Friday, October 29, 2010

The 'Sting' of Victimhood

From the WaPo:
A sting operation over the course of months. Federal agents posing as al-Qaeda operatives. The text of the sacred Koran used to send coded messages.
When federal authorities arrested Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old Pakistani American, this week for an alleged plot to bomb Metrorail stations in Northern Virginia, Muslim groups in the area struggled with what to say publicly.

Should they condemn the man unequivocally and praise law enforcement? Or should they wait?

As details of the arrest trickled out, many in the Muslim community avoided saying anything to outsiders, but instead quietly voiced concerns to one another about the tactics used.

The ambivalence highlights the complicated and often fraught relationship between law enforcement and Muslim Americans- an alliance some say has suffered especially in the last year with the slew of stinglike operations within their communities.

Increasingly, Muslims think that even as they work with the FBI to combat terrorism, they are being spied on by authorities...
The heart bleeds.

Did the dhimmi WaPo just refer to it as the "sacred" Koran? Why, yes; yes it did. And did it try to drum up sympathy for stonewalling Muslims who are in denial about those within their own communities who represent a clear and present threat to the West due to their literal interpretation of Islamic texts and teachings? Again, the answer is a big uh-huh. But let's coddle 'em and allow 'em to wallow in their own unfounded sense of victimhood. As if that's going to help the situation.

The WaPo defines what it means to be of and in the left: it is to be inappropriately empathetic (in this case of the people who may be hiding secrets instead of, more appropriately, siding with those who are endeavouring to uncover these secrets and prevent harm to the general populace).

Update: Here's the real story, the one the dhimmi WaPo buried, the one it hoped no one would pay attention to while it was wringing its hands and renting its garments (metaphorically speaking) over the offence caused by using the "sacred" Koran in a kafir sting operation. From AP:
WASHINGTON -- The tip that led to the FBI's subway bombing sting came from a source in the Muslim community: A Pakistani-born man from a middle-class suburb was trying to join a terrorist group, law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Farooque Ahmed, a naturalized citizen arrested Wednesday, was a married father who had a good job with a telecommunications company. Authorities say he also was eager to kill Americans in Afghanistan and committed to becoming a martyr.

Ahmed thought he had found what he wanted, a pair of al-Qaida operatives who would help him carry out an attack on the nation's second-busiest subway, according to court documents unsealed Thursday. But the operatives were really undercover investigators whose meetings at a local hotel room were all staged with the FBI's cameras rolling, law enforcement officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation continues.

What followed was an elaborate ruse in which Ahmed was given intelligence-gathering duties and coded information in a Quran by two individuals posing as al-Qaida operatives as part of the supposed plot to kill commuters...
Funny how when the story is presented properly, your sympathy for those being "stung" (the poor put-upon "victims" whose "sacred" book was used to transport coded instructions and who have the sense that "they are being spied on by authorities") tends to evaporate.

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