And once again we are hearing the plaintive cries that Islam is a religion of peace and that the mass murder of innocents be a few deranged bad apples should not spoil the bunch.
Once again non-Muslim mass murderers such as Adam Lanza, Timothy McVeigh and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are being trotted out as proof that we in the west are just as bad as them in the Middle East.
To a certain point the apologists for Islamic terrorism are right. There are enough loonies of all religions and colors to fill several bins. But that point stops on a wall, thousands of walls actually from Morocco to Gaza to Riyadh to Grozni and all points in between the Middle East and Central Asia where the smiling portraits of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev martyrs to the cause are springing up.
And that is the difference.
While the West is by no means free of evil men who commit evil deeds we do not laud their ‘achievements’ much less name our children after them.
70 years after World War II the names of Adolph and Benito still are hard to find in the birth announcements, yet Osama is one of the most popular name for a baby boy in the West Bank and has been in dozen years after 9/11.
And that is a big difference. We cannot blame a people for the atrocities committed by a few but we can blame a culture for celebrating them.
No we are not calling for pogroms against Muslims.
Americans are too decent a people for that.
What would be nice is that instead of gleefully posting of the “great victory “ in Boston, Muslims take a look at the eight old bomb victim and feel a sense of shame.
We aren’t holding our breath.