March 16, 2006
Patrick Buchanan
"Who is Karl Rove?" the puzzled fellow from Dubai inquired, on hearing he had a phone call waiting from the White House.
He found out. Karl was sorry to inform the sheiks that the 68-2 vote against the port deal in the House appropriations committee meant they would not be managing our East Coast terminals, and it would probably be wise to cut their losses and get out.
Thus the embarrassing episode ends in the best possible way for Dubai and Bush. But the firestorm was instructive for what it revealed.
Middle America did indeed react viscerally to news that -- after having been endlessly harangued by Washington that they will spend their lives in the shadow of Islamic terrorism -- Arabs from some place they've never heard of would be running our ports.
Their reaction was perfectly normal: "How dumb can these guys be?"
Bush's explanation never caught up with that first reaction. And when Hillary began pounding the ports deal as proof the Bush-Cheney team was clueless in a post-9/11 world, Republicans, seeing their No. 1 issue, national security, slipping away, dumped Bush. Bush, seeing his numbers plunging toward Cheneyville, told Rove: Tell Dubai goodbye.
But it is the media's contemptuous hostility toward people in whose name they presume to speak, suddenly on display, that was so instructive.
Here, again, is PBS-New York Times conservative David Brooks:
"This Dubai port deal has unleashed a kind of collective mania we haven't seen in decades ... a xenophobia tsunami ... a nativist, isolationist mass hysteria. ... God must love Hamas and Muqtada al-Sadr. He has given them the America First brigades of Capitol Hill."
Is there not some compassionate conservative who will send Brooks a grief counselor?
Here is his Times colleague Thomas Friedman on learning that folks thought the Dubai Ports deal was kind of a dumb thing to do.
This is "borderline racist. ... There's a poison loose. ... If we go Dark Ages, if we go down the road of pitchfork-wielding xenophobes, then the whole world will go Dark Ages."
Dark Ages? Are we really headed back to the fifth century A.D. if Halliburton aces out DPW for the New York terminal?
Fox News' Tony Snow, in a column titled, "Fearful Fringe Nativism is the Essence of Surrender," calls opponents of the deal "paranoid," caught up in a "Dubai hysteria."
"Fear has become the defining characteristic of a new strain of American nativism. ... Bin Laden ... has managed to plant the seeds of blank, unreasoning, hide-under-the-bed fear in many Americans."
To assure us he remains fearless, Snow ends: "Eternal vigilance remains a cost of liberty -- and Fearful Fringe nativism is what it has always been: the essence of surrender."
But as Snow's successor as editorial-page editor of The Washington Times, Tony Blankley, led the "Fearful Fringe" into battle against the Dubai deal, perhaps Snow should direct the cowardice charge there.
A disconsolate Weekly Standard has now weighed in. The collapse of the ports deal means "it's a paleo moment in America," wails Fred Barnes -- as in paleo-conservative. America is headed for a politics that is "gloomy, negative, defeatist, isolationist, nativist and protectionist."
In racing through the litany, Barnes only missed "xenophobic."
What are we to make of all this keening?
The media establishment was jolted as it realized that Middle America's belief in the Global Economy is wafer-thin. Its panic is proof of its lack of understanding of the country and of its fear that America may no longer be behind it, if ever it was.
For whatever the supporting role of the "paleos" in the ports battle, it cannot explain the instant opposition of almost 70 percent of the nation and 58 percent of Republicans and conservatives.
What happened to the ports deal is that Davos World collided with America First and got its clock cleaned. Economic patriotism, which engages the heart, thumped globalism, an intellectual construct of economists and corporatists.
Not to understand this is not to understand America. Though Bush may be an open-borders, free-trade Wilsonian who believes he has a providential mission to democratize the world, America, even when it was 90 percent with him, never bought in. To Middle America, Afghanistan and Iraq were always about punishing the people who did 9/11, not about converting them to Jeffersonian democracy.
What Barnes calls paleo-conservatism is the conservatism of the common man, rooted in tradition and wisdom born of experience. It is not the Big Government, open-borders, free-trade, interventionist, globaloney of the neo-cons and their Rebel in Chief.
Conservatives don't trash their countrymen, even if they think they're wrong. It is slander to say opposition to the Dubai deal exposed some deep, dark strain in the American soul.
The cakewalk crowd doesn't understand America because it doesn't live there. It lives in an ideological world of its own creation, which, as it denies aspects of reality, is forever colliding with reality.
And more collisions are coming.
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Robert Spencer: Fantasies About Jihad
Robert Spencer
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
March 15, 2006
I recently spoke at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference in The Hague, which focused on Europe’s growing immigration crisis and imminent Islamization; Bat Ye’or, Ibn Warraq, Daniel Pipes, Douglas Murray and others were also featured speakers. The first night we were in The Hague there was a reception for us at the American Embassy. The new Ambassador, Roland E. Arnall, hadn't arrived yet, but I had a pleasant conversation with our host, Deputy Chief of Mission Chat Blakeman.
Blakeman introduced me to an official of the Dutch Ministry of Integration, who spends her days in dialogue with Dutch imams and other Muslim leaders. We began a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of the jihad threat and the proper response to it. In the course of this I asked her how many Muslim leaders she encountered who were ready to lay aside attachment to the Sharia, accept the Dutch governmental and societal structure and the parameters of Dutch pluralism, and be willing to live in Dutch society as equals to, not superiors of, non-Muslims indefinitely. She told me that there were only very few, but insisted that we had to work with those few, and indeed had to place our faith and hope in them, for otherwise the future was impossibly bleak. I asked her if she had read the Qur’an. She told me no, she hadn’t, and wouldn’t, because she didn’t want to lose all hope -- and because whatever was in it, she still had to work to find some accord with the Muslim leaders, no matter what.
I urged her to ask the imams with whom she spoke questions that made their loyalties clear, insofar as they would answer them honestly. I urged her to ask them whether they would like to see Sharia implemented in the Netherlands at any time in the future, and whether they were working toward that end in any way, peaceful as well as violent. I asked her to ask them whether they would be content to live as equals with non-Muslims indefinitely in a Dutch pluralistic society, or whether they would ultimately hope to institute Islamic supremacy and the subjugation of non-Muslims.
She couldn’t ask them those questions, she told me. Such questions would immediately put their relationship on a confrontational plane, when cooperation was what they wanted, not confrontation. But, I sputtered, you’re not getting cooperation as it is. The confrontation is already upon us. What is to be gained by pretending that it isn’t happening?
I don’t envy this articulate and intelligent young lady her job. But her remarks reminded me of a message I received not long ago, after I had criticized former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid’s bit of Wall Street Journal puffery about how Islam is really a religion of peace. A reader took me to task for “suggesting that Islam is irredeemable in some sense.” He asked: “if we assume this to be true, what is to be done. What would Mr. Spencer suggest that this or any American president do to deal with this reality. Wahid was thought to be a step in the right direction when he was president of the extremely large population of Indonesia, but if he is not much more than a ‘trumped-up counterfeit,’ where do we go from here.”
Where do we go from here? We go to reality. We stop deceiving ourselves and allowing ourselves to be deceived by others. If Wahid was being disingenuous about the teachings of Islam, then he doesn’t offer Westerners hope. He offers them a weak reed that will collapse when they need it the most. Why? Because Muslims who are attracted by the siren song of jihad will see through his pleasing platitudes and recognize how slim a case he really has with reference to the Islamic texts. Westerners can be fooled by him, and Muslims can’t. The young lady in the Dutch Ministry of Integration, despite her best efforts to ignore or deny this reality, kept coming up against it: she found that only a small minority of Muslim leaders in Holland were at all interested in working toward integration.
Eventually the Dutch Ministry of Integration and other administrative bodies in the Western world are going to have to come to grips with the implications of that fact, and with the implications of other facts about Islamic jihad that so far they have preferred to pretend did not exist. What would I suggest that the President do about this reality? I would suggest that he acknowledge it as a reality. That he address the nation and the world, and tell them that the United States is going to lead the resistance to jihad and Sharia supremacism in the name of equality of rights and dignity of all peoples. That any state that oppresses non-Muslims or denies them equality of rights in any way will receive no American aid whatsoever. That any state that allows the idea that Muslims must make war against non-Muslims until they either convert to Islam or submit to the Islamic social order will be no friend of the United States. That the idea that the U.S. Constitution should one day be replaced by Islamic Sharia, whether by violent or non-violent means, will be understood within the United States as seditious.
The Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference was one small effort to bring Dutch officials, and ultimately the West at large, to confront the realities of our world that the world is doing all it can to deny. Bat Ye’or spoke about how European officials themselves had brought Eurabia into being by encouraging immigration while eschewing assimilation at the insistence of the Arab League. Only now are Europeans realizing that their culture, their soul, has been sold by their leaders for oil, and the jihad is upon them.
It is a reality so bleak that it is no wonder that most officials prefer fantasy. But they won’t be able to maintain their comfortable illusions much longer.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of five books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). He is also an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation.
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
March 15, 2006
I recently spoke at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference in The Hague, which focused on Europe’s growing immigration crisis and imminent Islamization; Bat Ye’or, Ibn Warraq, Daniel Pipes, Douglas Murray and others were also featured speakers. The first night we were in The Hague there was a reception for us at the American Embassy. The new Ambassador, Roland E. Arnall, hadn't arrived yet, but I had a pleasant conversation with our host, Deputy Chief of Mission Chat Blakeman.
Blakeman introduced me to an official of the Dutch Ministry of Integration, who spends her days in dialogue with Dutch imams and other Muslim leaders. We began a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of the jihad threat and the proper response to it. In the course of this I asked her how many Muslim leaders she encountered who were ready to lay aside attachment to the Sharia, accept the Dutch governmental and societal structure and the parameters of Dutch pluralism, and be willing to live in Dutch society as equals to, not superiors of, non-Muslims indefinitely. She told me that there were only very few, but insisted that we had to work with those few, and indeed had to place our faith and hope in them, for otherwise the future was impossibly bleak. I asked her if she had read the Qur’an. She told me no, she hadn’t, and wouldn’t, because she didn’t want to lose all hope -- and because whatever was in it, she still had to work to find some accord with the Muslim leaders, no matter what.
I urged her to ask the imams with whom she spoke questions that made their loyalties clear, insofar as they would answer them honestly. I urged her to ask them whether they would like to see Sharia implemented in the Netherlands at any time in the future, and whether they were working toward that end in any way, peaceful as well as violent. I asked her to ask them whether they would be content to live as equals with non-Muslims indefinitely in a Dutch pluralistic society, or whether they would ultimately hope to institute Islamic supremacy and the subjugation of non-Muslims.
She couldn’t ask them those questions, she told me. Such questions would immediately put their relationship on a confrontational plane, when cooperation was what they wanted, not confrontation. But, I sputtered, you’re not getting cooperation as it is. The confrontation is already upon us. What is to be gained by pretending that it isn’t happening?
I don’t envy this articulate and intelligent young lady her job. But her remarks reminded me of a message I received not long ago, after I had criticized former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid’s bit of Wall Street Journal puffery about how Islam is really a religion of peace. A reader took me to task for “suggesting that Islam is irredeemable in some sense.” He asked: “if we assume this to be true, what is to be done. What would Mr. Spencer suggest that this or any American president do to deal with this reality. Wahid was thought to be a step in the right direction when he was president of the extremely large population of Indonesia, but if he is not much more than a ‘trumped-up counterfeit,’ where do we go from here.”
Where do we go from here? We go to reality. We stop deceiving ourselves and allowing ourselves to be deceived by others. If Wahid was being disingenuous about the teachings of Islam, then he doesn’t offer Westerners hope. He offers them a weak reed that will collapse when they need it the most. Why? Because Muslims who are attracted by the siren song of jihad will see through his pleasing platitudes and recognize how slim a case he really has with reference to the Islamic texts. Westerners can be fooled by him, and Muslims can’t. The young lady in the Dutch Ministry of Integration, despite her best efforts to ignore or deny this reality, kept coming up against it: she found that only a small minority of Muslim leaders in Holland were at all interested in working toward integration.
Eventually the Dutch Ministry of Integration and other administrative bodies in the Western world are going to have to come to grips with the implications of that fact, and with the implications of other facts about Islamic jihad that so far they have preferred to pretend did not exist. What would I suggest that the President do about this reality? I would suggest that he acknowledge it as a reality. That he address the nation and the world, and tell them that the United States is going to lead the resistance to jihad and Sharia supremacism in the name of equality of rights and dignity of all peoples. That any state that oppresses non-Muslims or denies them equality of rights in any way will receive no American aid whatsoever. That any state that allows the idea that Muslims must make war against non-Muslims until they either convert to Islam or submit to the Islamic social order will be no friend of the United States. That the idea that the U.S. Constitution should one day be replaced by Islamic Sharia, whether by violent or non-violent means, will be understood within the United States as seditious.
The Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference was one small effort to bring Dutch officials, and ultimately the West at large, to confront the realities of our world that the world is doing all it can to deny. Bat Ye’or spoke about how European officials themselves had brought Eurabia into being by encouraging immigration while eschewing assimilation at the insistence of the Arab League. Only now are Europeans realizing that their culture, their soul, has been sold by their leaders for oil, and the jihad is upon them.
It is a reality so bleak that it is no wonder that most officials prefer fantasy. But they won’t be able to maintain their comfortable illusions much longer.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of five books, seven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). He is also an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Daniel Pipes: Sudden Jihad Syndrome
Daniel Pipes
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
March 14, 2006
“Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.” I wrote those words days after 9/11 and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March 3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not go far enough.
That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none were severely injured.
Until his would-be murderous rampage, Taheri-azar, a philosophy and psychology major, had an apparently normal existence and promising future. In high school, he had been student council president and a member of the National Honor Society. A number of UNC students told the Los Angeles Times that he “was a serious student, shy but friendly.” One fellow student, Brian Copeland, “was impressed with his knowledge of classical Western thought, adding “He was kind and gentle, rather than aggressive and violent.” The university chancellor, James Moeser, called him a good student, if “totally a loner, introverted and into himself.”
In fact, no one who knew him said a bad word about him, which is important, for it signals that he is not some low-life, not homicidal, not psychotic, but a conscientious student and amiable person. Which raises the obvious question: why would a regular person try to kill a random assortment of students? Taheri-azar’s post-arrest remarks offer some clues.
* He told the 911 dispatcher that he wanted to “punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world.”
* He explained to a detective that “people all over the world are being killed in war and now it is the people in the United States[’] turn to be killed.”
* He said he acted to “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.”
* He portrayed his actions as “an eye for an eye.”
* A police affidavit notes that “Taheri-azar repeatedly said that the United States Government had been killing his people across the sea and that he decided to attack.”
* He told a judge, “I’m thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah.”
In brief, Taheri-azar represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims. Taheri-azar acknowledged planning his jihad for over two years, or during his university sojourn. It’s not hard to imagine how his ideas developed, given the coherence of Islamist ideology, its immense reach (including a Muslim Student Association at UNC), and its resonance among many Muslims.
Were Taheri-azar unique in his surreptitious adoption of radical Islam, one could ignore his case, but he fits into a widespread pattern of Muslims who lead quiet lives before turning to terrorism. Their number includes the 9/11 hijackers, the London transport bombers, and Maher Hawash, the Intel engineer arrested before he could join the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Mohammed Ali Alayed, the Saudi living in Houston fits, the pattern because he stabbed and murdered Ariel Sellouk, a Jewish man who was his one-time friend. So do some converts to Islam; who suspected Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman, would turn up in Iraq as a suicide bomber throwing herself against an American military base?
This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.
This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since 9/11.
The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the “new anti-Semitism,” or “Islamophobia” is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of “Germanophobia” or anti-Communists of “Russophobia.” Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of “infidels.”
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
March 14, 2006
“Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.” I wrote those words days after 9/11 and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March 3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not go far enough.
That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none were severely injured.
Until his would-be murderous rampage, Taheri-azar, a philosophy and psychology major, had an apparently normal existence and promising future. In high school, he had been student council president and a member of the National Honor Society. A number of UNC students told the Los Angeles Times that he “was a serious student, shy but friendly.” One fellow student, Brian Copeland, “was impressed with his knowledge of classical Western thought, adding “He was kind and gentle, rather than aggressive and violent.” The university chancellor, James Moeser, called him a good student, if “totally a loner, introverted and into himself.”
In fact, no one who knew him said a bad word about him, which is important, for it signals that he is not some low-life, not homicidal, not psychotic, but a conscientious student and amiable person. Which raises the obvious question: why would a regular person try to kill a random assortment of students? Taheri-azar’s post-arrest remarks offer some clues.
* He told the 911 dispatcher that he wanted to “punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world.”
* He explained to a detective that “people all over the world are being killed in war and now it is the people in the United States[’] turn to be killed.”
* He said he acted to “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.”
* He portrayed his actions as “an eye for an eye.”
* A police affidavit notes that “Taheri-azar repeatedly said that the United States Government had been killing his people across the sea and that he decided to attack.”
* He told a judge, “I’m thankful you’re here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah.”
In brief, Taheri-azar represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims. Taheri-azar acknowledged planning his jihad for over two years, or during his university sojourn. It’s not hard to imagine how his ideas developed, given the coherence of Islamist ideology, its immense reach (including a Muslim Student Association at UNC), and its resonance among many Muslims.
Were Taheri-azar unique in his surreptitious adoption of radical Islam, one could ignore his case, but he fits into a widespread pattern of Muslims who lead quiet lives before turning to terrorism. Their number includes the 9/11 hijackers, the London transport bombers, and Maher Hawash, the Intel engineer arrested before he could join the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Mohammed Ali Alayed, the Saudi living in Houston fits, the pattern because he stabbed and murdered Ariel Sellouk, a Jewish man who was his one-time friend. So do some converts to Islam; who suspected Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman, would turn up in Iraq as a suicide bomber throwing herself against an American military base?
This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.
This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since 9/11.
The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the “new anti-Semitism,” or “Islamophobia” is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of “Germanophobia” or anti-Communists of “Russophobia.” Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of “infidels.”
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).
Monday, March 13, 2006
Mark Steyn: Media shockingly ignorant of Muslims among us
March 12, 2006
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
This week's Voldemort Award goes to the New York Times for their account of a curious case of road rage in North Carolina:
"The man charged with nine counts of attempted murder for driving a Jeep through a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last Friday told the police that he deliberately rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle so he could 'run over things and keep going.' "
The driver in question was Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar.
Whoa, don't jump to conclusions. The Times certainly didn't. As the report continued:
"According to statements taken by the police, Mr. Taheri-azar, 22, an Iranian-born graduate of the university, felt that the United States government had been 'killing his people across the sea' and that his actions reflected 'an eye for an eye.'"
"His people"? And who exactly would that be? Taheri-azar is admirably upfront about his actions. As he told police, he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world."
And yet the M-word appears nowhere in the Times report. Whether intentionally or not, they seem to be channeling the great Sufi theologian and jurist al-Ghazali, who died a millennium ago but whose first rule on the conduct of dhimmis -- non-Muslims in Muslim society -- seem to have been taken on board by the Western media:
The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle. . . .
Are they teaching that at Columbia Journalism School yet?
A fellow called Mohammed mows down a bunch of students? Just one of those things -- like a gran'ma in my neck of the woods a couple of years back who hit the wrong pedal in the parking lot and ploughed through a McDonald's, leaving the place a hideous tangle of crumbled drywall, splattered patties and incendiary hot apple-pie filling. Yet, according to his own statements, Taheri-azar committed an act of ideological domestic terrorism, which he'd planned for two months. He told police he was more disappointed more students in his path weren't struck and that he'd rented the biggest vehicle the agency had in order to do as much damage to as many people as possible. The Persian car pet may have been flooring it, but the media are idling in neutral, if not actively reversing away from the story as fast as they can. Taheri-azar informed the judge he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah," and it was apparently the will of Allah that he get behind the wheel of Allah.
Meanwhile, a new Washington Post/ABC poll finds that, in the words of the Post, "nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence."
"Often" targeted? Want to put some hard numbers on that? Like to compare the "violence" Americans perpetrated on Muslims after the slaughter of thousands of their fellow citizens in the name of Allah with, say, the death toll perpetrated by Muslims annoyed over some itsy-bitsy cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper? In September 2001, 99.99999 percent of Americans behaved with remarkable forbearance. If they're less inclined to give the benefit of the doubt these days, perhaps it's because of casual slurs like the Post's or the no-jihad-to-see-here-folks tone of the Times.
Ronald Stockton of the University of Michigan doesn't see it that way: "You're getting a constant drumbeat of negative information about Islam," he told the Post. By "negative information," Professor Stockton presumably means the London bombings, and the Bali bombings, and the Madrid bombings and the Istanbul bombings. But surely it's worth asking why in 2006 the Washington Post needs a man with a name like "Ronald Stockton" to explain Islam to us? The diversity bores in the media go out of their way to hire writers of color, writers of gender, writers of orientation. Yet, five years after 9/11, where's the New York Times' Muslim columnist? Where's the ''Today Show's'' Islamic weather girl? Why, indeed, are all the Muslim voices in the press broadly on the right -- Amir Taheri in the New York Post, Stephen Schwartz in the Weekly Standard, Fouad Ajami in the Wall Street Journal?
If Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar is not a free-lance terrorist, then what is he? Who is he? What's he thinking? In the absence of any explanatory voices from the Muslim community, all we have are the bare bones of his resume: He's a 22-year old UNC psychology major who graduated in December. And what's revealing is the link between Taheri-azar's grievance and his action.
Take him at his word: He's upset about "the treatment of Muslims around the world" -- presumably at the hands of Israelis on the West Bank, of the Russians in Chechnya, the Indians in Kashmir, the Americans in the Sunni Triangle and the Danes in the funny pages. So what does he do to avenge Islam? He goes to the rental agency, takes out the biggest car on the lot, drives it to UNC and rams it into the men and women he's spent the last few years studying with and socializing with -- the one group of infidels he knows really well.
How many Muslims feel similarly? Not many in America, perhaps -- if only when compared to Europe: For all the multiculti blather, the United States still does a better job assimilating immigrants than France or Germany. A recent poll found that 40 percent of British Muslims want sharia introduced in the United Kingdom and 20 percent sympathized with the "feelings and motives" of the July 7 London Tube bombers. Or, more accurately, 20 percent were prepared to admit to a pollster they felt sympathy, which suggests the real figure might be somewhat higher. Huge numbers of Muslims -- many of them British subjects born and bred -- see their fellow Britons blown apart on trains and buses and are willing to rationalize the actions of mass murderers.
"East is east and west is west/And ne'er the twain shall meet," wrote Kipling. Obviously, they meet every moment of the day -- the cabbie driving you to your appointment in Washington, the affable fellow at the corner store. But proximity isn't the same as understanding: Taheri-azar and that 20 percent of British Muslims think they know "the west" and they don't like it.
By contrast, the New York Times and Co. insist they like "the east" but go to an awful lot of trouble to avoid finding out anything that would ruffle their illusions. The twain would never meet, said Kipling, "till Earth and Sky meet presently/At God's great judgment seat."
I'd rather find out before then. Five years after Sept. 11, it's astonishing how little we still know about the West's Muslim populations.
©Mark Steyn, 2006
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
This week's Voldemort Award goes to the New York Times for their account of a curious case of road rage in North Carolina:
"The man charged with nine counts of attempted murder for driving a Jeep through a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last Friday told the police that he deliberately rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle so he could 'run over things and keep going.' "
The driver in question was Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar.
Whoa, don't jump to conclusions. The Times certainly didn't. As the report continued:
"According to statements taken by the police, Mr. Taheri-azar, 22, an Iranian-born graduate of the university, felt that the United States government had been 'killing his people across the sea' and that his actions reflected 'an eye for an eye.'"
"His people"? And who exactly would that be? Taheri-azar is admirably upfront about his actions. As he told police, he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world."
And yet the M-word appears nowhere in the Times report. Whether intentionally or not, they seem to be channeling the great Sufi theologian and jurist al-Ghazali, who died a millennium ago but whose first rule on the conduct of dhimmis -- non-Muslims in Muslim society -- seem to have been taken on board by the Western media:
The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle. . . .
Are they teaching that at Columbia Journalism School yet?
A fellow called Mohammed mows down a bunch of students? Just one of those things -- like a gran'ma in my neck of the woods a couple of years back who hit the wrong pedal in the parking lot and ploughed through a McDonald's, leaving the place a hideous tangle of crumbled drywall, splattered patties and incendiary hot apple-pie filling. Yet, according to his own statements, Taheri-azar committed an act of ideological domestic terrorism, which he'd planned for two months. He told police he was more disappointed more students in his path weren't struck and that he'd rented the biggest vehicle the agency had in order to do as much damage to as many people as possible. The Persian car pet may have been flooring it, but the media are idling in neutral, if not actively reversing away from the story as fast as they can. Taheri-azar informed the judge he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah," and it was apparently the will of Allah that he get behind the wheel of Allah.
Meanwhile, a new Washington Post/ABC poll finds that, in the words of the Post, "nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence."
"Often" targeted? Want to put some hard numbers on that? Like to compare the "violence" Americans perpetrated on Muslims after the slaughter of thousands of their fellow citizens in the name of Allah with, say, the death toll perpetrated by Muslims annoyed over some itsy-bitsy cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper? In September 2001, 99.99999 percent of Americans behaved with remarkable forbearance. If they're less inclined to give the benefit of the doubt these days, perhaps it's because of casual slurs like the Post's or the no-jihad-to-see-here-folks tone of the Times.
Ronald Stockton of the University of Michigan doesn't see it that way: "You're getting a constant drumbeat of negative information about Islam," he told the Post. By "negative information," Professor Stockton presumably means the London bombings, and the Bali bombings, and the Madrid bombings and the Istanbul bombings. But surely it's worth asking why in 2006 the Washington Post needs a man with a name like "Ronald Stockton" to explain Islam to us? The diversity bores in the media go out of their way to hire writers of color, writers of gender, writers of orientation. Yet, five years after 9/11, where's the New York Times' Muslim columnist? Where's the ''Today Show's'' Islamic weather girl? Why, indeed, are all the Muslim voices in the press broadly on the right -- Amir Taheri in the New York Post, Stephen Schwartz in the Weekly Standard, Fouad Ajami in the Wall Street Journal?
If Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar is not a free-lance terrorist, then what is he? Who is he? What's he thinking? In the absence of any explanatory voices from the Muslim community, all we have are the bare bones of his resume: He's a 22-year old UNC psychology major who graduated in December. And what's revealing is the link between Taheri-azar's grievance and his action.
Take him at his word: He's upset about "the treatment of Muslims around the world" -- presumably at the hands of Israelis on the West Bank, of the Russians in Chechnya, the Indians in Kashmir, the Americans in the Sunni Triangle and the Danes in the funny pages. So what does he do to avenge Islam? He goes to the rental agency, takes out the biggest car on the lot, drives it to UNC and rams it into the men and women he's spent the last few years studying with and socializing with -- the one group of infidels he knows really well.
How many Muslims feel similarly? Not many in America, perhaps -- if only when compared to Europe: For all the multiculti blather, the United States still does a better job assimilating immigrants than France or Germany. A recent poll found that 40 percent of British Muslims want sharia introduced in the United Kingdom and 20 percent sympathized with the "feelings and motives" of the July 7 London Tube bombers. Or, more accurately, 20 percent were prepared to admit to a pollster they felt sympathy, which suggests the real figure might be somewhat higher. Huge numbers of Muslims -- many of them British subjects born and bred -- see their fellow Britons blown apart on trains and buses and are willing to rationalize the actions of mass murderers.
"East is east and west is west/And ne'er the twain shall meet," wrote Kipling. Obviously, they meet every moment of the day -- the cabbie driving you to your appointment in Washington, the affable fellow at the corner store. But proximity isn't the same as understanding: Taheri-azar and that 20 percent of British Muslims think they know "the west" and they don't like it.
By contrast, the New York Times and Co. insist they like "the east" but go to an awful lot of trouble to avoid finding out anything that would ruffle their illusions. The twain would never meet, said Kipling, "till Earth and Sky meet presently/At God's great judgment seat."
I'd rather find out before then. Five years after Sept. 11, it's astonishing how little we still know about the West's Muslim populations.
©Mark Steyn, 2006
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