Category: Culture

The Swiss have entered political territory familiar to many Americans about the role of government in supporting the arts, especially when artists go out of their way to repulse and insult their sponsor. AFP reports that Pro-Helvetica, the Swiss arts council, faces demands for cuts in funding after presenting a controversial and tasteless display in Paris:

An exhibition at Switzerland’s cultural centre in Paris, which sheds the more common image of orderly Swiss society in favour of political rebellion and a vomiting actor, triggered an uproar in Switzerland.
The “Swiss-Swiss democracy” exhibition by avant-garde artist Thomas Hirschhorn, which opened in the French capital over the weekend, includes photographic paste-ups, graffiti slogans and tracts.
It also features an actor feigning vomiting while another urinates on the photograph of the right-wing Swiss justice minister, Christoph Blocher.

It typifies the artistic communities in both countries that they only honor the process of democracy when it results in their candidates getting elected. Otherwise, quite literally in this case, they piss all over it. Not too surprisingly, Blocher’s party has called for the Swiss government to cut all funding to Pro-Helvetica, which issued an unfortunate explanation:

Pro Helvetia backed Hirschhorn in a statement Monday, saying the artist had a right to question democracy and insisting that the exhibition was not meant to target the minister specifically.

I hope they used the word “target” specifically, because its use just adds a dash of comic irony to the image of hitting Blocher’s photograph with a stream of urine. If that doesn’t represent targeting, then are we to assume that the artist simply dropped trou and got lucky … er, so to speak? Apparently, Pro-Helvetica cannot operate with any intellectual honesty, which alone should cause the Swiss to question its funding priorities in the arts.
This demonstrates once again the problem with governments becoming patrons in the arts. As with the Robert Mapplethorpe display, what taxpayer money usually buys winds up infuriating most of the people who funded it — for example, the infamous “Piss Christ”, which was a crucifix dropped into a beaker of urine. (What is it with artists and bodily fluids, anyway? Didn’t most of us get over that obsession at potty-training?) Artists demand artistic freedom and subsidies, a ridiculous position at best. If government funds art, it has every right to dictate its terms, and if artists don’t like the terms, they should seek funding elsewhere.
Ideally, in a free-market economy such as ours and in Switzerland, artists shouldn’t want government money; they should create art on their own, and if successful in the open market, they can thrive. If not, they can find another, more useful manner in which to contribute to society. So often we find that government funding amounts to nothing more than subsidizing the mediocre or worse, which in this case sounds like a precise diagnosis.
I don’t hold much hope that the Swiss will reach these conclusions, seeing as how these truths have escaped Americans for years. The legions of mediocre artists will do their best to milk the public trough for all the money they can get.

President George Bush issued this proclamation for the holiday, titled In Focus: Thanksgiving 2004.
All across America, we gather this week with the people we love to give thanks to God for the blessings in our lives. We are grateful for our freedom, grateful for our families and friends, and grateful for the many gifts of America. On Thanksgiving Day, we acknowledge that all of these things, and life itself, come from the Almighty God.
Almost four centuries ago, the Pilgrims celebrated a harvest feast to thank God after suffering through a brutal winter. President George Washington proclaimed the first National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789, and President Lincoln revived the tradition during the Civil War, asking Americans to give thanks with “one heart and one voice.” Since then, in times of war and in times of peace, Americans have gathered with family and friends and given thanks to God for our blessings.
Thanksgiving is also a time to share our blessings with those who are less fortunate. Americans this week will gather food and clothing for neighbors in need. Many young people will give part of their holiday to volunteer at homeless shelters and food pantries. On Thanksgiving, we remember that the true strength of America lies in the hearts and souls of the American people. By seeking out those who are hurting and by lending a hand, Americans touch the lives of their fellow citizens and help make our Nation and the world a better place.
This Thanksgiving, we express our gratitude to our dedicated firefighters and police officers who help keep our homeland safe. We are grateful to the homeland security and intelligence personnel who spend long hours on faithful watch. And we give thanks for the Americans in our Armed Forces who are serving around the world to secure our country and advance the cause of freedom. These brave men and women make our entire Nation proud, and we thank them and their families for their sacrifice.
On this Thanksgiving Day, we thank God for His blessings and ask Him to continue to guide and watch over our Nation.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 25, 2004, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage all Americans to gather together in their homes and places of worship to reinforce the ties of family and community and to express gratitude for the many blessings we enjoy.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-third day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-ninth.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Please make sure you forward this to all students in Maryland or Cupertino, who will be barred from reading this since Bush mentioned God in the proclamation.

The Boston Globe reported yesterday that the Salvation Army, the pre-eminent charity for supporting the most downtrodden among us, can no longer ring its bells or put its trademark red kettles outside Target or Best Buy stores as the national chains get positively Grinchy about their no-solicitation policies:

As the Salvation Army kicks off its annual red-kettle program today, a growing number of retailers, from Best Buy to Target, are banning Salvation Army bell ringers from their doors — to avoid having to choose between competing charities and out of concern for customers, they say.
That’s created a schism in the retail world, with rival chains banking on kettle-carrying volunteers to set them apart as more civic-minded.

Hugh Hewitt wound up devoting almost all of his radio show last night to this topic, as listeners overwhelmingly reacted negatively to this new policy. Most of the ire was directed at Target, although Best Buy also banned the bell this year. The difference may be that for Best Buy, this continues their policy (I believe) while for Target it represents a change.
They issued a statement claiming that Target has always had a no-solicitations rule, and that they found it difficult to make an exception for the Salvation Army. I appreciate Target’s rule on solicitors; I find it annoying to be accosted by the rainbow of nutbar causes and con artists that accost shoppers elsewhere. However, lumping the Salvation Army in with the rest of the hucksters stretches credulity. The Salvation Army, as Hugh pointed out, has the lowest overhead and supports the most heartbreaking cases of any major charity group, making them not only the first such organization but also the best. You never hear about Salvation Army management keeping Upper West Side lovenests with donor money, as happened with another national charity a few years ago — one that regularly enlists corporate management to extort donations through payroll deductions.
Moreover, the money raised in those red kettles stay in the communuties from which they’re raised. Money raised in the Twin Cities go to the destitute right here in our neighborhood. Tossing the Salvation Army into the street denies the connection to the local community that Target and others tout in the public relations. It’s the one charity where we can be assured we are helping our neighbors, where our money stays in our own community.
The notion that Target finds it “difficult” to make exceptions to their own internal policy is absurd. Management gets paid to make value judgments all the time — they don’t hire seven-figure executives just to have them rely on zero-tolerance policies. The Salvation Army surely is worthy of such an exception, and their passive, cheerful presence at Target’s doors will do nothing to detract from the shopping experience of their customers. Either Target should commit to replacing the money that their ruthless policy enforcement denies to the Salvation Army or let them come back. Failing that, our family may need to make a new holiday policy ourselves.

The ACLU has won another victory against that oppressive paramilitary organization that threatens the liberty of every American. Branch Davidians? Al Qaeda? The Vibe Awards? No — the Boy Scouts. The Pentagon settled a lawsuit with the ACLU by ordering its bases not to officially sponsor any Scout group as long as the organization requires a belief in God:

The settlement, announced Monday, came in a 1999 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which says American military units have sponsored hundreds of Boy Scout troops.
“If our Constitution’s promise of religious liberty is to be a reality, the government should not be administering religious oaths or discriminating based on religious beliefs,” said ACLU lawyer Adam Schwartz.
The Pentagon said it has long had a rule against sponsorship of non-federal organizations and denied that the rule had been violated. But it agreed to send a message to posts worldwide warning them not to sponsor Boy Scout troops or other such groups.

It’s a darned good thing that the ACLU defends us against such a frightening enemy. Helping to raise young men committed to bettering their community and supporting their country could create all kinds of trouble later on. Why, those same boys might just aspire to leadership positions, helping others who are less fortunate, and serve as an example to other young men. Thank God whatever that now they will just hang out, get bored, and get into trouble. When they rob you, beat you, kill you, just remember to thank the ACLU from saving you from any mention of God in the public square.
UPDATE: For those who think that the Boy Scouts require belief in Christianity, please read their FAQs. They require Scouts to profess a belief in God, not Jesus Christ.

The London Guardian reports today on what appears to be an ongoing albatross for the Royal Family — their prized art collection. Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure it’s lovely, and they have every right to it, but it just seems to attract the worst luck these days:

They have survived Cromwell, the Blitz and the close attentions of a Soviet spy. But now one of the Queen’s prized paintings has fallen prey to an unexpected danger: a policeman determined to protect the Royal Collection.
The unnamed officer was attempting to close a window in St James’s Palace when he tumbled from a chair, pulling down curtains and tearing a sizable hole at the heart of a large oil painting. … “To get leverage he stood on a chair, but it collapsed, sending him flying. He flung out his arm, grabbed the curtains and landed in a heap of drapes,” the source said.
“He then saw the hole in the canvas. He still doesn’t know how he did it. He either stuffed his hand through or a curtain hook ripped into it.”

So not only did he tear a hole in one of the Queen’s paintings but he also managed to smash a chair as well. Doesn’t anyone own a stepladder at the palace? The Queen has graciously allowed for the mistake and have no intention on disciplining the constable responsible, not even docking his pay for the repair, which should be completely restorative.
About that Soviet spy? The Guardian saves that for last with typical Fleet Street snark:

The Royal Collection has been amassed by kings and queens over five centuries, and contains armour, jewellery, books and furniture as well as more conventional artworks.
Cromwell disposed of many of the finest works amassed by Charles I, but subsequent royals – including George III and Queen Victoria – boosted the collection again.
The eminent art historian Anthony Blunt oversaw it for many years, until he was exposed as a still more accomplished Soviet spy.

Oh, dear. Good help is so hard to find these days. Perhaps they should concentrate on polo.

The news media was buzzing last night as Bill Cosby’s caustic address to the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition conference sped around the country. Cosby, who has dropped his normally humorous approach of late and has taken to scolding and shaming audiences, told people that their problems were primarily of their own making, and to quit spouting excuses — lessons that apply far more broadly than most analysts give Cosby credit. Like most outlets, the AP repeatedly emphasized the ethnicity of the attendees:

Bill Cosby went off on another tirade against the black community Thursday, telling a room full of activists that black children are running around not knowing how to read or write and “going nowhere.” He also had harsh words for struggling black men, telling them: “Stop beating up your women because you can’t find a job.”
Cosby made headlines in May when he upbraided some poor blacks for their grammar and accused them of squandering opportunities the civil rights movement gave them. He shot back Thursday, saying his detractors were trying in vain to hide the black community’s “dirty laundry.”
“Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it’s cursing and calling each other n—— as they’re walking up and down the street,” Cosby said during an appearance at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition & Citizenship Education Fund’s annual conference.
“They think they’re hip,” the entertainer said. “They can’t read; they can’t write. They’re laughing and giggling, and they’re going nowhere.”

And so on; Cosby gave plenty more examples of his point, which was that the degradation of culture began in the homes with the parents. Some of his examples were specifically aimed towards the black community, especially in his tirade against the use of the “n-word”, which I find so foul that I refuse to use it even in quotes. Cosby apparently agrees, despite, or perhaps because of, its resurgent popularity:

Cosby lamented that the racial slurs once used by those who lynched blacks are now a favorite expression of black children. And he blamed parents.
“When you put on a record and that record is yelling `n—– this and n—– that’ and you’ve got your little 6-year-old, 7-year-old sitting in the back seat of the car, those children hear that,” he said.

I heard more of that part of his speech on the radio, and while I can’t quite quote Cosby verbatim, he railed about the popularity of a word created by racists who spent decades stringing black Americans up in trees and burning them out of their homes. But beyond this specific point, Cosby could well have been addressing Nob Hill parents, or the PTA meeting at Beverly Hills High School, and on two levels.
The specific cultural degradations to which Cosby referred — a lack of emphasis on child-rearing, the abdication of parental responsibilities, and the failure to hold children and teenagers accountable for their education, dress, speech, and behavior apply to all social and ethnic strata in American life today. Go to the mall and see how our sons and daughters dress in public today. The boys look like hoods, dressed in gangsta chic, where beltless pants droop sometimes below the buttocks and ludicrously large shirts overwhelm narrow shoulders. But the boys are only the secondary issue. Our daughters go to the mall dressed in the same outfits streetwalkers wore ten or fifteen years ago, covered in makeup and showing almost as much skin as at the beach. At the rehearsal for my goddaughter’s confirmation, many of the girls showed up in that mode of dress — in church. I’m not talking about 18- or 19-year olds; these were girls as young as 14, and the ones at the mall get younger than that.
Since when did American parents get so comfortable pimping their daughters out to society?
The verbal skills are not much of an improvement, either. Everything Cosby says about black youths and the English language applies to suburban white and Asian youth as well. Perhaps they all get it from the same source — rap music and the hip-hop culture — but in any event, it’s not an ethnic issue now, if it ever really was. We are raising a generation of verbal illiterates, and I tell you that it’s not an affectation. I interview dozens of people a year for jobs, and I hear more and more of what Cosby describes during these meetings. I sit back in wonder that the applicants haven’t a clue as to the immediate disqualification that creates for customer-service positions.
People can continue to assume that parental abdication and the degradation of our youth is strictly a problem in the black community. A few will take Cosby’s message and use it to bash African-Americans. Even Bill Cosby may have focused on the community closest to his heart in order to wake it up. But we all are deceiving ourselves if we think that his criticisms don’t apply to our entire society.

Over the past twenty-four hours, it’s become obvious that the credibility of Michael Moore even among his natural allies has diminished to near zero. Last night Newsweek blew apart the central thesis of his paean to conspiracy-theory paranoia, Fahrenheit-9/11, by utterly refuting the notion that the Saudis had bought the entire Bush family in the 1990s. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, no right-wing apologists, did that with simple research and understanding of the calendar.
Now today, two major opinion columnists on the Left have shredded Moore’s tactics and conclusions even more vociferously than the deferential Isikoff and Hosenball. First, Richard Cohen writes of Moore’s film in today’s Washington Post (via Memeorandum):

I brought a notebook with me when I went to see Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and in the dark made notes before I gave up, defeated by the utter stupidity of the movie. … Moore’s depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories. But nothing is said about multiple U.N. resolutions violated by Iraq or the depredations of Saddam Hussein. In fact, prewar Iraq is depicted as some sort of Arab folk festival — lots of happy, smiling, indigenous people. Was there no footage of a Kurdish village that had been gassed? This is obscenity by omission.

Next, Ellen Goodman follows up with her own disapproval towards the Oscar-winning documentarian, whom the Academy may wish to avoid during the next voting cycle, titled “Limbaughing To The Left“. (That’s not a compliment, by the way, when coming from Goodman.)

But at some point, I also began to feel just a touch out of harmony. Not even this alto believes that the Iraq war was brought to us courtesy of the Bush-Saudi oil-money connection. Not even the rosiest pair of my retro-spectacles sees prewar Iraq as a happy valley where little children flew kites. …
Moore described his movie as an “op-ed piece,” not a documentary. Well, I know something about op-ed pieces. Over the long run, you don’t get anywhere just whacking your audience upside the head; you try to change the mind within it. You don’t just go for the gut. You try, gulp, reason.

Bear in mind that both columnists take plenty of opportunity to take shots at the Bush administration, although Goodman also writes about the lack of intelligent discourse between the right and the left in this country, which people should take time to read. Both Goodman and Cohen, especially Cohen, argue persuasively that not only will F-9/11 fail to convince anyone but the true ABB believers, its falsehoods and propaganda will repel the centrists.
If Tom Daschle, Tom Harkin, Barbara Boxer, and the other Democratic leaders who showed up for the premier and lavished praise on this film are reading the papers today, they have to feel cut off at the knees. After all, Michael Moore will make tons of money off of this film and continue to produce movies regardless of how F-9/11 plays out from here. But if Moore’s lunacy sticks to the fools who jumped into his cesspool with both feet, their careers may be over sooner than they think, especially Daschle, who faces a strong challenge from John Thune in November.
QandO has a good roundup on Moore, and Instapundit notes a lot of blog reaction as well.

Michelle Malkin, one of my favorite writers, notes the summer reading list from a Worcester school district now includes the poetry of hate incitement:

Have you checked your child’s summer reading list? Beware: Some lame-brained school officials have decided to ditch the sonnets of Shakespeare for the tripe of Tupac.
That’s slain gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur — the drug-dealing, baseball bat-wielding, cop-hating, Black Panthers-worshiping, convicted sexual abuser who made a fortune extolling the “thug life” before he was gunned down in Las Vegas eight years ago. …
Frances Arena, manager of curriculum and professional development of the Worcester Public Schools, told me this week that Shakur’s book will remain on the list for the foreseeable future because it “heightens awareness of character education” and, more importantly, because it’s “popular with the kids.”
If that’s the standard, why not just drop the pretense of academic instruction and assign them comic books and romance novels?

Why bother with reading at all? My guess is that Shakur likely recorded most of this poetry on his rap recordings, which means that students only need to drop a CD into the player and close their eyes … an unusual way to promote reading, if you ask me.
No, what this list indicates is that Worcester teachers have given up the idea of summer reading and are going through the motions, pandering to their students in a desperate attempt to either ingratiate themselves to the children or to look hip, neither of which will do anything but generate contempt from the students involved. Ever tried acting “cool” with your teenager? Teens want adults to act like adults and maintain standards. They may not like the work, but they respect the boundaries. They don’t want gray-hairs invading teen turf and trying to be something they’re not, and in that kids are just like everyone else.
While Shakespeare often wrote passages that have entered our collective consciousness almost without attribution, Michelle notes that Shakur falls somewhat short of this mark:

In riveting prose that presumably rivals Frost or Longfellow, Shakur brags that he is “more than u can handle” and “hotter than the wax from a candle.” Edgar Allan Poe had Annabel Lee. Shakur had Renee (“u were the one 2 reach into my heart”), April (“I want 2 c u”), Elizabeth (“the seas of our friendship R calm”), Michelle (“u and I have perfect hearts”), Carmen (“I wanted u more than I wanted me”), Marquita (“u were pure woman 2 me”), Irene (“I knew from the First glance that u would be hard 2 4get”), and Jada.
Proclaiming his love “4 Jada,” Shakur pays gallant literary tribute to the object of his desire: “u bring me 2 climax without sex.”
Lord Byron, he wasn’t.

2 bad 4 Worcester s2dents. On her blog, Michelle updates the mention of her Town Hall column with a dissenting e-mail that explains perfectly why teachers should be sticking to their standards instead of abandoning them to the near-illiteracy of Shakur’s muse:

Dont hate the player hate the game that created these conditions which enable such artist like 2pac to reflect the times and eras of their time. Michelle here some advise next time you want to use a rapper as a scapegoat to justify your means think before making an ass out of your self.

If you haven’t added Michelle to your blogroll yet, make sure you do. She’s definitely a must-read on a daily basis. Besides, she reads Captain’s Quarters — how cool is that?
UPDATE: As Bill from the always-excellent blog INDC Journal notes in the comments, he has some personal reasons to oppose the glorification of violence in general, and the Shakur family in particular. I noted this post when Bill first wrote it, but it’s timeless. Read the whole thing. And don’t forget to drop some change in the tip jar for the family of Captain Eggers, who was killed in Iraq in the service of our nation.

Many people, especially in the media, comment that this generation lacks either courage or convictions. However, as we can see in our men and women in the armed forces, that certainly cannot be true; too many of them have voluntarily put their lives on the line in defense of freedom and their country. Ah, but that’s a small percentage, naysayers will tell you. Universities and colleges abound with apathy or worse, as activists seem to fade from sight.
Perhaps they’re fading because people don’t want to hear the message they support. Longtime reader Brian Scott e-mailed me today with the story of Bryan Henderson, a high-school conservative who decided to risk the wrath of his classmates and his teachers to protest the leftist indoctrination he received at school:

At the end of the day, my fellow PW chapter members and I felt it was time to fight back and strike at the public education indoctrination machine that seemed to be running out of control. Our school desperately needed some ideological balance, so we decided that the next day we would up the ante and place 500 signs in the halls of the school.
I got to a quick start the next morning … and just when we posted about 200 of our 500 signs, we heard a rustling around the corner. Upon investigating the noise, we found a fellow student tearing the signs from the wall and ripping them into shreds. We made no attempt to stop her, but she quickly abandoned her pursuit when I removed my camera from my backpack. Apparently, her being conscious of her own hypocrisy was not enough to prevent her from forcibly suppressing our dissenting point-of-view. But facing the prospect that others might be made aware of her hypocrisy, and it’s cut-and-run. Typical.
Replacing the fallen signs we ran into a teacher who didn’t find the signs appropriate, objecting to their pro-war message. She then told me that if I was responsible for placing them I would have to take them down. After I refused, her true colors came shining through. Abandoning her pacifist ways she summarily began to tear down the signs from the wall. My fellow ProtestWarriors and I sat back and photographed the action.
Since I was the “ring leader” (as if we were some sort of street gang), I was escorted to the office while the remaining signs were confiscated. However, the fight did not end there.

Bryan has a number of pictures from his protest, including that of teachers tearing down his posters, students agitating against Bryan’s “hatred”, and a very believable account of threats made against him by both other teens and an adult who injected herself into the maelstrom. Be sure to read the entire article. Even though I think a couple of his handouts were unnecessarily incendiary, Bryan shows exactly how to stage an intelligent and legally defensible protest. It’s a great story.
UPDATE: Bryan’s not the only one; Athena is making her mom and dad proud by standing up for what she believes in, too.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, will likely be excoriated by the lords of politically correctness for a speech he gave yesterday in Rome — but more voices need to be added to Lord Carey’s if we are to prevail in the war on terror:

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, launched a trenchant attack on Islamic culture last night, saying it was authoritarian, inflexible and under-achieving.
In a speech that will upset sensitive relations between the faiths, he denounced moderate Muslims for failing unequivocally to condemn the “evil” of suicide bombers. He attacked the “glaring absence” of democracy in Muslim countries, suggested that they had contributed little of major significance to world culture for centuries and criticised the Islamic faith.

Carey only says what is objectively true on its face: the Muslim world, with the notable exception of Turkey and perhaps Indonesia, has not progressed and in many ways is rooted firmly in the twelfth century. Islam has never had its Enlightenment or Renaissance, meaning that it has never gone through a process which purifies the spiritual by eventually divorcing it from temporal power. As a result, Islam remains a religion that relies on force of arms, as Carey states:

Contrasting western democracy with Islamic societies, he said: “Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes with deeply entrenched leadership, some of which rose to power at the point of a gun and are retained in power by massive investment in security forces.
“Whether they are military dictatorships or traditional sovereignties, each ruler seems committed to retaining power and privilege.”

Of course, dictatorships and autocrats are not exclusive to Islam, as a quick tour of Latin America and the Caribbean could demonstrate. However, it’s almost entirely true that Islamic countries are run by either dictatorships or autocracies/monarchies whose power is near-absolute, where Western nations are much more likely to be run by democratic. multi-party systems that guarantee basic human rights.
Carey warns us not to forget the gains that Western nations have made over the past millenium. We should not be embarrassed by our progress, nor should we make excuses for Islam’s lack of it, especially since that stagnation has cost us thousands of lives in senseless attacks by Islamic fanatics, with nary a peep from the “moderate” Muslims in our midst. However, you can be sure that by this time tomorrow, the PC Police of the West will have demanded a retraction and apology from Lord Carey and will have blamed his attitude for causing Islamic terrorism by promoting ‘conflict’ and ‘misunderstanding’.
UPDATE: Here’s the reaction I knew would follow:

The ex-archbishop’s comments were greeted with fury by Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Federation of Muslim Organisations in Leicester, home to 40,000 Muslims. “This is a disastrous statement from the former archbishop,” said Mr Moghal. “He has fallen prey to the campaign tactics of racists in this country.”
Rejecting Lord Carey’s claim that Muslim leaders do not do enough to criticise terrorists, Mr Moghal said: “That is nonsense – we condemn suicide bombers, we go on radio, on television, we have made statements. What more can we do? We cannot be responsible for the criminal actions of others.”

That’s certainly true — and I am not as familiar with British Muslim reaction as I am with that of their American counterparts. Here in the US, Muslim reaction has been almost entirely concerned with racial profiling and publicizing of dubious claims of harassment, rather than speaking out clearly, consistently, and forcefully against terrorism and violent jihad as antithetical to Islam. Nor has the media held them accountable for that silence.