9 Comments

Slats Grobnik
August 14th, 2012 | 11:21 am

I don’t mean to downplay the significance of attacks on a minority religion, but I would point out that the two incidents in the Chicago area are being mis-represented by your short blurbs.

You say that a man “fired at” a security guard in Morton Grove. But the story in the papers here (and in the linked story) say that the people were inside the mosque and someone fired at the outside wall with a bb gun. That’s terrible, but it’s not like they were “shooting at” a particular person.

Secondly, you say that someone threw a bottle of acid at “schoolchildren” in Lombard. That would be horrific. In fact, however, that’s not happened. Again, people were inside the building and heard a noise. They came outside and found broken glass on the ground. Someone had thrown a bottle at the wall of the building.

An official at the center said he thought there was acid and other materials on the glass that they found, but it’s never explained how or why they thought there was acid in the bottle. They claim it was being sent for testing.

Obviously, these actions are despicable, but they are not as described here.

Matthew Schmitz
August 14th, 2012 | 11:49 am

Slats,

Thank you for pointing out how the Lombard description could be misleading. I’ve updated the post to say that a bottle of acid was thrown at “a mosque where schoolchildren were attending Ramadan prayers.”

But you’re wrong about Morton Grove. The security guard was standing outside and heard the projectile whiz by his head. Nor was it a child’s Daisy BB gun, but rather a high-velocity air rifle—the kind of thing that can kill a bird or small mammal or, when fired at a human, destroy an eye.

Graham Combs
August 14th, 2012 | 12:04 pm

Nearly a half century of indoctrinating our children in inclusiveness, multiculturalism, and diversity and yet these kinds of incidents persist. Is it possible that Americans do what they do in these cases because they’ve been offered no underlying moral guidance? The scoldings received in corporate diversity training or in the public classroom are no more effective than the high decibel free-lance preacher riffing his own theology. Or rather they’re effective at dulling the hearer’s conscience. The essence of orthodoxy or conservatism is at the very least good manners. Not so with the fevered evangelists of diversity. These particular Muslims may be yet more unintended victims of social engineering. Of Know Nothings in the fashion of the New Tolerance which knows no history, no religion, no philosophy, no poetry, no literature, no morality, no music. In Msgr. Benson’s LORD OF THE WORLD the term “faddism” is used frequently by the character Fr. Percy Franklin to describe the unfolding horror of the novel. It isn’t change that is the “only constant,” it is the fad. And one fad is as substantive and nourishing as the last. And with as little future on offer. Without faith or hope why would one expect charitable behavior? In a rootless and rudderless West the frequency of uncharitable acts swamps the figures given above. Did the Occupy Movement and the London Riots happen that long ago? Then again who can blame Muslims or their Christian neighbors from wanting to escape an exploding Middle East or the spasms of violence in Nigeria? But public examples may be the least of it.

Slats Grobnik
August 14th, 2012 | 12:04 pm

Matt,

There is one story saying he heard it whizz past his head, but no one claims that the shot was “fired at” him. The perpetrator is being charged with firing a bb gun at the building, not firing at the security guard.

I would be amazed if the police and prosecutors would pass up the opportunity to charge this guy with attempted murder or assault on a person and instead focused on the charge of firing at a building. This would be especially odd since the security guards were off-duty cops, and they don’t tend to down play violence aimed at themselves. They are quoted as saying the guy was shooting at the building, at least in all the stories I’ve seen.

Blake
August 14th, 2012 | 3:00 pm

Nearly a half century of indoctrinating our children in inclusiveness, multiculturalism, and diversity and yet these kinds of incidents persist.

There is only one way to have all of us be, together, Americans (rather than subdivided little communities in rivalry with each other).

That is to have one set of rules that applies equally to all Americans.

Unfortunately, this is the opposite of what the multicultural/diversity crowd teaches. They go out of their way to set up double standards whenever and wherever possible. People are divided by skin color, by ethnicity, by religion – even by political beliefs – and one side is dubbed the “minority” or “victim”, while the other side is understood to be the opposite (the “privileged” or the “aggressor”). With this framing in place, double standards become not only acceptable but can even appear to be required by the demands of justice.

But it is a false justice: true justice means each person gets his very own trial, a fair trial, and one in which the facts are examined in full. When we seek to shortcut this process and grant to ourselves the ability to “fix” problems of social injustice by simply decreeing that THESE people are guilty and THOSE people are entitled to compensatory benefits, while THAT group is deserving of something good and THOSE people are deserving of something bad – what can the end result be, other than a world where you can “know” who is guilty of what simply by looking at their skin color or their religious symbols or their bumper sticker?

Botolph
August 14th, 2012 | 4:16 pm

So much for the supposed virtue of ‘tolerance’. Let’s return to the real virtues of justice, charity and the seeking of the common good

Mark Perkins
August 14th, 2012 | 7:52 pm

Just to clarify, commentariat. You’re saying the blame for sectarian violence should be place at the feet of those preaching tolerance and inclusion. Remarkable.

Bob McMaster
August 14th, 2012 | 9:59 pm

While certainly unkind, I’m not sure that throwing pig legs onto the driveway of the site of a proposed mosque is “violent”.

Also, I think Slats is correct also about the shooting. The vice president of the organization that owns the mosque points out that the parking lot between the buildings has been a source of dispute. I don’t know that it’s beyond question that the shooter was shooting because they were Mohammedans and not because he was mad about something to do with the parking lot.

Also, while CAIR claims the bottle was filled with acid, I haven’t seen that claim verified by anyone else. And, frankly, with CAIR’s record, if they told me the sun was going to come up in the east, I’d get up early and check.

The arson and the shooting are concerning, but the rest? You’ve got fruit, paintballs shot at a building (not people), a bottle, some loon headbutting a sign and pig legs on the ground. While I certainly can’t condone any of these actions, whether they were done specifically to annoy, harass or harm Muslims or just because some folks like to hurt people and break things, I can’t muster too much outrage. I prefer to keep for the real acts of violence committed against people because of their religion (whatever it might be) in other countries around the world.

Sachiko
August 16th, 2012 | 2:11 pm

There’s been about this much recent vandalism and harassment at our local LDS temple (pollutants in the fountain; someone repeatedly breaking stained-glass doors; spray paint on the temple exterior, etc) and that’s just our temple.

That doesn’t even include the LDS temples or meetinghouses in other states.

But I don’t think it’s considered hugely out of the ordinary. I had a seminary teacher who spent years as a security officer at Temple Square; he told us that dealing with vandalism and threats of violence was a daily thing.

I think that places of worship just tend to attract negative attention from unhappy, destructive types.