‘Racist’ to Remember the Victims of the 1972 Olympic Jihad Attacks?

by Robert Spencer

When the International Olympic Committee turned down a request to hold a moment of silence for the Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the 1972 Munich Olympics, unnoticed in the furor was the shocking moral inversion in the statement from Jibril Rajoub, President of the Palestinian Olympic Committee. In explaining why he opposed the moment of silence, Rajoub said: “Sports are meant for peace, not for racism… Sports are a bridge to love, interconnection, and spreading of peace among nations; it must not be a cause of division and spreading of racism between them [nations].”

Rajoub’s statement strikingly paralleled Islamic supremacist rhetoric about “Islamophobia” in labeling any commemoration of the victims of the Munich jihad attacks “racist” — as if the jihad murderers who perpetrated the attacks, including Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, were the real victims. So the purveyors of “Islamophobia” identify the opponents of jihadist Jew-killers and persecutors of Christians as “bigots” and the destroyers of civility in the world today.

In line with this, Rajoub praised IOC President Jacques Rogge’s refusal to hold a moment of silence: “[Rogge] said that his position not to politicize sports, and his determination to implement the International Olympic Charter represents a victory for freedom in sports.” Of course, it wasn’t those who requested the moment of silence who were “politicizing sports”; the Munich assassins did that forty years ago when they murdered Israeli athletes in order to advance a religious and political cause. Mirroring the way in which Islamic supremacists habitually deploy charges of “Islamophobia,” Rajoub (and Rogge) shifted responsibility from the Palestinian murderers to their Jewish victims.

Last February, Islamic supremacist writer Reza Aslan provided a telling example of this twisted mindset. “Attitudes towards Muslims in the United States are getting progressively more and more bigoted,” he claimed during an address at Colgate University. “Two-thirds of Americans don’t think Muslims should have the same rights or civil liberties as non-Muslims….It is not the result of a slow-moving grassroots sentiment. On the contrary, this is the result of a very well-organized, well-funded campaign by a handful of far-right extremist groups (Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America) to convince Americans that Islam is the enemy.”

Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America: that’s essentially Pamela Geller and me. Did Aslan actually expect the Colgate students to believe that two people are responsible for the alleged “surge in anti-Muslim sentiment”? Obviously, any actual rise in “anti-Muslim sentiment,” or in rightful suspicion of Islamic jihadists and supremacists, is not due to anything we have done, but rather to the activities of Muslims such as Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood jihad mass murderer; and Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; and Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; and Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; and Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; and Naveed Haq, the jihad mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; and Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a jihad plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber; and many others like them who have plotted and/or committed mass murder in the name of Islam and are motivated by its texts and teachings — all in the U.S. in the last couple of years.

But that is precisely the reality that “Islamophobia” – a Muslim Brotherhood coinage — is designed to suppress. Leftist Muslim writer Mona Eltahawy was recently a victim of this, after she published an article in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy criticizing a series of practices that are justified in Islamic law, including child marriage, wife-beating, and female genital mutilation. Sounding much like Rajoub terming the commemoration of victims of a jihad attack “racism,” Harvard professor Leila Ahmed confronted Eltahawy on MSNBC: “Mona, I appreciate what you do. I would love it if – I understand if you want to get your message across. It’s an important message. But if possible [you should not] give fuel, fodder to people who simply hate Arabs and Muslims in this climate of our day.”

Eltahawy answered: “That’s the whole point. It’s not me that makes Muslims look bad. It’s those atrocities that make Muslims look bad.” This candor caused her to be introduced to the treatment that Muslim Brotherhood agents have been dishing out to opponents of Islamic bigotry, misogyny and hatred for years. The way Leila Ahmed reacted to Mona Eltahawy’s article was typical. It showed that she cared more about protecting the image of Islam than about the human rights victims of Islam. It also reflects how Islamic supremacists and their willing allies in the mainstream media have employed Islamophobia charges to demonize and marginalize those who have dared to speak out against human rights abuses that are sanctioned by Islam.

If the slaughtered Olympic athletes and those who wish to remember them are not safe from this tactic, no one is. Anyone who defends the rights of the victims of Islamic supremacists will be accused of “hate,” and if the supremacists are successful, they will be punished for it. But the real haters are, clearly, those who, like Jibril Rajoub, want the world to forget the Munich massacres and prepare for new ones.

Robert Spencer

Source:http://frontpagemag.com/2012/robert-spencer/racist-to-remember-the-victims-of-the-1972-olympic-jihad-attacks/

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