Webloggin » It’s All About Us!

I was in the car this morning at the dreaded 8:30 time, when there’s really nothing to listen to on the radio, news-wise, except for NPR’s Morning Edition. That’s the reason I found myself listening to a radio bit profiling the New Jersey mosque which three of the Fort Dix six attended. It was a fascinating story because, in common with most of the stories of this nature on NPR, it had a few consistent memes: the Islamic community now lives in fear of repercussions, Islam had nothing to do with it, and the only reason the accused could possibly have planned a slaughter of American soldiers was because they were upset about Iraq and Afghanistan:

There may be a tendency to believe we are being watched,” said Ismail Badat, who is one of the mosque’s trustees. He and his wife are founding members of the center and helped buy the two-story former Catholic Church that now houses the mosque.

“Frankly, it is possible we are being watched,” he said. “The congregation is open to anybody — you can come and go as you like. We don’t sanction anybody before they enter the doors. So people may feel they don’t want to be involved.”

Members aren’t just worried about Muslim extremists infiltrating their ranks; they are worried about undercover FBI agents coming in as well.

***

Afsheen Shamsi is with the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. She said that after the arrests, Muslims in New Jersey were blamed. When Naseem Badat was a guest on a local radio station after the arrests, someone called in and threatened to blow up the mosque. A short time later, a Muslim woman in south Jersey was beaten by a white man who called her a terrorist. He was later arrested. Neighbors who live close to the Center asked the Badats to start screening visitors.

That has put nerves on edge.

“Every time a terrorist plot is averted, we breathe a sigh of relief because this is our home and this is our country, too, and we don’t want to see it come to any harm,” CAIR’s Shamsi said. “But relief is immediately followed by fear — a fear that there is going to be a reaction against the Muslim community.”

Concern about reprisals aside, what everyone really wants to know is what caused the six young men to want to attack soldiers at Fort Dix?

The Badats say the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq may well have been a trigger. The men tended to be quiet and kept to themselves. But they did talk about their frustration over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“All I can think of is their aggravation and frustration because of Iraq and Afghanistan,” Badat, who is Indian, said. “It is the only reason I can think of. Otherwise, there is no reason whatsoever, no reason why they would be involved in such things.”

MSM stories like the one above are so predictable, they’re almost parodies of themselves. Just once, I’d like to hear a story where the Muslims in the affected community are outraged — not because they are being scrutinized more closely — but because one of their own would have the temerity to turn on fellow Americans. I’d like to hear some of them say that, yes, extreme individuals could find a calling to violence in their religion, and that they’re working to educate people to understand that being a Muslim does not mean attacking the United States or Jews. I’d like them to say that it is a wonderful thing that America is working to liberate Muslims in the Middle East so that those poor benighted souls can enjoy the same freedoms, economic, political, religious and social, that American Muslims enjoy. I’d like anything but the usual “it’s all about us; we’re the victims” garbage that flows endlessly out of those representatives of the Muslim community that America’s MSM sees fit to interview.

[Discuss this article with Bookworm over at the Bookworm Room...]