Douglas Murray: Don’t Be Distracted By Irrelevancies
Hugh Fitzgerald:
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It is not whether someone is “right-wing” or “left-wing,” well-spoken or possibly coarse in expression. What matters is this: Muslims all over the Western world (in Dar al-Islam they already can kill at will those accused of “blasphemy”) are attempting, some by murder and others by other means, to suppress those in the West who wish to hold up for public inspection (and criticism, and even ridicule) aspects of Islam, including the figure of Muhammad. That’s what counts: the suppression of freedoms long established in our own lands that ournon-Muslim civilisation has developed over slow time. Muslims don’t like it? Too bad. They don’t have to remain.
- It is most important to keep on challenging these would-be censors, so that people with Kalashnikov rifles do not make our customs and laws.
- One of the false presumptions of our time is that people on the political left are motivated by good intentions even when they do bad things, while people on the political right are motivated by bad intentions even when they do good things.
- When people prefer to focus on the motives of the victims rather than on the motives of the attackers, they will ignore the single most important matter: that an art exhibition, or free speech, has been targeted.
- It does not matter if you are right-wing or left-wing, or American, Danish, Dutch, Belgian or French. These particularities may matter greatly and be endlessly interesting to people in the countries in question. But they matter not a jot to ISIS or their fellow-travellers. What these people are trying to do is to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws across the entire world. That is all that matters. More here.
Al Jazeera America Vice President: “Enemies of Muslims Face Death”
Posted By Daniel Greenfield
Al Jizz is considered to be a bona fide news source down under, served up by “our” ABC:
[1]
Al Jazeera, we were told, was a perfectly legitimate media outlet. The fact that it was controlled by Qatar, a state sponsor of terror was irrelevant. Accusations by Egypt and the UAE that it was helping stage coups on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood shouldn’t be believed.
But now here is some of the ugliness coming out of Al Jazeera America [2].
Here is some of what Osman Mahmud, senior vice president of broadcast operations and technology, had been up to.
The lawsuit contends: “As an employee at AJAM, Mr. Mahmud’s discriminatory conduct included, but was not limited to, removing female employees from projects to which they had been previously assigned by other management level employees, excluding women from emails and meetings relevant to their assignments, and making discriminatory, anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks such as ‘whoever supports Israel should die a fiery death in hell.’ ”
A screen grab of another incendiary comment, allegedly posted by Mahmud on his Facebook page—which apparently has been scrubbed or made private in recent days—has also been making the rounds among colleagues, detractors and media reporters, along with concerned AJAM execs.
“The enemies of Muslims in Egypt, their puppets and blind supporters are due to face death in the hospitals and streets of Egypt, starting from this evil man,” reads the comment, time-stamped July 29, 2014 at 2:32 a.m., apparently a reference to Egyptian television presenter and Muslim Brotherhood opponent Tawfik Okasha.
It’s hardly the sort of sentiment one expects from a senior manager of a journalistic organization.
But exactly the sort of thing you expect from a Muslim Brotherhood operation, which supports Hamas and actively fought a limited civil war in Egypt. Al Jazeera is not a journalistic organization. It never was.
Calling for people to die and making death threats on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood is exactly the right thing to do at Al Jazeera.
McGinnis, meanwhile, was demoted from news gathering chief in February to the “significantly less prestigious” outreach job after tangling with Mahmud over his wish to replace an experienced Israeli cameraman with a questionably qualified Palestinian one, and then reporting his “dismiss[ive]” and “patroniz[ing]” conduct to HR, according to the lawsuit.
Now that’s much more journalistic behavior.
