Loon noun
1. a worthless lazy fellow
2. a person with confused ideas; incapable of serious thought [syn: addle-head]

[As found on the Loonwatch website.]

The Loonwatch website uses the subheading: "the mooslims! they're heeere!" The implication here is that all us "loons" and "Islamophobes" are exaggerating the problem of Islamic terrorism, sharia law, etc. Consequently, Loonwatch dedicates itself to uncovering such "Islamophobia" and exposing "Islamophobes", "loons" and "wackos"; as well as to analyzing all the various and many unfounded criticisms of Islam and Muslims.

Yes, the problem is that each and every criticism of Islam, Muslims (as Muslims), the Koran, Muhammad, etc. is deemed -- by Loonwatch -- to automatically be "Islamophobic" and/or the work of a "loon".

Now, isn't that convenient? Isn't that neat?

Exactly the same thing occurs in the UK. The British have Islamophobia Watch as well as the "anti-Islamophobia" journalist, Seumas Milne (of the Guardian). Neither of them attempt to make even the most basic of distinctions between the many critics of Islam and Muslims. To Islamophobia Watch and Seumas Milne, all critics of Islam and Muslims are, by Marxist/Leftist definition, "Islamophobes" and/or "fascists". Even the critics whom Islamophobia Watch and Seumas Milne don't explicitly call "fascists" or "Islamophobes" are still accused of "contributing to Islamophobia" or even of "contributing to the rise of fascism". In other words, all critics of Islam and Muslims should, according to Leftist diktat, keep utterly silent. (Seumas Milne is an open and keen fan of the former Soviet Union and Bob Pitt, the founder of Islamophobia Watch, is a Trotskyist.)

Let's put what Loonwatch is doing in this way. Instead of sharia law (i.e., blasphemy law, death for apostasy, etc.) stopping all criticism of Islam, the Koran, Muhammad, etc. (which it has for up to 1,400 years in parts of the Muslim world), we now have a seemingly hip, ironic and Leftist website which is attempting to enforce sharia law with the help of its pseudo-journalistic and sometimes pseudo-academic articles. These articles are also copiously sprinkled with mindless ad hominems and some terrible pop psychiatry (stuff about "loons" and "wackos").

One permanent article on Loonwatch is: 'All Terrorists are Muslims... Except the 94% that Aren't'

When you read the small print, the percentages are only actually about the situation in the United States (which neither the writer -- Danios -- nor the title make clears); which has a big problem, according to Loonwatch, with "Latino" terrorism. However, most of that Latino terrorism is very low-level -- hardly anyone has been killed.

Everyone is well aware that all sorts of non-Islamic groups have bombed places and buildings. (In England and the U.S. animal rights activists have done so.) But there is a big difference between all Islamic bombings and most other attacks. (The attacks Loonwatch is talking about are in the U.S.) In most cases of the latter, the bombings weren't carried out specifically in order to kill civilians; but to intimidate and scare. In the Muslim terrorism case, virtually every bombing is designed specifically to kill civilians. In fact I've never heard of an Islamic terrorist attack which was only aimed at a building or designed simply to intimidate rather than kill. Most Islamist bombs are designed to kill civilians -- and that is the source of the terror. Most other non-Muslim bombings -- specifically in the U.S. and Europe -- are designed to scare or intimidate.

Loonwatch provides a link to a FBI page which cites 318 terrorist attacks in the U.S. between 1980 and 2005. Firstly I would say that there have been more attacks in one year alone in, say, Pakistan and Iraq than during the entire 25-year period cited by the FBI. In the Muslim world as a whole, there will be more than 300 terrorist attacks every few months.

The death toll of such attacks in the U.S. was 3178 (between 1980 and 2005) -- and that includes 9/11 and the Oklahoma bombing! If you take away those two attacks, you are left with around 116 deaths in 25 years. (That death toll has been surpassed in a single day in such Muslim countries as Syria and Egypt.) The other thing worth mentioning is that most of the attacks in the U.S. were either carried out by foreigners or by American citizens who favored foreign causes. Hardly any of the attacks were for domestic causes.

As for the Latinos, it's hard to tell what Loonwatch means by "Latino" terrorist attacks because it has classed various and heterogeneous groups together with that term: most are fighting for completely different causes (e.g., Ejercito Popluar Boricua Macheteros, Puerto Rican Armed Resistance, Antonia Martinez Student Commandos, etc.). Loonwatch would have better classed some of them as "left-wing" terrorists; not as "Latinos". In other words, Loonwatch has based its position on "Latino" terrorism solely on race or ethnicity! Now classing disparate groups together as Latinos is worlds apart from classing all Islamic terrorist groups together.

The Muslim population in the U.S. is small compared to the Latinos. There are around 43 million Latinos in the U.S. compared to between 2.8 to 6 million Muslims (as in the UK, the true numbers are in dispute). So is it any wonder the figures are what they are? But all this also depends on what Loonwatch classes as "terrorism" in the Latino and in other non-Muslim cases. When Muslims bomb, tens of civilians are often killed. Have the Latinos really done anything even remotely equivalent to the daily worldwide carnage that is Islamic terrorism? No! ...not even according to the statistics which Loonwatch provides links to.

Of course Loonwatch's central argument may be that Americans Muslims are fundamentally different from Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, etc. But are they really? Or is the real point that Muslims in the U.S. are a minority? Is that fact alone at the heart of all such differences? (For example, Muslim interfaith and moderation occurs in the U.S., but in most Muslim countries there's virtually zero interfaith and moderation.) If Muslims were a majority in the U.S., or even a much larger minority, would Loonwatch argue that things would be just the same? I strongly doubt that. History has shown that the larger a Muslim minority becomes, the more violent it becomes towards its non-Muslim neighbors and equally towards the states which host them.

The other thing is that percentage figure: 94%. I too have seen the figure which states that 94% of all terrorists -- globally, not in the U.S.! -- are Muslims. So what Loonwatch has done is simply use that figure itself, applied it only to the U.S. alone and then stated: "except the 94% of terrorists that aren't". But even that doesn't make sense. Even if Muslims don't make up 94% of all terrorists, it's a bit of a coincidence that, according to Loonwatch, they make up 100% minus that 94% of terrorists -- that is, 6% of all terrorists. If that 94% figure was wrong in the first place, then why has Loonwatch used it again in such a sly way so as to come to a figure of 6% Muslim terrorists? In addition to that, Loonwatch gives a contradictory figure elsewhere in the very same article. Here it says that 99.6% of terrorists attacks -- in the U.S.? -- are carried out by non-Muslims. That is, less than 1% of terrorist attacks are carried out by Muslims. So what on earth happened to the 6% Muslim terrorist figure Loonwatch cited earlier?

I also love the way Loonwatch uses classic Stalinist tactics. Stalin himself accused virtually all of his political opponents of being "fascists". Nowadays the word-weapons Stalinists, Trotskyists, and progressives use include "racist", "Islamophobe", "bigot, "xenophobe", etc. And now Loonwatch adds such tasteful psychological ad hominems as "loon", "wacko" and "mad" into the mix. (The Communists/Stalinists of yore used more scientifically respectable psychiatric terms for political dissidents and opponents such as "philosophical intoxication" and "sluggish schizophrenic".)

So who runs and writes for Loonwatch? There's a lot of speculation about this because no writer uses his or her real name. (Most recent posts are by someone called Emperor and Garibaldi is also a frequent contributor.) My strong guess is that Loonwatch writers use fake names for one very simple reason: they are Muslims. Distinctly non-Muslim names may be used because Loonwatch knows full well that if they used their Muslim names then, in a manner of speaking, the cat really would be let out of the bag. In other words, why else would Loonwatch writers use false names? (Because Loonwatch lies so much, it may also have something to do with avoiding litigation.) Alternatively, it may that both totalitarian ideologists, Leftists and Islamists, are working together (as they often do) on this project of monumental taqiyya or, as Leftists put it, "lying for Justice".

Finally, Loonwatch's central claim is that all critics of Islam and Muslims are "loons". This is quite amazing claim when you bear in mind the simple fact that every single week 150 people -- at the very least! -- die (sometimes up to 200 or more) as a result of Islamic terrorism around the world. On top of that there's the daily deaths from sharia law, honor killings, the massive persecution of Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. Yet Loonwatch thinks that everyone who points such facts out is a "loon". That strikes me as being the position of, well, a loon. If not a loon, then the position of an Islamist Muslim or, alternatively, a Trotskyist/communist/progressive. Who knows, perhaps some of Loonwatch's writers have managed, somehow, to fuse totalitarian Leftism with totalitarian Islamism (or vice versa). Would that be such a difficult thing to do?