Via Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority, we see that Dr. Rusty Shackelford, the writer of The Jawa Report, has decided to arm himself in the wake of events at the Jewish Federation in Seattle, in which a Pakistani man with two semi-automatic pistols killed one and wounded five after taking a 13-year-old girl hostage -- at gunpoint -- at the start of his rampage. A bit of irony in Dr. Shackelford's remarks on his site here:
The reason for the gun? The death threats. Hundreds of them. All for criticizing the ROP over the years.
The ROP the good doctor mentions stands for -- what else? -- Religion of Peace. How ironic it is, indeed, that so many adherents of this "religion of peace" are so willing to kill pregnant women, small children and otherwise innocent civilians (by suicide bombings and using said civilians as shields). I am reminded of the sardonic observation that different people have made recently, something to the effect that "Islam is a Religion of Peace, and they'll kill to prove it!" Far be it from me to say that all Muslims have such burning hate in their hearts for those who don't follow their religion that they'll do things like this, but I think it's safe to say that Islam has more or less been taken over by these extremists, and it's probably going to take nothing less than a full-scale intra-religious war, a literal war within Islam with guns and bombs and all that good stuff, to cleanse it of these insidious elements. Of course, there are those who would in effect argue that if something like this were to happen, there would be no Islam left (emphasis mine -- ed.):
I don’t like Islam. I have read the Koran, and I have studied for enough years to know that I do not like Islam. I view "good" Muslims (and I do so loathe that term, but find it useful in this case) as Muslims who do not practice Islam the way that it was meant to be practiced by the person who invented Islam. I wish there were more of them, and that they were more outspoken. I wish so because I want their freedom from tyranny just as much as my freedom from it as well. But Islam, as defined in the Koran, as practiced and invented by Mohammed - the historical figure of Mohammed - I do not like. I view him as a Hitler, and I view the Koran in the same light as I view Mein Kampf.
Take that for whatever you think it might be worth -- I personally haven't studied Islam or the Koran enough to make an informed comment -- but the events of the last five years, and even further back than that (bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the 241 Marines killed at the Beirut barracks in 1983, just to name a few), at least as far as I can see, do very little to dispel the perception that Islam is not nearly as much of a "Religion of Peace" as certain dangerously politically correct pundits, commentators, university professors, politicians, etc. would like us all to believe it is. The ghosts of 3,000-plus of our countrymen and 2,000-plus brave men and women in uniform fighting this monster in Iraq would certainly beg to differ. I hate to make what sounds like such a sweeping judgment, but the sounds of guns and bombs going off from Bali to Seattle to New York to Madrid to London to Baghdad are, literally and figuratively, much louder than the whispers that "Islam is a Religion of Peace."
And Kim du Toit asks a most pertinent question:
As for the people who are still “thinking” about buying themselves gun, I have only one more question to ask: How many more random massacres like this will it take to get you to buy a gun? Do you think this kind of incident is just going to magically disappear in the future?
It's a scary thing to contemplate indeed, but it's extremely difficult to argue that we're not suffering from the ancient Chinese curse of living in interesting times. The Muslims may not be bringing the jihad on here in the good ole U.S.A. as fast as they are in Europe, but if we don't remember our roots as an armed citizenry, and the value our Founding Fathers saw in an armed citizenry, it's only a matter of time until we suffer the same fate as our neighbors across the pond. Which reminds me, I need to go buy a few boxes of ammo and get my tail to the range, soooon....
|