Gates of Vienna: #ShowMeTheImam

This is a mirror of a post at Gates of Vienna. It is an important issue and so is mirrored in full

The Baron has responded again to yet another commenter who left a link to yet another assertion that the Germanwings co-pilot who deliberately crashed the plane was a convert to Islam.

BB says:

Jim Hoft, like everyone else, is sourcing his post to Michael Mannheimer, who is well-respected. However, this is Mannheimer’s only source.

Mr. Mannheimer made a mistake when he based his assertion on that post. It provides the flimsiest of evidence — virtually non-existent. This story is being spun out of less than gossamer. If it is ever definitively refuted, it will discredit everyone who jumped on it.

I still think there’s a fair possibility that the guy was a convert. But we have no evidence to support it yet, NONE. The fact that he lived in Marseille and Bremen and suffered from depression proves nothing.

People need to be more careful in their assertions, and label outright speculation clearly as such.

This “co-pilot = Muslim” meme is reminiscent of that old childhood game “Telephone”. Do you remember when kids sat in a circle and one person was chosen to whisper into the ear of the child next to him some random sentence? That child in turn whispered it to the one next to him and so on, till it came to the last person in the circle. He would then repeat what he’d heard and the child next to him, who’d said the original sentence, would repeat that starter statement. The ending was so garbled compared to the beginning that the participants would have a real ROFL moment before beginning another round. [In their games, children are pretty good rule enforcers. The implicit rule here was to repeat as faithfully as possible what you thought you’d heard; it was no fun if spoilers just made up something.]

On Twitter this morning the same thing was going on. One fellow, John Galt, proposed there was no Islam involved and I agreed with him. A third person said we were wrong so I asked him for sourced information. I don’t understand his non-sequitur response. Maybe it was a form of “shut up”??

Here’s the screen cap. See for yourself:

And that is what led to my frustrated #ShowMeTheImam.

We know:

  • Andreas Günter Lubitz, the co-pilot/mass murderer had a history of depression.
  • His depression was serious enough to interfere with his flight instruction.
  • As a result he had only six hundred hours of flying time despite his training beginning in 2008.
  • Police have found a doctor’s note for leave, torn up (either in his parents’ home or his apartment.

The Daily Mail would have no trouble naming this as terrorism or jihad if they had any evidence with which to back up such an assertion.

Thus, to those people claiming it must be jihad, I will continue to say #ShowMeTheImam. Until solid evidence about some JIM feature in this guy’s life surfaces, that claim is a fatwa too far for this here radicalrightwingextremist.

If we want to be taken seriously it behooves us to step carefully, to act with probity, and to wait for the truth to surface. Especially since the evidence has been utterly obliterated.

I keep thinking of those bereft family members of the flight crew and the passengers. If you have friends in aviation you know how deeply saddened they are by this… imagine the screws that are going to be turned on pilots’ heads, trying to ascertain whether they’re “safe”.

Update

In a “What Would Wretchard Say” moment, I looked at his top post. He begins this way:

[…]

Authorities have now mounted a massive effort to find some motive or explanation for his actions. They may succeed in unearthing a publicly acceptable motive or nothing, for the blackest of boxes is not the flight data recorder but the innermost citadel of consciousness.

Sometimes people do things that nobody else can understand. Sometimes they even do things that are contrary to their rational interest. The underlying premise of the A320 security model was enlightened self-interest. Because the pilot shared the fate of the plane and all its passengers it was assumed that he would do nothing to harm the collective platform.

But once upon a time men knew that self-interest was not always a true shield. What Milton called “the unconquerable will” often trumped it; demanding it should be obeyed, even when destruction is the result. The name given to this unquenchable selfishness used to be evil. There is a strange moment in the New Testament when the disciples marvel at Christ’s ability to cast out demons and He responds by recalling a memory from an eon past. “It was a little before your time,” He told his followers, “but Satan and I have fought before.”

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” And He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.”

Christ’s reminiscence is one of the spookiest moments in the New Testament. He knew evil of old. We, on the other hand, have forgotten it, or deny it exists. Lufthansa thought it could make its planes safer through layers of screening and automated processes, but it failed to defend against the oldest enemy of all: the insistent will. To guard against this old enemy — which civilization remembered until recently — systems of checks and balances were built into critical systems to ensure that no single individual will could unilaterally control them.

Of course he has more. Much more. Algorithms, the power of two people exercising control together, and the Founding Father’s ideas on checks and balances are just a few of his passing thoughts in this meditation. But Milton and the Gospel of Luke are indeed a robust response to the mystery of this evil.

“The citadel of consciousness” indeed.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

8 Replies to “Gates of Vienna: #ShowMeTheImam”

  1. The Telegraph ; Andreas Lubitz planned spectacular gesture that would go down in history, claims ex-girlfriend

    […]An ex-girlfriend of the Germanwings pilot who crashed his plane in the French Alps, killing all 149 others on board, described him as “tormented” and able to hide secrets.

    Maria, 26 (not her real name), told Bild newspaper that when she heard about the crash she remembered that he had said he was going do something “that would change the system” and “make everyone remember” him.

    She added: “It didn’t make sense at the time but now it all does.”

    Maria, who is thought to have met Lubitz at work, said he would wake up at night screaming in terror: “We’re going down.” […]

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/aviation/11501075/Andreas-Lubitz-planned-spectacular-gesture-that-would-go-down-in-history-claims-ex-girlfriend.html

  2. Great article again. Such a feat of Western Society in getting human beings not to be able to look at each other, that ‘knowing without any words’ that ‘feminine intuition’ which make-up caked-females and intelectual feminists are unable to read, that walked on board that plane with the Emporer’s Clothes that everyone was shamed out of looking at.
    The unspoken criminals of religion, politics and sexuality walk freely among us, until one lone wolf from their group ‘pops off’ and it had nothing to do with the state of their soul (another unnamed human quality), we are ‘reliably’ informed. Uninformed in knowing the journey to degration of the self and personal accountability.

    On a lighter note of promoting intrigue for a forth coming film , James Bond should never be in anyway played by a “Black Man”. He can of course be of any person of African descent if he represents the British Lion heart, knowing the Communism of slave-workers is the enemy not to do business with, where the snatch of death was tempered by the tempory comfort of a beautiful woman, and the love of his county and culture was paramount. A spy we could sympathise with as the things that come with the teritory. This invincible casual-everything vainity came with Roger Moore’s reflection on the screen and would be no one’s secret agent. Because he is a “White Man”.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3015757/Roger-Moore-racism-row-saying-Idris-Elba-t-Bond-s-not-English-English-English-unlike-half-previous-007s.html

  3. The point of the article is that we should not jump to conclusions, I will admit that I am as guilty as anyone else of doing this at times.

  4. Whether or not the plane crash had anything to do with Islam or not, the fact that Islam is getting blamed is kind of heart-warming in a way.
    Just a few years ago people were trying to claim the innocence of Muslims even when it was plainly obvious that they were guilty.
    Now people are trying to blame Muslims even if they may be innocent. It shows that the free World is finally waking up.
    It’s like the story of the boy who cried wolf. Everybody believed him when he was lying but then nobody believed him when he told the truth.
    In a way it’s also karma. Muslims have got away Scot-free so many times that it’s fitting that they should be blamed for something that they may not have done. It’s poetic justice.

    • And when criminals have no faith in the justice system, then it’s every warlord for themselves.

      To wrongly accuse someone demonstrates paranoia and blindness, for you hand over to the rapist the moral high ground, the truth of the wrongly accused, and now with the dawning knowledge that all they have to say is, “boo” and it has power to make people react one way while you go the other and then say you went their way too. Because, today it has been revealed you have a population who don’t trust themselves anymore, and need a positive leader who can lie and tell them only what they want to hear. “Peace be with you, Salam aleikum”.

      Mohammad and Allah, Communism and Socialist Peoples, Homosexuals and The Right To A Family Life. All deceivers going in the opposite direction to the promised life you will have.

      This behavior of the conquered resentful have Islam residing in them, and any further stress will make them believers, because they see Islam everywhere. They say white and you say black. There is nothing good in Islam they declare. But oh, oh there is, just take away Muhammad and give them Jesus and you have a most excellent servant of God who is loving, kind and forgiving.
      Take away Collectivism and Socialism is good. Take away sodomy and marriage is good.

      Poetic justice it is not. A worrying lack of discernment, it is.

      As wtd wrote “JIM/SJS” Jesus In Me (Personality-Cult wrapped up in his new image taking the beating of rejection rather badly) or Sudden Jihad Syndrome (these weaklings before the strong just got handed a planeload of strapped-in kafir).

    • I get your point in the abstract. But now that I have seen what I have seen in this new era of replacement of Greek thought with either a communist based conclusion based reasoning system or an islamic one, I realize that fighting for what is demonstrably true, even when those truths may be uncomfortable to us, is really really important.