Since then, Andrew Sullivan has written thousands of additional words arguing that "Boston was jihad." There's two more missives today. Yet I'm no closer to having an understanding of what, exactly, he thinks that means in material terms, given that he has acknowledged that the Tsarnaev brothers were not part of some larger network. So what does he want? I think he wants what all of them want: I think he wants credit for being "tough" and for standing against political correctness. But these things imply no policy or material response. What does he want us to do?
When the Boston story was first appearing on the national stage, I was in a class. Among my classmates was an Algerian Muslim, an Afghan Muslim, and a Libyan Muslim. Since then, I have read all of the intellectual work being done to blame Islam for these events with the same question: what should I have done in their presence? Slapped them in the face? Placed them under citizen's arrest? Followed them around town, tracked their movements, informed on them to the FBI? I'm sure the world of applied linguistics is simply rife with jihadis, waiting for the vast power we give to academics in this country to accrue to them so that they can work their destructive business. Or perhaps I should have demanded that they renounce terrorism and terrorists, an activity many prominent political commentators in this country have called for. I've never been asked to renounce Adam Lanza or spree killing, despite being a white dude, but hey. Perhaps I should have accosted three people from disparate cultures and ethnic backgrounds, united only by following a religion of 1.3 billion people, and simply shouted in their faces "This was jihad!"
I imagine that Andrew would say that I shouldn't have done any of those things. That's what they always say, when I ask plainly what I am to do, when I encounter all the Muslims in my daily life: oh, don't do anything. Which is precisely the problem: they want credit for being provocative but shun actual provocation, speak in terms of war but recoil at the violence that stems from such talk, and ascribe vast condemnation to innocent people but object to being described, accurately, as engaging in bigotry. Oh, champions of liberty. What courage, to tell Americans that Muslims are bad. What a controversial stance. What guts.
By the way:
It seems to me that Anwar al-Awlaki was clearly complicit in the Boston marathon bombers and that the bulk of his propaganda was about inciting domestic terrorism in the US along the Tsarnaev lines. That makes him a little more than an icon for the First Amendment. It makes him a traitor allied with forces that want to kill American citizens.
Of all the things that Andrew has written in recent years that I've disagreed with, this is the most extraordinary. This sentiment, that because people whom you have never met or directly communicated with you have been "inspired" by you to commit violence, you are guilty of treason and deserve to be killed without trial, is totally incompatible with basic intellectual freedom. I wonder if Andrew would support a drone strike against Pamela Gellar, were a domestic American terrorist to kill American Muslims after having been inspired by her. But of course, this is to traffic in absurd: we only kill Muslims, when we fight against terrorism these days. Always and only Muslims.
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