Wake-up Call to What?

What can you say about Islamist terrorist groups?

Canadian security has arrested 17 people who, they say, were planning to blow up some stuff in Toronto and, maybe, do some harm to prominent figures. It's unnerving in a way, but not very surprising. Most Canadians have been expecting something along these lines for a few years.

The reactions of the chattering class are worthy of note.

Of course, you have your Islamic apologists.

Professional Muslims are predictably lecturing us on the need to be fair and re-re-re-itering about the beauty of Islam and you can't tar...blah, blah, blah...racist Canadians trying to...blah, blah, blah...how can you charge these people simply because they are devote Muslims and it will unleash yet another racism, discrimination, bias, shallow, not-understanding, stupid non-muslim reaction...blah, blah.

They can be dismissed as people who are lost in their own angst.

And then we have the usual rightwinger suspects with their usual screed about wake up calls, and this shows that Canada is not immune to international blah, blah, blah.

The professional Muslims we can take or leave. Most of us can recite their exposition by heart. Yes, yes. Nicely put. Please take a seat.

But the wake-up-callers are of particular interest. They keep flinging out this cliche. It's a wake-up call. A wake-up call. What the hell are they talking about?

It's time they were called on it.

A wake-up call. As in...a plot to blow up a bunch of places in downtown Toronto is a wake-up call.

Okay. I'm awake. What do I do now?

What precisely do you want me to do?

When you say, Oh, that's a wake-up call, do you actually expect me to rouse myself from my presumed slumber to actually, like, do something? And what pray tell would that be?

Should I now wake up enough to run up and down my street attacking people who look Muslim? Is that what you're saying? Should I throw over-ripe tomatoes at the lads from the Durham Islamic Centre? Is that what you're proposing?

Come out and say it, dervish. Wake-up call, indeed.

Wake up and what?

Smell the coffee?

Attack the Muslims?

Bomb the suk?

Wake up how, exactly?

What are you trying to say?

Fact is, nobody needs waking up and nobody needs your coded call to arms.

Wake-up call, indeed!