"I don't think fluffynymph is an apologist for Islamic extremists..."
Well I am telling you there is no doubt that you, fluffy and others are doing your cause a major disservice and are fanning the flames of the situation with your 'head in the sand attitude'.
Your argument seems to be:
- Look at the number of Islamist activities (it only represents a handful in the scheme of things)
- Compare them with the obvious number of peace-loving muslims (the majority)
- So therefore, people are wrong in saying that all muslims are bad.
- BUT - in applying the above logic, the Apologist component (that I and many criticise you for) is the Ad-Nauseum playing down of the Islamist component
That is why the label Apologist is rightfully being applied.
I am saying that you and others need to:
- stop playing down the degree of Islamist terror - it is clearly dangerous and is causing a flow-on
- start to be seen to condemn the Islamist terror (strongly)
- admit that these are not isolated incidents
- admit that if the peace-loving muslim majority (and their supporters) generally dismiss those Islamists as not true Muslims (or say they cannot do anything to resolve the problem) and this is a meaningless exercise without collective and serious addressing of the issues
- admit that the issue needs to be directed at persons within the Islamic community and therefore that the Islamic community needs to be taken to task if they do not comply with approaches taken (unless they demonstrate that they are prepared to apply their own heavy approaches to put the problem back in its box)
Now, when we look (at an example) locally at what many Islamic community representatives said/did when our government cranked up the anti-terror laws, rather than applauding and supporting the government in the stance of attempting to extricate Islamists, they instead played the victim card and signed petitions and fronted up whinging that the laws were unfairly aimed at Muslims.
Mistyrains, you, fluffy and others are doing nothing more than egging on the peace loving Muslim majority to play the victim card and all you are doing is succeeding in alienating them all, rather than coercing them to turn in the bad eggs.
Now bear with me on an aside that gives you an example of the tenterhooks that we all (society) feel over the global terror issues.
I was very recently on a domestic flight out of Melbourne. We had taxied and were in a queue for take-off. Everyone was seated and with their seat belts fastened (including Flight Attendants). We had been sitting without moving for approx 10-15 mins when an Arabic fellow gets up with his son (approx 9-10 years old) with the intention to take him to the toilet. Flight Attendants motioned and immediately called for them to sit down (for obvious reasons). 5 minutes later (having still not taken-off), this fellow again repeated his actions (this time more agitated and aggressive) and claiming that his son urgently needed to go to the toilet. Same thing again - was told to sit down - and became further, this time verbally agitated to those immediately around him. Third time, 5 minutes later (plane had still not moved) and the situation came to a head where the man refused to take NO for an answer and stood up yet again, so finally an Attendant was forced to confront him and apologised again that although he recognised that the boy needed to go to the toilet, for safety and security reasons, this was not possible until after take-off and that there was only one plane ahead of us. He warned the man that if he continued with his aggressive behaviour, we would be forced to turn back to the terminal and the Federal Police would board and escort him off the plane. We were already at risk of turning back because the Attendant was forced to get up and address the situation and cause the airline to hold up planes around us. The man stupidly just continued to argue the point and so buzzers went off and the pilot immediately announced we were turning back to the terminal for security reasons. As we headed back, the man was muttering in arabic and a women some rows back shouted at him (in arabic, to which he began arguing back), likely annoyed at what he was responsible for. The kid ultimately pissed himself at some point as we were taxiing back. The man and his son were confronted by Federal Police who escorted them off the plane - we then experienced refuelling and queue delays before finally flying out. Obviously passengers were annoyed.
My point - sure, an unfortunate situation, but in our heightened state of alert, everyone is on tenterhooks - anything was possible in the above situation - there were planes in front and behind us and taking-off/landing down the runway - given that the fellow (despite the seemingly unfortunate situation his son was in) decided he would not take no for an answer and this, compounded by the fact (in may people's minds) that he happened to be Arabic.
Back to the topic - everyone IS on tenterhooks, so the approach of using the argument that the majority of Muslims are peaceful and attempting to rationalise by claiming Islamist terror does not amount to much, so don't make a song and dance, IS A COPOUT and plays into the hands of the Islamists.
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