(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
"....millions of Christians, almost certainly tens of millions in the U.S. alone, do in fact tithe, and have been doing so for years."
Nolo contendere. Of course, this implies that your garden variety Muslim is not even as observant of jihad as Christians are of tithing -- else America, with one million allegedly observant Mohammedians in residence, would be experiencing daily bombings.
Which was really my point. Whatever the Koran says, all followers of Islam are not automatically going to blow infidels to bits. With all the recent talk of the Crusades, it's important to remember that we're not facing a monolithic force. Catholics don't automatically hew to the Pope, and Muslims don't automatically hew to Bin Laden, who of course has much less temporal authority than John Paul II.
I'm increasingly convinced that all the blame-Islam stuff is just a way for professionally politically-incorrect types to play to their galleries. Jonah Goldberg, for example, has a lot of fun with intransigent Muslims, but eventually admits that "Islam need not be a hateful religion and for untold millions of decent people around the globe it most certainly isn't that." Yet he shows no sign of dismounting his hobby-horse (his essay is even entitled "Blame Islam").
This sort of thing is Goldberg's schtick, and he's not the only one. When your audience is primarily conservative, mocking ethnic constituencies is just a bit of tonic for the troops. I should really have known better than to take it seriously in the first place.
