The Eric Holder line (“Islam? What Islam?“) is not shared by novelist Mark Goldblatt:
You see, I live in Manhattan, three blocks from Times Square. As near as I can determine, I was walking with a friend about thirty feet from the car bomb on May 1st right around the time it was supposed to detonate. Except for the technical incompetence of a Muslim dirtbag named Faisal Shahzad, I and my friend would likely be dead now. Note the phrase: “Muslim dirtbag.” Neither term by itself accounts for the terrorist act he attempted to perpetrate; both terms, however, are equally complicit in it… Why is that so difficult to admit?
Let me ask the question another way: Where’s the rage?
What’s interesting is that it’s not clear how many others among the many hundreds of intended murder victims thirty feet from Fausal Shahzad’s bomb that Saturday night even feel any “rage”. Mr Goldblatt continues:
There are times for interfaith dialogue, for mutual respect and compassion. This isn’t one of them… “You want to kill the Enlightenment, you’re going to have to come through me.”
I would be more confident of that slogan if our public education wasn’t so degraded that most people don’t know what the Enlightenment is and, of those that think they do, a big chunk reckon it’s something to do with Eurocentric racist hegemony.