Against Stubborn Facts: 9/11 'Not a Religious Event'?
I'm just catching up to a whopper of a sentence. In an August 3 editorial scorching the "vitriol and outright bigotry" against the Ground Zero Mosque proposal, that "Monument to Tolerance," as they call it, the Times editorial writers composed this bizarre sentence: "The attacks of Sept. 11 were not a religious event. They were mass murder."
They added: "The American response, as President Obama and President George W. Bush before him have said many times, was not a war against Islam."
It's quite clear that two presidents have not blamed an entire religion, but that does not mean that 9/11 wasn't a religious event for the attackers. It certainly doesn't strike most Americans as an act of worship, but the Times seems to be avoiding the fact that it was certainly seen as pleasing to Allah inside the terrorist circle. Catholic League president Bill Donahue argued in a press release:
The New York Times is half right: the attacks of 9/11 were mass murder, but to say they were not a religious event is delusional. What were they? Celebrations of separation of church and state?
The FBI possesses a letter written by the ringleader of 9/11, Mohamed Atta, telling his fellow terrorists what to do on that fateful day. Here is what he instructed them to do the night before the attacks:
"When you board the P or place you foot, before your enter [the plane] recite the prayers and remember: It is a raid for the sake of Allah. Recite the prayer. As you take the seat, recite the prayer. Mention Allah a lot."
"When you strike, shout Allah is great because this shout strikes terror in the hearts of the infidels."
"Seconds before the target, your last words should be there is no God but Allah. Muhammed is his messenger."
Quite obviously, the Times does not have the same exquisite sensitivity against "vitriol" when it comes to Christianity. On July 22, Donahue also noted that the Times crusade against sex abuse in the apparently unaccountable Catholic Church is more accountable than...the New York Times:
Yesterday, a Boston Globe editorial unfavorably compared the Vatican to the American bishops, saying that "Until the church adopts a zero-tolerance policy, justice cannot be served...." On July 9 and July 17, the New York Times, which owns the Globe, ran editorials voicing the same criticism. The Times editorial of July 17 correctly notes that such a policy means "requiring secular authorities to be alerted from the beginning." Interestingly, neither newspaper has such a policy of its own.
Yesterday, we contacted three persons on four different occasions who work in the Boston Globe's Human Resources Department about this issue. No one responded.
This settles the issue. The New York Times and the Boston Globe find it unwise to adopt the same policy regarding employee misconduct-including instances where the law is broken-that it condemns the Catholic Church for not adopting worldwide. So if a priest is alleged to have groped a parishioner, the cops must be called. But even after an internal probe reveals that an employee at the Times or Globe is guilty of the same offense, the cops should not be summoned. The hypocrisy is vile.
