The New York Times spends 118 words going to bat for the presumptive innocence of Muslims in the Mumbai train blasts in its coverage this morning:

But they also reminded many here of a series of bomb blasts in this city of 17 million in 1993, later attributed to organized crime, that killed more than 250 people.

With much still unknown about Tuesday's blasts and India's own long history as a victim of terrorist violence — much of it predating the rise of global Islamist terrorist networks — it was impossible to draw immediate conclusions about the forces behind the attacks.

For now, there was no concrete evidence linking Tuesday's explosions in Mumbai to any particular group, nor any claim of responsibility. It was not clear how the bombs had been planted, what materials had been used, or whether they were the work of suicide bombers.

Ed Lasky   7 12 06

Richard Baehr adds:

Oh the mob. I see. They also must have set off the bombs that kiled 8 Indian soldiers in Srinigar in Kashmir at the same time.

Ed Lasky adds:

There has long been a pattern of Muslims attacking transportation points. The Times forgot Madrid train bombings,  planned attacks on Paris subways, innumerable airports attacked by Muslim groups —Athens, Vienna, Israel are just some example; numerous bus depots blown up in Israel; planned subway attacks in New York City. The modus operandi is one of the first principles of evidence used by police around the world to find suspects.

To dredge up the Indian mob being responsible for such wanton destruction defies belief. The last such attack was 13 years ago! Is this type of reporting worthy from a major American newspaper.

Bookworm notes in her blog Bookworm Room that even reliably liberal Mr. Bookworm seemed to find it off that the Times ignored the possibility of Muslim involvment:

Mr. Bookworm is one of the smartest people I know. He's also someone who gets his news exclusively from the New York Times, NPR and The New Yorker. He's fond of repeating in a loud voice that President Bush is the worst president ever, that he's an idiot, and that all his policies are wrong. When he takes time to get to the nitty gritty, though (something he avoids so as not to interfere with his cherished biases), he often finds himself unable to disagree with conservative ideas.
Even in his liberal media bubble, ideas are percolating.

This morning, as he was reading the times, he hollered out to me, 'Are the people who blew up the trains in India Muslims?' (I think this is the NY Times article he was reading as he asked that question, and find his confusion unsurprising. The Islamic connection doesn't precisely leap out, and the article, by focusing on the fact that one specific Islamic group might not have been the culprit, implies no Islamists had anything to do with the bombing.) I answered that, yes, it was Muslims who blew up the trains, possibly in concert with Al Qaeda.

My response was followed by a ruminative silence. Then, the man well—marinated in Leftist political correctness asked 'What are these Muslims doing? They're blowing up people all over the world? People are going to get sick of them? These are really bad people.' It's small, but it's a start.