Media's Muslim "Mosquerade"

ABC's Good Morning America breathlessly reported the slashing attack against a Muslim taxi driver in New York City as a "hate crime" and tied the attack to the debate over the Ground Zero mosque and even to opposition to the construction of a fifty-two thousand square foot mega-mosque in Murfreesboro here in Middle Tennessee. First, the reportage of the knife attack is a gross rush to judgement with no presumption of innocence being given to the white, Christian alleged attacker who evidently is a twenty-one year old film student recently back from making a documentary while embedded with US troops in Afghanistan. Second, regardless of what happened in this or any other incident, I am opposed to the very notion of hate crimes. Punish an offender for what he did, not for what is in his head or his heart when he did it. It is a vulgar overreach by the media to tie an offense like the Manhattan cutting to Constitutionally-protected dissent against the construction of the Murfreesboro mosque. The Muslim community of Murfreesboro is vastly too small to support such a grandiose project on its own and concerned citizens have every right to wonder where the funding for such an ambitious project is coming from, even if Murfreesboro's politicians, who have green lighted the construction, were not intellectually curious as to whether those providing the resources behind the project might be Saudis spreading the intolerant and violent Wahhab agenda. The Islamic community in Middle Tennessee needs and can support such ambitious construction here the way Murfreesboro's tiny Jewish community would have any use for or be able to build a Taj Mahal on their own- without a huge infusion of capital from some unknown and perhaps malevolent outside source with some ulterior motive far beyond serving local worshippers. And I remember no national network media mentioning two alleged attacks by Muslim cab drivers in Nashville beyond the Drudge Report which picked up the assault which resulted in grave injuries to a non-Muslim passenger several years back after September 11, 2001 when Drudge still had a national Sunday night radio show and no mention whatsoever in the national media when another Muslim cabbie drove a female soldier who was visiting Nashville from nearby Fort Campbell to a secluded location and allegedly raped her. Americans should be suspect of the whole notion of hate crime and be skeptical of any media which attempts to link an isolated incident of violence to a large group of people, whether they be all Muslims being blamed for the crimes of the few or all opponents of the construction of enormous and perhaps deliberately provocatively placed new mosques being connected to a slashing that was committed by an allegedly drunk yob. Let us not forget that this is the same dinosaur media that has been touting the exit of American combat forces from Iraq as a great victory for Obama policy without tying it to the series of newly unleashed attacks there that logic would dictate have occurred now because insurgents were biding their time and keeping their powder dry coordinating the spate of new outrages for the moment the US announced the departure of the final combat troops. Obama's handmaiden press will not make that obvious connection but gladly connects unrelated events to smear the right.