Words Matter Bill

Posted at October 21, 2010

Political correctness has once again become the topic of the day in the U.S. Most recently, the heat has been turned up due to the Bill O’Reilly face off with the ladies of the View and the Juan Willams termination by NPR. The issue seems to be whether or not one should engage in speech that lumps all Muslims into the fundamentalist extremist variety. Bill O’Reilly seems to be of the opinion that since there is an underlying hatred of the entire Muslim world towards the “infidels” of the West, that yes it is quite appropriate, even healthy, to do so. My take on it is to ask the question, where does such speech leads us? Does saying that “Muslims killed us on 9-11″ help in any way to assure that such an event is not repeated? What is Mr. Bill really saying here? That the entire Western Christian world should consider itself at war with Islam? Where does that lead us? Of course, O’Reilly’s gross over-generalization cannot be true. There are millions of Muslims who would not condone the terrorists acts of 9-11. If what he is really saying is that the “religion of Islam killed us on 9-11,” then, while still over-simplifying things a bit, he at least may be closer to some kernel of truth. The Muslim faith is in a sense hostile to other faiths, especially those of the West, isn’t it? And that hostility, taken to the extreme, is what motivates terrorism. It is not like the FARC of Colombia who engage in terrorism from an economic motivation. Islamic terrorists certainly cannot be equally motivated since once the strap-on bomb is detonated, there is no more hope of shopping sprees in Dubai. They are religiously motivated, pure and simple. And our constant interference in their affairs, based largely on our own economic motivations, makes them even more motivated. We feel threatened. They feel threatened. So we do the best we can to blow each other up. Rhetoric such as what was engaged in by Bill O’Reilly on the View only adds more fuel to the already raging fire. The “politically correct” action of the View ladies walking out on O’Reilly was stupid and meaningless and did nothing to solve the problem….only made for good TV. Thinking before we speak, however, could be a step in the right direction.