April 19, 2007

Islam: Tribe of Choice for America Haters

More on that 'Ismail Ax' connection to the Virginia Tech mass murderer. It's very clear that Cho Seung-Hui chose the Arabic form of Ishmael (Ismail) to make some sort of statement, and I think Bowyer's gets it right from the get go.

TCS:

First it was Johnny Muhammad, now it was Cho Sueng Hui aka Ismail Ax. Precisely how many mass shooters have to turn out to have adopted Muslim names before we get it? Islam has become the tribe of choice of those who hate American society. I'm not talking about people who grew up as Muslims, confident and secure in their faith, good fathers, sons and neighbors. I'm talking about the angry, malignant, narcissist loners who want to reject their community utterly, to throw off their 'slave name' and represent the downtrodden of the earth by shooting their friends and neighbors.

For some, becoming a Muslim is a public renunciation of America and the West. In choosing between us and them, these converts choose them.

Many others, though, never become Muslim. Instead, these fellow travellers--Marxists, mainly--identify with them as "the downtrodden". They've already chosen them. Any them will do. The them of choice these days just happens to follow Islam and, oddly enough, disdain Marx more than Adam Smith.

Here's some anectodal evidence that this is true. In one of my "outside the Jawa" projects, I've been involved in several confrontations with jihad supporters. Many of them, however, claim not to be Muslim. Instead, they are the fellow-travellers mentioned above. Marxist-Leninists of one stripe or another and especially devotees of the cult of Che Guevara.

In fact, what passes for wit for many of them is to combine the name of a Communist revolutionary with the name of a famous Muslim historical figure or recent shahid. That is, despite rejecting Islam as a religion they do embrace Islam as an identity. They feel they have more in common with a Palestinian in Gaza than they do with their neighbor across the street.

This type of fellow traveller is especially prevalant on the modern college campus where all the world's ills are commonly laid at the feet of Western civilization.

I'm not trying to imply that Cho was either a Muslim nor that he was a Communist. However, in addition to being a lunatic, it would seem that he was also an America hater.

It says something more about the social construction of Islamic identity than it does about Cho's personal demons. That is, Islam is seen by many as the symbol of 'resistance' to [insert demon here: 'imperialism', 'Zionism', 'consumerism', 'over sexualization', etc.].

Was Cho a Muslim? I doubt it and have been saying so since day one--despite being called "hater" by the nitwits at the Arabisto who didn't bother reading the post they link to. But in his warped mind Cho was someone who was setting the crooked world straight and bringing justice to those responsible. He was the downtrodden, and American society the oppressors.

Cho was no Muslim, but he chose a Muslim name to make a statement. That statement was that he was not one of us. And if that is accurate, then Muslims in America are going to need to more vocally reject groups like CAIR, MAS, and the ISNA to 'speak for them'. Because as long as these groups speak for Muslims, then the perception that Muslims are them rather than us will continue.