With one of the largest populations of Arabs outside the Middle East, Detroit and its surrounding suburbs have become fertile ground for terrorism fund-raising and recruiting. [...] Almost every major terrorist organization has operatives in Michigan, according to the report. Citing information received from the Detroit office of the FBI, the report says “most of the 28 international terrorist groups recently identified by the State Department… are represented in Michigan. Examples include such well-known terrorist organizations as Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Brotherhood, Al-Gama’at, Al-Islamiyya, and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization—Al Qaeda.” [...] Those groups, along with domestic “patriot groups” in Michigan, combine to create 374 “potential-threat elements” statewide, the report says.
So what IS it about Michigan, anyway? Why would that one state draw so many terrorist groups? (And yet actual terrorist activity -- of the poisoning/infecting/blowing things up stripe -- doesn't actually happen much there, does it?) Is it something in the water? Some spiritual link that says, "We want to blow things up ... let's go to Detroit!" What's going on here?
And let us savor the irony that one state is home to not only 28 international groups, but 346 domestic terror groups, most of whom are probably of the white-supremacist sort (well, that's most of what we have running around these days). It would just be fascinating if we could stick all of those groups in one area and let them realize who each other is/are, wouldn't it? Of course, the international groups would be vastly out numbered, so it would probably be a slaughter, but then, the internationals seem to have better weapons these days, don't they?
State Police Director Col. Michael Robinson said he will apologize today to Arab-American leaders for a State Police report that labeled the Detroit/Dearborn area a hotbed of support for Mideast terrorist groups. [...] Robinson said the report was not meant for the public. [...] "It's not that he has to apologize to us," [Nasser Beydoun, executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce in Dearborn] said. "It's more that he has to set the record straight, so people know our community does not harbor terrorists, or support terrorists."
But ... in fact, the Arab-American community in Michigan does harbor them, if by "harbor" what is meant is simply that they live in that community, as the white-separatists and other domestic terror groups frequently live among the rest of us. After all, where else would they live? Out in the Michigan boonies? All of them? The only way foreign-born terrorists could reliably keep from being noticed by the authorities is to live among other people in this country of the same ethnicity. Most people in the Arab communities in the US are perfectly law-abiding, of course. The communities as such do not actively support terrorists and their causes, no; that's a separable issue. But that says nothing about where they live.
To be sure, I can understand the desire to keep people from attacking Arab-Americans by not making incendiary material public. But wishing that something weren't so doesn't make it not true, regardless.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!