It’s a mystery …Why did they do it? Roger Franklin
In a dusty hovel somewhere in Iraq, ISIS press officer Mohommet shuffled nervously as Imam Muhammad cast an angry eye over the shame-faced young man he had summoned to his presence.
“By the beard of the Prophet, you’re an incompetent dill,” snarled Muhammad. “Here we have yet another surprise attack on the kufr in their lair, and do we get any credit? No!”
Mohommet went to say something in his defence but was silenced by Muhammad’s escalating fury.
“I mean, seriously, why don’t we just put your head on a pike and be done with it? Clearly, there is no brain between those ears!”
Again Mohommet went to speak. Again he was cut off.
“Allah’s latest martyrs shoot up a Christmas party, kill 14 infidels and plunge another Crusader city into chaos, and what do I see everywhere in the infidel press? No credit where credit is due, that’s what I see!”
Mohommet was almost relieved to find himself silenced yet again, before a word of explanation could pass his lips. Whatever he might have said would only have made his predicament worse, as his frustration at Western press coverage of the San Bernardino butchery matched that of his boss.
“I mean, how difficult would it be to get the Infiltrators of Allah the credit they so richly deserve? The martyr Syed Rizwan Farook had just returned from swotting up on jihad in Saudi Arabia. He kept his wife in a sack, except when he kitted her out in all-black jihadi drag to assault the sons of pigs and monkeys in the San Bernardino Municipal Health Department, that pustule of Crusader wickedness.”
Muhammad’s rage was escalating, furious words tumbling in such loud profusion that entire colonies of creatures which called his beard their home could be seen leaping to the safety of the Imam’s shoulders. One unlucky nit landed on the book of raffle tickets that would decide that very night which jihadi would enjoy the company of a winsome Yazidi captive. Mohommet prayed silently for Allah to protect it — the bug, not the captive.
“The martyr Farook had a house full of homemade bombs, and the kufr very soon learned that he was in regular contact with what they call in their ignorance ‘radical elements’, by which they mean, of course, those of us who take the Koran seriously.
“And what sort of credit does Allah get in the Western press? Nothing but headlines about workplace violence, gun control and open questions about motives. It’s just not fair. Last week, when that lunatic shot up the abortion clinic, the infidel press projected his motive without any problem. I read that he was a right-wing Republican Christian and they were reporting that within minutes of the first bullet.”
At long last Muhammad paused for breath. Mohommet, who rather liked his head being attached to his neck, knew he had to say something.
“Oh, Imam,” he began, “it is a mystery why we cannot get the credit we deserve.
“My one and only theory is that those who chose to ignore the common thread in our many and glorious slaughters are profoundly and deeply stupid.”
To support his argument, he nudged and turned the laptop on the table between them until its screen faced the Imam. The home page of The Age filled its screen, the story by US correspondent Nick O’Malley its lead item.
“This what I’m up against,” said Mohommet, sighing as he read out the headline, ” ‘…but why did they do it?’ Oh, Imam, they don’t get it, and they don’t want to get it!
“And look here, this report actually says, ‘leaving a grieving community with few clues to puzzle out the motive for the carnage.’
“Few clues! Oh, Imam, are they too stupid to understand, or is it that they refuse to understand. I do know their blinkered ignorance makes my job very difficult.”
The Imam stroked his beard, found a fragment of falafel and chewed in ruminative silence.
“We have agents in this city of Melbourne, do we not?” he wondered at last. “Perhaps we should instruct them to mount an operation against this Age newspaper, invade the newsroom with guns blazing and enlighten the editors and reporters about our point of view.”
Mohommet thought it wise to nod in agreement. He could feel the cold glare of Muhammad’s bodyguards — Mohammed, Mohamed, Muhammad, Muhammat, Mohammad and Mohandas — settling on his neck.
But in his heart he knew it would make no difference. As a keen student of the kufr press he knew all too well that when the blood had been mopped and body parts re-assembled, the next day’s lead story would be a sermon about the dangers of Islamophobia, with a sidebar sheeting home the real blame to a demoted politician and former Prime Minister called Tony Abbott.
Once again he cast his eye over O’Malley’s baffled and baffling report (which can be read in full via the link below). There really was no hope of garnering the kudos the army of Allah deserved, he knew and understood, not with news organisations so blind to the bloody and obvious….
— roger franklin
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