This United States will surely flounder as a nation given the present non-sense with regard to political correctness. If we find a kiddy-porn magazine in a person’s home, then that individual is open to suspicion whether the person is Jewish or Muslim or black or white or Asian or Latino or whatever. Of course, it could turn out that the magazine is there because the person just took it away from another family member. The point, obviously, is that the onus is very much on the person (in whose home the kiddy-porn magazine is found) to proffer an excusable explanation for the magazine being there. That is possible, but certainly immediate suspicion is absolutely warranted.
We get a different kind of suspicion if we find blood on a butcher knife that a person has in his home and we know that the individual is a vegetarian who does not hunt animals. Again, it is a suspicion that can be properly addressed. But, once more, only a fool would not have immediate concern.
Contacting Al-Qaeda is surely an analogous case in which immediate suspicion is warranted—suspicion that may be properly addressed given the appropriate explanation. However, it is just plain silly to suppose that if the person is a Muslim soldier, as in the case of Nidal Malik Hasan, then any such suspicion constitutes some form of bias against Muslims. Why? Because precisely what we know is that Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization—an organization committed to using killing others as a means of advancing its ends.
I do not think for a moment that all American Muslim are would-be murderers or disloyal United States citizens. I have Muslim colleagues and Muslim students; and, quite frankly, it is easier to think that I might get drunk (and so far that has never happened) than it is to think that these individuals are would-be murderers or disloyal United States citizens. But then it is also the case that I cannot imagine any of these individuals contacting Al-Qaeda.
Alas, the same holds for all the other individuals whom I take to be decent. And guess what? If anyone I know should contact Al-Qaeda, I would be immediately concerned unless I was given a very good explanation. For instance, it is certainly reasonable to wonder how easy it is to make contact with an Al-Qaeda person; and I can imagine this being the research aim of an individual.
Perhaps the aim of Nidal Malik Hasan was just that. However, there is virtually no reason at all to think that Hasan’s attempt to contact Al-Qaeda was research in the endeavor to see how easy Al-Qaeda could be contact.
Saying that America is a free country and that people have a right to contact whomever they please does not vitiate the point that in contacting certain kinds of individuals invite ever so reasonable concerns. Even in a free country, adults in a chat-room for children invite reasonable concerns. Alas, MSNBC’s Chris Mathews seems not to grasp this point—at least not with respect to contacting Al-Qaeda. He asks: “What is wrong with contacting Al-Qaeda?”
Asking what is wrong with contacting Al-Qaeda is rather like asking what is wrong with an adult going into chat-rooms for children. If one has a damn good reason, then the answer is: Nothing. In either case, though, it takes quite a bit to have a reason that warrants such behavior. In the case of chat-rooms for children one could be out to catch child predators. In the case of Al-Qaeda, one could be out to catch a key enemy figure and being Muslim gives one an advantage in that regard. Well, it simply cannot be said that Nasen has this motivation for contacting Al-Qaeda.
I understand, of course, that there can be truly objectionable attitudes towards Muslims. Truth be told, however, there can be objectionable attitudes towards the members of any group. The minority person who thinks that all whites are racist has just as much of an objectionable attitude as someone who, for example, thinks that all Jews are cheap.
What is more, I am prepared to say that there is indeed something to be said for giving individuals the benefit of the doubt. Alas, that does depends on what the stakes are. I am prepared to give a person the benefit of the doubt if she or he is in, for example, the adult section of Craigslist; for I assume (as I have never been there) that the adult section is not just about finding sexual liaisons.
No less true, however, is that some actions do not warrant the benefit of the doubt. If the kiddy-porn magazine that Opidopo has in his home is one that he just took away from his father, then that magazine really needs to be gone within the next day or so. This is because such a magazine is so morally repulsive that there is no room for a person to be indifferent to the fact that it is in her or his home.
Given what Al-Qaeda is about, trying to contact those involved in the group is not at all like trying to contact an organization involved in saving the whales or an organization like Habitat for Humanity or even an organization that promotes drinking beer for health. I am skeptical about the idea of beer as a means to health. But freedom is indeed about the right to make stupid choices. It is certainly about the right to determine whether a given option is stupid or not.
The idea of Muslims serving in a branch of the American military no more concerns me than does the idea of Italian born and raised persons working as pilots for an American airline. In the case of the pilots, I require simply that they be fluent in English. Anything less than fluency is unacceptable. And for any person serving in a branch of the American military, I require considerable loyalty to America. Anything less is unacceptable.
In the absence of some form of authorized research, any military person contacting Al-Qaeda would be a cause for alarm. If that person is Muslim, well: the reason for concern does not change one iota. Far from being a form of bias against Muslims, what we have is none other than a manifest form of commonsense. A disloyal soldier of any ethnic group is not fit to serve in the military. And at this point in time, a military personnel who contacts Al-Qaeda of her or his own accord is as clear an indication as we could want that the person’s loyalty to American forces is very much suspect.
Insofar as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews cannot see this he is clearly a fool. Worse, he is a morally dangerous person.
