It wasn’t for nothing…

Real life shows why anyone’s outrage at Identity Crisis was justified, ditto at the horrible tie-ins that came with it.

November 24, 2006

By Avi Green

"Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil" --  Thomas Mann

More than a year ago, I spoke out against Identity Crisis, and even condemned the MSM moonbats who were fawning over it, in all their dishonest non-glory, which include Andrew Smith, of Captain Comics non-fame.

Now, more than a year afterwards, I’ve found additional research that shows why my anger and disgust wasn’t for nothing.

Fjordman, a Norwegian journalist and blogger, who now writes on occasion for Jihad/Dhimmi Watch, wrote a lot of research last year that was later republished on Faith Freedom International, about the scary rape epidemic that’s been sweeping across Europe. And when looked upon in the context of the following, that’s why Identity Crisis is even more distasteful than I may have previously thought:
Swedish girls Malin and Amanda were on their way to a party on New Year's Eve when they were assaulted, raped and beaten half to death by four Somali immigrants. Sweden's largest newspaper has presented the perpetrators as "two men from Sweden, one from Finland and one from Somalia", a testimony as to how bad the informal censorship is in stories related to immigration in Sweden. Similar incidents are reported with shocking frequency, to the point where some observers fear that law and order is completely breaking down in the country. The number of rape charges in Sweden has tripled in just above twenty years. Rape cases involving children under the age of 15 are six - 6 - times as common today as they were a generation ago. Most other kinds of violent crime have rapidly increased, too. Instability is spreading to most urban and suburban areas.

According to a new study from the Crime Prevention Council, Brå, it is four times more likely that a known rapist is born abroad, compared to persons born in Sweden. Resident aliens from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia dominate the group of rape suspects. According to these statistics, almost half of all perpetrators are immigrants. In Norway and Denmark, we know that non-Western immigrants, which frequently means Muslims, are grossly overrepresented on rape statistics. In Oslo, Norway, immigrants were involved in two out of three rape charges in 2001. The numbers in Denmark were the same, and even higher in the city of Copenhagen with three out of four rape charges. Sweden has a larger immigrant, including Muslim, population than any other country in northern Europe. The numbers there are likely to be at least as bad as with its Scandinavian neighbors. The actual number is thus probably even higher than what the authorities are reporting now, as it doesn't include second generation immigrants. Lawyer Ann Christine Hjelm, who has investigated violent crimes in Svea high court, found that 85 per cent of the convicted rapists were born on foreign soil or by foreign parents.

[...]

Some Muslim immigrants admit their bias quite openly. An Islamic Mufti in Copenhagen sparked a political outcry after publicly declaring that women who refuse to wear headscarves are "asking for rape." Apparently, he's not the only one thinking this way. “It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably f***ed before, anyway. But the Arab girl will get problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame. It is important that she retains her virginity until she marries.” It was no coincidence that it was a Swedish girl that was gang raped in Rissne – this becomes obvious from the discussion with Ali, Hamid, Abdallah and Richard. All four have disparaging views on Swedish girls, and think this attitude is common among young men with immigrant background. “It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore…… girl, I mean;” says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words. “Many immigrant boys have Swedish girlfriends when they are teenagers. But when they get married, they get a proper woman from their own culture who has never been with a boy. That’s what I am going to do. I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get f***ed to pieces.”
In case you’ve been living with your head in the sand, you’d better know that this is what Europe has become in the past two decades: overrun with poorly educated, violent immigrants, but mainly Muslim ones, for whom rape is part of the jihad against the west. As expert Robert Spencer, the founder of Jihad/Dhimmi Watch, whom I once spoke to, explains, the answers to this lie within Sura 4:23-24 of the Quran:
What does rape, then, have to do with these religious conflicts? Unfortunately, everything. The Islamic legal manual ‘Umdat al-Salik, which carries the endorsement of Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, stipulates: “When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled.” Why? So that they are free to become the concubines of their captors. The Qur’an permits Muslim men to have intercourse with their wives and their slave girls: “Forbidden to you are ... married women, except those whom you own as slaves” (Sura 4:23-24).

After one successful battle, Muhammad tells his men, “Go and take any slave girl.” He took one for himself also. After the notorious massacre of the Jewish Qurayzah tribe, he did it again. According to his earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad “went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for [the men of Banu Qurayza] and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches.” After killing “600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900,” the Prophet of Islam took one of the widows he had just made, Rayhana bint Amr, as another concubine.

Emerging victorious in another battle, according to a generally accepted Islamic tradition, Muhammad’s men present him with an ethical question: “We took women captives, and we wanted to do ‘azl [coitus interruptus] with them.” Muhammad told them: “It is better that you should not do it, for Allah has written whom He is going to create till the Day of Resurrection.’” When Muhammad says “it is better that you should not do it,” he’s referring to coitus interruptus, not to raping their captives. He takes that for granted.
As I said before, this is what’s become of Europe today, and it stems from what Spencer chillingly describes above.

What could or does this have to do with DC Comics’ Identity Crisis? Unfortunately, everything. When you realize what’s happening in real life, it makes it all the more harder to credit a book like that as entertainment. Is rape something delightful? Only to the most grisly of sadists. So it's all the more atrocious that anyone could legitimize such a filthy, rancid book.

This news proves an important point about how rape cannot be overlooked as a serious crime, which the bad, BAD Captain, unfortunately, did.

And I think that’s why I must present…

An open letter to Andrew Smith

Mr. Smith (since in the light of your trivializing and sensationalizing a serious subject, I cannot bring myself to call you “captain” any longer), you certainly do know a lot, or so it seems, about comic book history. And you’ve also written at one time about how “comics can be educational.” But what do you know about morality in a real life perspective, and, what have you done to prove that comics can be educational for you, or anyone else who reads them? If you’re going to sugarcoat a ghastly case of cheap sensationalism laced with Stockholm Syndrome, then it’s hard to believe that you’ve ever been influenced to do as you say.

Take a look at that poor Swedish girl in the picture above. Do you think she’d find Identity Crisis as entertaining as you did after the nightmare she went through at the hands of The Religion of Peace? Frankly, I doubt it.

Mr. Smith, I am so sorry to say, but, if the only thing you can do about an abomination like Identity Crisis is to sugarcoat and sensationalize the news of it, and not tell your audience the truth, that the story degrades women by trivializing the violation of one of the ladies featured, by denying them a female perspective in the whole story, by depicting them as ineffective in combat, and by even justifying the rape of another women in a panel featured towards the end of the book that implies that she was violated as well in Arkham Asylum, then you have not learned anything from the comics you read, and probably because you did not want to.

In fact, have you ever thought to examine and point out the anti-American allegories which Identity Crisis concealed within its slimy story to anyone? Something tells me that even there, you failed on every possible level. You certainly did fail to uphold your argument to a writer on October 5, 2001. And that, I hate to say, makes me question your patriotism. No joke.

If you had truly wanted to learn anything from comics, including from your most definite role model, J. Jonah Jameson, it’s that you can’t do as scummy fools like Jameson do, and that you can’t take the side of the publisher. But, that’s what you did, and now, look at what thou hath wrought – distrust from the general audience.

As a newspaper reporter and editor, you do little more than to dumb down the public perception of comic books in ways that few others do. You make it sound as if everything’s okay and everything goes, and every culture is on the same level of respectability as the other. Something that’s also known in some circles as multiculturalism, and is fast becoming a dirty word too. And it is my dreary duty to tell you but, you are not a hero. No, you are a villain, even more so than J. Jonah Jameson is. Come to think of it, even more so than Bethany Snow ever was. You said on December 26, 2004, “Love it or loathe it, Identity Crisis was truly an event.”

I don't think the victims of the Religion of Peace would agree.

Tell me this: have you ever written in your own newspaper about the kind of vile crimes Fjordman was right to tell us about? I’ve looked at the websites of the papers you’ve written for, and…nothing, if at all. Neither you nor your colleagues seem to take a problem like rape seriously. And if you don’t consider rape a serious matter, regardless of who’s doing it, nor even violent crimes, then clearly, you are not a hero. Rather, it is reporters like Fjordman who are. You could say that his screen name is also his alias name as a superhero, which you, Mr. Smith, are decidedly not.

There may have been a time when I could overlook the slimy underlinings of leftist propagandists like you. But that time is now past, and I can’t do that anymore. Never again will I overlook the frightening damage moonbats of your standing are capable of causing.

If there’s anyone whom I really feel sorry for in all of this, it’s the people who frequent your message board, whom I wonder if you have any real respect for. They should really wake up and view your form of journalism for the dishonest treacle it really is. I certainly did. But while it may have been the last straw for me, it was after I’d read Fjordman’s research on the Muslim rape epidemic that sadly, can even be found in the United States, that I ended up regretting ever having read your columns. This may be just IMO, but what you did Mr. Smith, was an insult to rape victims and battered women everywhere, even within the Muslim community itself.

If I ever got on your nerves because I sounded too “conservative” years ago, assuming that “conservative” and “liberal” really mean anything, frankly, I can’t really say I care now. Nor am I sorry. Ever heard of that phrase “annoy a liberal”, Mr. Smith? Well I guess you might say that’s what you ended up going through, the most ironic thing being that I considered myself a liberal at the time! Today, I think of myself as more a neo-conservative. It’s what a lot of liberals disillusioned with the left thought of trying out, and to some extent, they may have succeeded where even some conservatives failed. But that’s beside the point. No, the point is that, for your propaganda tactics, you were virtually cruising for a bruising, and you got it. Today, I look back at the times, and I can only whistle in amazement at how much you actually asked for a drubbing. Because, truth be told, you are not devoted to any of the messages that comic books could or do promote.

And that’s why I can no longer support or follow people of your standing.

You’re welcome to turn over a new leaf in how you approach journalism. One way you could do so is to read Robert Spencer's latest book, The Truth About Muhammed. But quite frankly, I’m not waiting up. Newspaper reporters who go the way of J. Jonah Jameson and Bethany Snow and not the way of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, are not people whom I admire or care to give much benefit of the doubt to. Not anymore anyway.

Today, I’m my own man. I’ve been a blogger, in both comics and world affairs, and to be quite honest, I’ve found it a much more educational experience than anything you could’ve done in a fortnight. And of course, I’ve made sure to add you to my list of subjects to examine as far as the MSM goes. Not because I really wanted to, but because, if I just sat there while you celebrated the sleaze you so shamelessly promote, then, in the words of Stan the Man Lee, "we'd be doing more harm to the public by not talking about it." So, if all you can do is propagandize for the perverse, the money hungry, then, don’t be surprised if you end up being taken to task for it. Because that's what just about any MSM moonbat journalist faces now, with good reason.

Avi Green
Proudly known at one time as “He who was cast out”.

Copyright 2006 Avi Green. All rights reserved.

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