Have you ever seen this headline?  "380 stampeded on the way to Vatican City."

...or how about this one:

"400 Tea Partiers stampeded during march on Washington"

...or even this one:

"200 stampeded to death on line for Disney Jungle Cruise"

No?  And yet there are constantly deaths, hundreds of deaths, from people going to Mecca during the Hajj.  More than 700 people were killed yesterday alone.  Three hundred sixty were killed in 2006.  Two hundred forty-four in 2004.  Three hundred forty in 1997.  Over 1,400 people killed in 1990.

All these people are doing is marching on huge roads to Mecca.  There are huge crowds, but there are other places with huge crowds that don't result in mass deaths. Why are so many people dying during the Hajj?

The reason is that some of the worshipers push.  And when enough people push on a crowded road, people get crushed and stampeded.

This is supposed to be a very holy day for Muslims, when presumably they are on their best behavior.  But some of them behave terribly, leading to the deaths of hundreds.  "Stampeding" should be a term reserved for cattle, but here we see it time and time again applied to Muslims going to Mecca.

The unavoidable explanation for this is that some worshipers are so radicalized, so fanatical, that they push when they should be walking.  It can be exciting to go to an event sponsored by your religion, but normal people are not so hyped up that they push over, knock down, and step over people in front of them.  Those are the actions of religious extremists.  Obviously, not all the people going on the Hajj are extremists, but a large enough minority are to cause all these deaths.

And yet no one speaks about the responsibility of individual Muslims in all this.  The news of the deaths is reported, but it is treated merely like the weather, as something that simply happens (at least as the weather used to be reported).  If 700 Christians were trampled to death at a rally, do you not doubt they would be labeled fanatics by the media?  But when it happens to Muslims, the world is silent.

Because the media is never interested when Muslims kill Muslims – only when Christians or Jews kill Muslims in self-defense.  It is a sad truth, especially since the leading killers of Muslims are other Muslims.

This article was written by Ed Straker, senior writer of NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.