When Bill O’Reilly told Whoopi Goldberg that we have a “Muslim problem,” which she corrected as a “terrorist problem,” he attributed the problem to the fact that Muslim countries, like Pakistan, aren’t collaborating with us to catch the bad guys. He said that Pakistani Madrasas are basically camps where kids as young as 4 or 5 learn “Jihad.” O’Reilly couldn’t be more factually incorrect in his definition of Madrasas because these are simply schools where poor kids who can’t afford real education can at least learn to recite the Quran. It is strange he says Pakistan is not collaborating with the U.S. Maybe he arrogantly expects it to open its doors for our forces to invade it just we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pakistani citizens have already paid the price of their government’s collaboration with the U.S. in its global war on terror: More than 6000 have been killed both by our US bombs and by the radicals lashing out at Pakistan for allying itself with the U.S. O’Reilly further ignores the underlying reasons why this terrorism problem happened in the first place. The unaddressed grievances that caused it to happen are clearly detailed below in the 9-11 Commission Report. The investigations show the clash with these Muslim terrorists is rooted in our policies and not really about civilizations or religious values, as some would like us to believe.
These grievances which continue to go unaddressed are further complicating our fight on terror as clearly stated by General David Petraeus in a closed Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in March 2010:
O’Reilly still defends his ignorant views that there isn’t much violence or bullying of Muslim kids leaning on statistics that show more hate crimes against Jews. He and Whoopi neglect to put these stats in context because obviously the Jewish population is bigger than the Muslim one. But the hatred of Muslims in more overtly expressed publicly on the streets, on TV and even endorsed by many politicians, including Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, who equates Muslims with Nazis! O’Reilly once again stated that 90% of terrorists are Muslims. Meanwhile, the FBI Database numbers below indicate otherwise:
3 comments
Jamie says:
November 29, 2010 at 6:39 am (UTC 0)
What you’re seeing here is the lack of balance in our media output. The mainstream media will not even touch any issues dealing w/those who are muslims as well as Jihadist and terrorism even though that has been a serious (documented) threat to us. So, since the mainstream ignores these things that many of us see for ourselves as a danger to our us, we have our Fox news hitting the subject hard in this area hoping to make up for the lack of balance needed to discuss the worthy aspects of muslims/Jihadists/terrorism/and even the innocent American-Muslims effected by this, with reasonable dialogue and democracy. Until the mainstream media stops ignoring these important concepts Bill (who is in my opinion more flamboyant in his content than anything else) and Fox will have to continue to hit hard on this topic or they will not be heard or taken seriously and it is a serious subject that can’t be swept under the rug since lives may be in danger.
Just to let you know I met a really nice guy who was Muslim and shared with me the same feelings of racism that I have heard about in recent months. But I never saw him as Muslim and only found out how he felt when we got close. So I understand the need to separate the threat of Jihadists in our country to those who are merely here living their lives (as he was).
But I also understand the need for an open conversation without people being labeled racist and ignorant which is what many other news outlets do, like MSNBC, NBC (Couric), cNN and the many others. They shut us down and bully us into silence rather than take our views and thoughts opinions and report on the issues without bias so we can have an open mind about all of it. Fox I know is seen as baised too, but I think they are less biased although they are the anti-liberal press.
Jehan says:
November 30, 2010 at 2:27 am (UTC 0)
You’re right, Jamie, there should be more space to discuss issues without labeling people as racist, etc… I think if somebody like Juan Williams was not an NPR commentator/expert, people wouldn’t have been more on his case for professional reasons. It is extremely odd how people, even Sean Hannity himself, are in denial over why 9-11 happened! He keeps telling me on his shows if America was an accessory to 9-11 and in the middle of me explaining why it happened, I constantly get interrupted! We need to remedy the causes stemming from our policies in a practical and effective way instead of spinning our wheels on war. Thanks for sharing your personal experience with that Muslim person. We need to see people as humans first and last, beyond those divisive labels. That’s the American way and that’s why I started this blog! So please share with others and get on my T and FB to stay updated.
aspergers syndromes symptoms says:
January 11, 2011 at 2:13 am (UTC 0)
Nice site, nice and easy on the eyes and great content too.