch a thousand “thoughtful” articles on the plight of today’s Muslims in India. And when the Jewish death toll is determined, it will constitute a sort of somber personal-interest sidebar. Yesterday, Mumbai native, Fareed Zakaria said, “One of the untold stories of India is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last ten years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted.” Fear not, Fareed: It will now be told, and told, and told. And if it turns out that some of the terrorists were in fact British, the story of England’s institutional discrimination of Muslims will be jammed down our throats as well.
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