ISIS SYDNEY HOSTAGES: Where Does the Left Stand?
by Andrew Allen
Clash Daily Contributor
As of this writing (Sunday night) the media doesn’t seem to have connected the dots. The description of a “black flag with white arabic writing on it” ought to sound familiar. It’s the flag of the Islamic State. We’ve seen it in photos and videos for a while now coming out of Syria and Iraq.
Assuming then that it is the Islamic State (ISIS) that has taken 13 people hostage in a Sydney chocolate shop, one might wonder, how might this event be digested by militant Islam’s apologists? Just a few weeks ago Ami Horowitz visited University of California Berkeley — the same Berkeley where Ferguson inspired rioting has recently taken place — and talked to students there about ISIS. Many were unable to identify Islam as the religion of ISIS. Those that did have a clue naturally blamed America. One young man stated that it was “America’s bombs” and not ISIS that were killing people in Iraq and Syria and that ISIS just wanted “our own state…an Islamic one…just like America”.
The magnitude of ignorance, from students that couldn’t identify Islam as the religion of the Islamic State to the rabid distortion of recent events complete with a depiction of ISIS as a peaceful organization that just wants to co-exist within a multicultural world, shouldn’t be a surprise. Rather, it should be the expected product of a dozen years of grievance mongering, far left hysterics, and deliberate misinformation.
Since 9/11 a vocal leftist minority has unceasingly pushed an agenda that claims Islam is a religion of peace, accuses the US and Israel of criminal behavior in exerting their influence in the Middle East, denounces as unjust the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, proclaims the glory of the Arab Spring, and celebrates the idea that all cultures are equal even if some are misunderstood.
The average freshman at UC Berkeley was born in 1996 and was five years old when 9/11 occurred. Almost their entire lives they’ve ingested this kind of nonsense so is it any wonder they and their peers at other universities — Harvard students were interviewed in a separate report; their answers paralleled Berkeley’s — have a false idea of what ISIS is all about?
One would think beheadings would have been informative. These students no doubt are adept at using social media. Chances are some of them have viewed the numerous videos ISIS has posted which document their execution of infidels and apostates via a painful, methodical severing of their heads from their bodies. Graphic imagery like that runs contrary to the idea of a peaceful group of culturally misunderstood people that just want their own state, “an Islamic one…just like America”. A beheading doesn’t speak to cultural misunderstanding, it should be the source of revulsion and no amount of “blame America first” should constrain it. Undoubtedly, these students felt revulsion reading the recent report concerning alleged CIA torture. Do they feel the same towards ISIS and it’s depravity?
That’s what remains to be seen as events unfold in Sydney, Australia. As it’s understood right now, gunmen flying the Islamic State’s flag are using their hostages as human shields. Whether the gunmen have communicated demands or anything else to Australian police isn’t known. They may not have demands.
These gunmen are little different than the radicalized Muslims that hacked British Soldier Lee Rigby to death in broad daylight on a London street in May 2013. For people like these, their calling card is public imposition of terrifying physical violence. Hopefully that won’t transpire in Sydney, but there should be no mistake in realizing who is behind this and what they are capable of.
Whether the left is willing for once to come to terms and recognize this will be interesting to observe. Will they accept the reality happening right before their eyes via live feeds from Australia, or will they continue to curl up in an ideological fetal position and pretend that it’s all America’s fault for rejecting a peaceful and misunderstood Islamic State.
Where does the left stand regarding Sydney?
Andrew Allen grew up in the American southeast and for more than two decades has worked as an information technologies professional in Washington DC, southern California, and abroad variously in Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia. A former far-left activist, Allen became a conservative in the late 1990s, once emboldened to begin questioning his own leftist points of view. When not working IT issues or traveling Andrew Allen spends his free time with family, exercising, and writing.
Image: http://mariamuir.com/isis-militants-us-passports/
