the dissident frogman · time to take sides

Bruce Bawer

(...) consider the riots that gripped immigrant suburbs in France in the autumn of 2005. These uprisings were largely assertions of Muslim authority over Muslim neighborhoods, and thus clearly jihadist in character. Yet weeks passed before many American press outlets mentioned them—and when they did, they de-emphasized the rioters’ Muslim identity (few cited the cries of “Allahu akbar,” for instance).

Not a surprise, when one knows how quickly Canal Plus (one of the five French national channels) buried its own footage of Youths On A Rampage Whose Religion Thou Shall Not Name, when people started noticing the aforementioned cries in the background.

Even to the most disinformed audience—re the French coverage of Iraqi Freedom for instance—it's hard to make "Allahu akbar" sound like "Will work for food".