Augean Stables

The appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Obama’s Chief of Staff has raised concern among Arab-Americans. Emanuel is an Orthodox Jew, his father is Israeli, and he volunteered as a civilian on an IDF base during Gulf War I. Rumors have been circulating about him being a secret Israeli citizen, and his father’s recent remarks about Arabs only exacerbated the situation.

James Zogby wrote an article for the Arab American Institute cautioning his fellow Arab-Americans from reverting to paranoia and anti-Semitism. While the two sets of rumors do not parallel each other perfectly, this is a rebuke to those who dumbed down the anti-Obama efforts by rumors about him being a closet Muslim with an anti-Israel agenda. 

On November 5th, my office sent an email to tens of thousands of our members and contacts congratulating President-elect Barack Obama. In our message, we noted the historic transformation his victory represented and commended the thousands of Arab Americans who participated in this winning campaign.

The initial and near universal response was heartwarming, with many sharing moving anecdotes of their campaign experiences, their reactions to the victory, and their hopes for change.

One day and one announcement later, the tide turned.

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A six-member delegation from Pakistan comes to the West to demand that, where Islam is concerned, we curtail freedom of expression. Few issues illustrate better the clash between Western notions of free speech and Muslim desires to control the public sphere. This began back in 1989 with the Rushdie affair, and has not gotten a whole lot better since. This offers an occasion to draw the line. Only when we respect our own institutions (which are kryptonite to Muslim pretensions at a global Caliphate), can we hope to have them respect us. (Hattip LGF)

Pakistan to ask EU to amend laws on freedom of expression

By Tahir Niaz

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will ask the European Union countries to amend laws regarding freedom of expression in order to prevent offensive incidents such as the printing of blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) and the production of an anti-Islam film by a Dutch legislator, sources in the Interior Ministry told Daily Times on Saturday.

They said that a six-member high-level delegation comprising officials from the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Law would leave Islamabad on Sunday (today) for the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium and explain to the EU leadership the backlash against the blasphemous campaign in the name of freedom of expression.

The delegation, headed by an additional secretary of the Interior Ministry, will meet the leaders of the EU countries in a bid to convince them that the recent attack on the Danish Embassy in Pakistan could be a reaction against the blasphemous campaign, sources said.

They said that the delegation would also tell the EU that if such acts against Islam are not controlled, more attacks on the EU diplomatic missions abroad could not be ruled out.

Sources said that the delegation would also hold discussions on inter-religious harmony during its meetings with the EU leaders.

Comments:

A commission of demopaths, come to denounce democratic institutions in the name of religious harmony and mutual respect. Alas, I suspect they’ll find a warm welcome. More global Jihad warming.

They want Fitna removed, despite the fact that most of it could be a recruiting film for Jihad.

The obvious response to the threat — that there may be more attacks on embassies, which they can’t prevent, i.e., blackmail — is to withdraw the embassies. But we don’t want to walk away from Pakistan, so they play on our unwillingness to let them go down the tubes in order to maneuver us into positions of weakness.

Already, institutions like the Chamber 17 in Paris and the Canadian Human Rights Commission enforce these gag orders.

Geert Wilder’s film on Islam — Fitna (Dissension, Civil War) — which has been rejected from theaters and repeatedly blocked from websites for offending Muslims and engaging in hate speech, is now available.

Watch it, and ask yourself: Is documenting hate speech, hate speech?

Further reflections:

View this movie with the “eyes” of a jihadi Muslim who doesn’t know who made it, and believes in the destiny of Islam to conquer the world by any means. You see quotes from the Qur’an about engaging in Jihad; you hear preachers calling for jihad; you see victims of Jihadi attacks. Take out the Muhammad Cartoon, the Western music, and final coda, and I think he’d go, “Yessss!”

This could well be a recruiting device for Jihadis (e.g., considerably more elegant and to the point that Osama bin Laden’s long rambling recruiting video.

Note that the Muslims most engaged in the violence the Europeans so fear this movie will provoke, are precisely those who would find the contents unexceptional. So why are they threatening to riot?

Interestingly, the response has been remarkably muted so far. But note this comment from an al Qaeda member:

A militant believed linked to al-Qaida’s deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahri told The Associated Press in the northwestern city of Peshawar last week militants would mount revenge attacks against foreigners because of Wilders’ film.

“Foreigners will be attacked. The situation will change, change, change,” said Qari Mohammed Yusuf, whose also said his two brothers died fighting alongside al-Zawahri. “The reaction was in (the Pakistani tribal region of) Waziristan before, but tomorrow it will be in Kabul and even in Holland and in Denmark.“

Revenge for what? Quoting his buddies?

(The following is a close look at the thesis of Major Stephen Coughlin, prepared by LB with comments by RL)

The fact that Coughlin is being fired for pressing his approach to Islam — take Islam seriously in its own terms — illustrates what’s wrong with Western policy circles, even those whose primary role is our defense.

Major Stephen Coughlin is one of the Pentagon’s premier experts on Islamic law and Islamism. In March, he will become the Pentagon’s former expert. Reports coming from the Pentagon in the past month have indicated that after submitting his Master’s thesis, Coughlin was fired from the Joint Staff after he fell into the bad graces of Hasham Islam, a key aide to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. Islam and England have been aggressively reaching out to American Muslim groups, including the Islamic Society of North America, a group many critics call a front for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. During a meeting several weeks ago, Islam confronted Coughlin and called him “a Christian zealot with a pen.” The Pentagon decided that Coughlin was too controversial, and terminated his contract, effective this March.

The episode highlights intellectual weakness in the nation’s defense policy establishment and the influence of demopaths like Heshem Islam who is also a zealot with a pen who favors autobiographical fantasy. The Pentagon has apparently decided on an outlook that dictates that mainstream Islam stands for peace, that the Jihadi zealots represent a hi-jacking of the “true” religion, and will not countenance any evidence to the contrary. It also illustrates the way in which this “politically correct” approach acts as a form of cultural disarmament.

Coughlin’s recent 333 page Master’s thesis for the National Defense Intelligence College, entitled “To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad“, is well researched, well argued and fairly straightforward. That his recommendations are being sidelined makes one pessimistic about the direction of the intellectual underpinnings of U.S. defense policy.

Coughlin calls for a dispassionate analysis of the Jihadi threat. He argues that our enemies base their statements and actions in Islamic law, and use Islamic legal language, therefore our only way to seriously understand their motives and intentions is to listen to what they are saying and analyze it in the context of Islamic law.

According to Coughlin, it is irrelevant if Islam stands for peace or not. Even if most Muslims do not share the specifically Jihadist reading of Islam, Jihadi positions are grounded in mainstream Islamic law, and their language is rooted exclusively in Islamic terms. Coughlin calls the dominant contemporary intellectual approach the Current Approach what we at the Augean Stable call the PCP. The “Current Approach,” he argues, is useless because it refuses to acknowledge the doctrinal basis of the terrorists’ actions. Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke about the danger of ignoring our enemies’ declared intentions on The National Strategy for Victory in Iraq at the National Defense University on December 1, 2005:

Likewise, the nature of today’s jihadist enemies can only be understood within the context of their declared strategic doctrine to dominate the world. Just as we ignored Mein Kampf ” to our great detriment” prior to World War II, so we are on the verge of suffering a similar fate today.

Of course, that is a comparison that, according to the rules of political correctness, cannot be made. And not being able to make it is part of our cultural disarmament. We are not permitted to even imagine that we might have an enemy as ruthless and imperialist as the Nazis. Just as it would be an insult to all Germans to call them Nazis, so it would be an insult to all Muslims to call them Jihadis. But what if a similar dynamic was at work whereby a small but dynamic minority began to gain inordinate influence over the larger majority? Could we not talk about it? And should honest Muslims, like honest Germans, be throttling such a discussion because it offends them? Whose side are they on? That of decency, or Islam “right or wrong”?

Coughlin starts with fundamental questions that, if answered honestly, should lead to an accurate understanding of the threat.

Why have we failed to do a doctrine-based threat assessment?
What is the doctrinal basis of the jihadi threat?
How can we come to understand the jihadi threat?

The efforts to define the doctrinal basis to the Jihadi threats were hampered in the first days after 9/11 by President Bush’s adamant assertions that Islam is a religion of peace, and the extraordinary assertion (for an outsider) those who commit violence in the name of Islam misread their religious texts and law.

Following the catastrophic events of 9-11 when 19 Muslim men attacked U.S. targets for reasons associated with jihad in furtherance of Islamic goals, President George Bush made broad statements that held Islam harmless:
The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.

While there is little doubt the President made these comments to allay fears in the Muslim community while staring-down thoughts of vigilante justice in some circles, his statements exerted a chilling effect on those tasked to define the enemy’s doctrine by effectively placing a policy bar on the unconstrained analysis of Islamic doctrine as a basis for this threat.

There is a faulty assumption of an underlying cause for terrorism that has pervaded the thinking on the Jihadi threat. That assumption is that poverty and despair lead to terrorism, even when the facts stand against that conclusion.

As recently as 15 May 2007, from the same utterance in which he acknowledged that “it is true that terrorist leaders seem more often than not to come from middle-class backgrounds,” U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, Ross Wilson counterfactually asserted that “most people would find it hard to argue against the idea that [the underlying cause of] terrorist violence arises, sociologically speaking, out of poverty, despair, hopelessness and resentment.”

The logic behind insisting on poverty as the source of terrorism is, like so much of PCP, a desire to have a solution we can implement: we [think we] know how to deal with poverty and getting rid of that is a good liberal goal, so kill two birds with one stone. But even some economists — who have every professional motivation to adopt this position — disagree.

And yet, the defense community apparently still does not understand the enemy’s motivation (transgressing against Sun Tzu’s cardinal rule, “Know Thy Enemy”), which comes entirely from Islamic doctrine. Before we can understand the enemy and predict his intentions, the U.S. planners must have a solid grasp of what the terrorists themselves say motivates them.

More than five years into the War on Terror (WOT) against a threat that defines itself in Islamic terms, the national security community does not understand the most basic Islamic doctrines that the enemy self-identifies as being its primary motivating factor.

In 2006, Republican congressional intelligence leaders could not explain any difference between Sunni and Shia in response to a reporter’s questions. When Democrats took over later that year, the situation was no better. Congressman Silvestre Reyes, Democratic Chairman of the House Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence (and senior member of the Armed Services Committee), told the same reporter that al-Qaeda was predominantly Shia.

The “Current Approach” is characterized by two contradictory assertions, often made by the same individual- “Islam is a religion of peace” and “No one can say what Islam really stands for. There are a thousand ways to interpret Islam”. The intelligence establishment has a harmful practice of outsourcing crucial intelligence to experts who support the current approach and demand that the recipients of their expertise follow suit. Ironically, it’s as if the “Islamic experts” who adhere to the “Current Approach” get to inform the intelligence community on a “need to know basis.” Except that here, what we don’t know will hurt us.

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When discussing the dangers that Europe faces with colleagues, it’s very difficult to get them to take it seriously. Partly this comes from an almost narcissistic sense that Western culture (whose freedoms we academics enjoy to the fullest) is immortal and invulnerable, something like James Dean tooling down the highway on his hog at 120mph without a helmet. Partly this comes from their inability to imagine the Europeans behaving self-destructively, even though many of our own “progressive” values contribute to that behavior. In the asymmetrical warfare between Global Jihad and the West, the role of “progressive” values, aggressively asserted by dupes of demopaths plays a key role. Not only do “progressives” consistently attempt to silence any effort to expose the hate-mongering world of Islamism with cries of Islamophobia, but they aggressively attack anyone who objects. In this, the police seem to play an astonishingly central role.

Here’s a post from the Brussels Journal on the behavior of the police and other “progressives” concerning a protest of Islamism and its growing influence in Belgium that illustrates many of the suicidal dynamics at work in Europe today.

Council of Europe Backs Belgian Authorities: “Europe Is Threatened by Bigots – Not by Islam”
From the desk of Paul Belien on Thu, 2007-09-13 09:35

Last Tuesday the police authorities in Brussels, the “capital of Europe,” brutally attacked peaceful demonstrators protesting the Islamization of Europe. Even the European Commission was shocked at the appalling behaviour of the Brussels police, but the officers seem to have their fans as well.

This is a press release (590/2007) issued on Tuesday by Terry Davis, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

Europe is threatened by bigots - not by Islam

Statement by Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, on the march “Against the Islamisation of Europe” today in Brussels

Strasbourg, 11.09.2007 - European values are under threat, say the organisers of a protest march under the banner “Against the Islamisation of Europe” which was due to place today in Brussels in spite of the ban by the city Mayor. The fact is that Europe and its values are indeed under threat, but the danger is not coming from Islam. Our common European values are undermined by bigots and radicals, both islamists and islamophobes, who exploit fears and prejudice for their own political objectives.

The self-proclaimed defenders of European values say that the Mayor has violated their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. The freedom of assembly and the freedom of expression are indeed essential preconditions for democracy, but they should not be regarded as a licence to offend. I will not enter into the discussion about whether the march should have been allowed or not, but I note that the protesters’ reading of the Convention is selective to say the least. It is very important to remember that the freedom of assembly and expression can be restricted to protect the rights and freedoms of others, including the freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This applies to everyone in Europe including the millions of Europeans of Islamic faith, who were the main target of today’s shameful display of bigotry and intolerance.

Need it be added that Terry Davis is a Socialist?

And need it be added that when we are dealing with people for whom the slightest criticism is taken as offensive, then following these guidelines — without applying them to Muslims — is a recipe for censorship. The difference between politeness and civility is that when one is polite one avoids saying things lest there be violence while when one is civil one can say what needs to be said, and there won’t be violence. European Muslims need lessons in civility.

Meanwhile the RTBF, the Belgian (French language) public television, reports that the demonstrators had staged the police violence. Showing a picture of Frank Vanhecke, a member of the European Parliament, lying on the ground after the police maltreated him, the RTBF reported: “These images are deceptive because he went to lie down on the ground himself.” Perhaps, Mr Vanhecke also pinched himself in the balls?

Note that when they want to, progressives are perfectly capable of calling into question the meaning of photographs and claiming that they are misleading.

Pictures from VTM, a private television network, clearly show that Mr Vanhecke was thrown down by police officers and that another Belgian politician, Filip Dewinter, was hauled away by police officers while he was giving an interview to the VTM journalist several yards away from the demonstration. The Belgian authorities intend to charge both Vanhecke and Dewinter for assaulting police officers.

[The video on YouTube to which they link is “No longer available.”]

Oh yes, before I forget: The Council of Europe is an organization of 47 European countries which has as its aim to safeguard human rights in Europe.

These are pictures taken in jail by a Dutch woman who was arrested at the demonstration in Brussels. She was kept in the cell for 7 hours. The detainees (aka the bigots) received one bottle of water and a… Brussels waffle.

If I were a Belgian reporter, I’d ask these police folks what they think they’re doing — is it a combination of fear of confronting Islamism so you bully the people you’re afraid will provoke them? Do they think they’re doing the “right thing,” or are (at least some of them) unhappy with what they’re ordered to do? What’s the justification given by their superiors? Are we looking at a new form of kapo mentality in which some of the oppressed join with their oppressors and do their dirty work? If I were an Islamist planning on taking over Europe, I’d be laughing out loud.

The NYT has a piece by Neil MacFarquhar, who has a track-record in these matters, reporting the complaints of Muslim Americans at their annual convention. Nowhere in the piece do we find the slightest hint of self-criticism, nowhere any suggestion that Muslim Americans owe something to the country from whom they demand so much in the way of freedom. Couldn’t we hear just a word or two about how some Muslims in America and around the world are a problem, that prejudice and stereotyping are problems in the Muslim community, and that the Muslims have an enormous contribution they could make to the security of the country they live in by feeling responsible for and policing their own ranks to make sure that groups who talk about infidels as the “enemies of Allah” and plan attacks on American military bases are indeed denounced and stopped.

I guess it’s always easier to make demands on people who won’t knee cap you. (Note that ISNA is under investigations for links to the same Hamas whose sadistic innovations in knee-capping I’ve linked to here.)

September 4, 2007
Abandon Stereotypes, Muslims in America Say

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
ROSEMONT, Ill., Sept 3 — It is time for the United States to stop treating every American Muslim as somehow suspect, leaders of the faith said at their largest annual convention, which ended here on Monday.

Six years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans should distinguish between mainstream Muslims and the radical fringe, the leaders said.

It would be nice to get some guidance on this. It would be nice if we had “mainstream” Muslims denouncing the radicals more often, and defending them less often.

“Muslim Americans feel an increasing level of tension and scrutiny in contemporary society,” said Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, the largest Muslim organization in the United States and the convention organizer.

The image problems were among the topics most discussed by many of the 30,000 attendees. A fresh example cited was an open letter from two Republican House members, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan and Sue Myrick of North Carolina, that attacked the Justice Department for sending envoys to the convention because, the lawmakers said, the Islamic Society of North America was a group of “radical jihadists.”

Note that, as is his wont, MacFarquhar doesn’t cite any of the evidence to support this position, so it just sounds like crackpot Islamophobia.

The lone Muslim in Congress, Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, the keynote speaker here, dismissed the letter as ill informed and typical of bigoted attacks that other minorities have suffered.

Ellison’s apparently much better at denouncing Islamophobia among outsiders than Judeophobia among his own.

Leaders of American Muslim organizations attribute the growing intolerance to three main factors: global terrorist attacks in the name of Islam, disappointing reports from the Iraq war and the agenda of some supporters of Israel who try taint Islam to undermine the Palestinians.

American Muslims say they expect the attacks to worsen in the presidential election and candidates to criticize Islam in an effort to prove that they are tough on terrorism.

Zaid Shakir, an African-American imam with rock star status among young Muslims, described how on a recent road trip from Michigan to Washington he heard comments on talk radio from people who were “making stuff up about Islam.”

Among the most egregious, he said, was from a person in Kentucky who denounced the traditional short wood stick some Muslims use to clean their teeth, saying, “They are really sharpening up their teeth because they are planning to eat you, yes they are.”

Representatives of at least eight federal departments and agencies attended the convention, their booths sandwiched among hundreds of others from bookstores, travel agencies, perfumeries, clothing designers and real estate developers.

Mark S. Ward, who runs programs in Asia and the Middle East for the Agency for International Development, said Washington had to compete for influence abroad with militant groups that are expert at delivering humanitarian services.

Mr. Ward said he hoped more American Muslim organizations would apply to help distribute overseas aid.

A few people approached the Federal Bureau of Investigation booth to voice dismay at its presence, said a recruiter, David Valle, but most expressed pleasant surprise.

“A lot of folks think we want to hire them to spy on their community, spy on their families,” he said. “We want to dispel any myths they might have about the F.B.I.”

The Justice Department responded to Mr. Hoekstra and Ms. Myrick’s letter by noting that broad community contact in areas like voting rights was an important part of its mission.

That theme was echoed by Daniel W. Sutherland, chief officer for civil rights and liberties at the Homeland Security Department. Mr. Sutherland told a luncheon audience that the government needed to dispel prejudice and misconceptions to steer the public discussion about fighting terrorism to “a higher level.”

Sometimes frustration with the government boiled over. At a seminar on charitable giving, Ihsan Haque of Akron, Ohio, asked a Treasury Department representative, Michael Rosen, how to avoid being prosecuted for donating to Muslim charities. When Mr. Rosen said the government did not have the resources to check the million or so charities in the United States, Mr. Haque shouted, “And I do?”

Shouldn’t moderate Muslims have issued a list of genuine charities a long time ago? How well do they even understand the distinction that a civil society wishes to make? How many Islamic “schools” in Palestine are funded by well-meaning Westerners, but that teach a cult of death?

Muslim leaders described the government relationship toward Muslim organizations as contradictory. The government seeks to foster greater civic engagement, because a lack of engagement is widely considered a big cause of Muslim extremism in Europe. A Department of Homeland Security official moderated a panel on aiding engagement.

Muslim groups are often treated as suspect, speakers said. In a trial that started in July in Dallas, federal prosecutors named the Islamic Society of North America as part of an effort to raise money for groups the government considers terrorists, but did not charge it with wrongdoing.

This is a major issue, which MacFarquhar characteristically tells us almost nothing about. He also doesn’t tell us that ISNA is Wahhabi.

An Israeli journalist (former student I’m proud to say) told me that what she had the hardest time doing — every day — was struggling between her loyalty to her sources and her loyalty to her public. MacFarquhar strikes me as the kind of person who does not want to offend his sources.

The Justice Department has to decide on its law enforcement side what it considers a target, said Khurrum Wahid, a prominent Muslim defense lawyer.

“Are they going to continue to say that the higher degree of religiosity you have the higher likelihood that you are a threat, because that’s the message they’ve sent,” Mr. Wahid said.

That is, unfortunately, a reasonable presumption these days. Maybe not 20 years ago, maybe not in 20 years. But any Muslim who will deny that the more zealous a Muslim gets, the more susceptible he or she is to a discourse of Muslim supremicism that all too easily spills over into violence, is a demopath. That there are zealous and passionately tolerant Muslims, I’m ready to believe. That such groups have high profiles in the Muslim world today, that they draw the large number of new converts or newly observant Muslims, would surprise me considerably. If I’m not mistaken, it’s to this aspect of Sufism that Steven Schwartz converted.

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, denounced by name Christian fundamentalists like Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham, as well as Dennis Prager, a well-known radio host who is Jewish.

“The time has come to stand up to the opportunists, the media figures, the religious leaders and politicians who demonize Muslims and bash Islam, exploiting the fears of their fellow citizens for their own purposes,” Rabbi Yoffie told the opening session.

He actually targeted the media as a key element in the demonizing. His remarks, as reported in Ha-Aretz are an interesting case of modified cognitive egocentrism:

As a Jew I know that our sacred texts, including the Hebrew Bible, are filled with contradictory propositions, and these include passages that appear to promote violence and thus offend our ethical sensibilities. Such texts are to be found in all religions, including Christianity and Islam”, Yoffie admits. However, he says, “the overwhelming majority of Jews reject violence by interpreting these texts in a constructive way“.
He believes that similar dynamics work in all religions, but falls short of a full-fledged comparison. In the Jewish faith, he says, there is “a tiny, extremist minority”. For Islam he chooses somewhat broader definition: “as we know from the headlines, you have what I know must be for you as well as for us an alarming number of extremists of your own.”

Delicately phrased. I wonder how it went over with the crowd. Remember that Wahhabism’s response to the most violent passages in the Quran is not to feel offended ethically, or to interpret these texts in a “constructive way,” but rather to exult in them, and interpret them as newly relevant commands to violent Jihad. There are few branches of Islam more explicitly and ruthlessly imperialistic than Wahhabism.

The Koran tells Muslims to abstain from drinking alcohol and to lower their gaze in modesty when meeting a member of the opposite sex, but some college-age Muslim men and women at the convention stayed up late into the night drinking, talking and getting to know one another.

“If you keep your gaze lowered all the time, you might just walk into a wall,” said Hazem Talha, a high school senior from Atlanta who said he was here for the religious lectures.

Sounds like the American Muslims may resemble the American Catholics — a problematically libertine branch of the Umma…. unless, of course, we regress to the pre-modern world where the religious police get to work these kids over “for the sake of public morality.”

But my sense is, this was not a gathering where genuine pluralists were welcome. Stephen Schwartz, for sure not. But how often at this convention did the attending Muslims hear words like this from a fellow Muslim:

Muslims often drone on and on about “Shari’ah”—Muslim Law. But the fact is, there is no Shari’ah. You will find no book, no tome, no historical text called “Shari’ah.” Rather, you will find shari’ahs—plural—because what Muslims call Muslim Law is nothing more than one type of interpretation of the Qur’an, and there are a lot of different types, and vast possibilities for even more. Its not just Sunni Islam and Shi’a Islam, and it most certainly is not just “Islam.” This is true in spite of the fact that Muslims themselves, out of a misunderstanding of “unity” (and a bit of self-delusion), often seem to pretend otherwise, and often give that impression to non-Muslims. A result of that misunderstanding and bit of delusion is that Muslims tend to “close ranks” in a manner that can make them complicit with evil– our own version of the clearly unethical statement “my country: right or wrong.”

Okay, so he shouldn’t have used the word “drone on,” it’s insulting. But my sense of the tenor of this man’s thought and tone is that he represents the voice of a genuine pluralist, ready to do the work of modernizing Islam, in that sense, in the same ballpark as the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Our problem is not with those who wish to transform Islam into a tolerant religion that can live in equality with others, a form of Islam that might/could happen — and if I understand correctly, at least some Muslims believe that would be a step in a more genuinely Muslim direction. Our problem is with those Muslims who view such modern demands, such civic heroism, as a mortal assault on the essence of Islam and an emasculation of Muslim men, but who nonetheless insist that we infidels not stereotype them, that we respect their civil rights to privacy. In a word, the demopaths.

I know this is a couple of months old, but Joshuapundit just alerted me to its existence, and I couldn’t resist posting on it. Note that the journalist reports the results of the conference without the slightest trace of irony or embarrassment. Now either we’re dealing with people so clueless that they don’t realize what fools they sound like, or, people who think think we’re such fools that if they keep a straight face, we’ll believe them. Come to think of it, that could be a “both… and…”

‘Islamophobia Worst Form of Terrorism’
Siraj Wahab, Arab News

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr. Nizar ibn Obaid Madani gestures during his meeting with OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Islamabad on Wednesday. (AN photo by Siraj Wahab)

ISLAMABAD, 17 May 2007 — Foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) yesterday expressed grave concern at the rising tide of discrimination and intolerance against Muslims, especially in Europe and North America. “It is something that has assumed xenophobic proportions,” they said in unison.

Speaking at a special brainstorming session on the sidelines of the 34th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (ICFM), the foreign ministers termed Islamophobia the worst form of terrorism and called for practical steps to counter it.

The ministers described Islamophobia as a deliberate defamation of Islam and discrimination and intolerance against Muslims. “This campaign of calumny against Muslims resulted in the publication of the blasphemous cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a Danish newspaper and the issuance of the inflammatory statement by Pope Benedict XVI,” they said. During a speech in Germany last year, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet had brought the world only “evil and inhuman” things. The Pope’s remarks aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world.

“The increasingly negative political and media discourse targeting Muslims and Islam in the United States and Europe has made things all the more difficult,” the foreign ministers said. “Islamophobia became a source of concern, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but the phenomenon was already there in Western societies in one form or the other,” they pointed out. “It gained further momentum after the Madrid and London bombings. The killing of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh in 2004 was used in a wicked manner by certain quarters to stir up a frenzy against Muslims,” the ministers pointed out. Van Gogh had made a controversial film about Muslim culture.

The OIC foreign ministers deplored the misrepresentation in the Western media of Islam and Muslims in the context of terrorism. “The linkage of terrorists and extremists with Islam in a generalized manner is unacceptable,” they said. “This is further inciting negative sentiments and hatred in the West against Muslims,” they said. The ministers also pointed out that whenever the issue of Islamophobia was discussed in international forums, the Western bloc, particularly some members of the European Union, tried to avoid discussing the core issue and instead diverted the attention from their region to the situation of non-Muslims and human rights in the OIC member states.

Like the victims of real terrorism? Probably not. The unhappiness of the Islamic ministers with European Union members is a clear indication that elaborate sycophancy is not enough.

The foreign ministers said prejudices against Islam were not helping the situation. “Because of Islamophobia, millions of Muslims in the Western countries, many of whom were already underprivileged in their societies for a variety of reasons, are further alienated and targeted by hatred and discrimination.”

The selective application of the existing legal frameworks and anti-discrimination and anti-blasphemy laws in Western countries also came in for criticism. “They are being applied in a selective manner when the victims are Muslims,” the ministers said.

The ministers also noted the many praiseworthy initiatives to bring together the West and the Muslim world such as the EU-OIC Forum of 2002, Dialogue Among Civilizations, Alliance of Civilizations and various other interfaith dialogue meetings. “However, it remains a fact that anti-Islamic sentiments are being fanned in the West with the implicit and explicit support of racist anti-immigrant and ultra-right political parties and certain media outlets.”

The ministers agreed that in Europe there was a need to enhance efforts to promote greater understanding and awareness of Islam. “In the Muslim world, endeavors have to be made to dispel misperceptions about the West and to promote democracy, human rights and good governance.”

According to OIC’s European observers, the taking over of the European Union presidency by Slovenia in 2008 will augur well for Muslims. “Because Slovenia has declared that intercultural dialogue will be among the first four priorities of its EU presidency, it has accordingly set up a task force to implement the ‘European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008’ program.” The OIC observers said the Slovenian minister of foreign affairs had already invited the OIC secretary-general to Ljubljana before or during the Slovenian EU presidency to discuss possible joint projects.

At the end of the session it was decided to shortlist reputable Muslim and non-Muslim think tanks, academics and NGOs in the US and UK and other leading European countries for cooperation in monitoring and countering anti-Islam campaigns. The ministers said Muslim think tanks and NGOs in the Western countries should be encouraged and urged to develop closer contacts with their non-Muslim counterparts and to remain engaged in regular contact and dialogue. They felt the international media should be properly cultivated to motivate them to be more responsible in carrying out their responsibilities.

When I was a kid, the anti-honor/shame ditty ran: “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names can never hurt me.” These fellows still live in a world where names others call me are far more serious that your broken bones. I think that qualifies as the most primitive stage of moral thinking according to Lawrence Kohlberg: “What’s in it for me?” The fact that such infantile reflections can take place on the public stage by a collection of diplomats from Islamic nations, represents an indictment of the quality of discussion in the public sphere — not only are they ridiculously self-absorbed, but we, apparently, have difficulty saying, “grow up.”

The term demopathy first arose in the context of the stark contrast between CAIR’s ability to mobilize hundreds of people to protest “True Lies,” for depicting Arabs as unsympathetic terrorists. And yet, only shortly thereafter, Arab terrorists blew up a Jewish Community in Buenos Ares, I don’t remember an apology and certainly not a demonstration. Then I first understood the hypocrisy of the loud demand that we honkeys in the West observe most stringently not only our principles of civil rights, but also our consideration for the feelings of “others,” by people who had no dedication to the principles they invoked to the disadvantage of others. It’s clearly whose ox is geing gored. If it’s yours, says CAIR — if you have to restrain yourself for my sake — then that’s just fine. If it’s mine — I need to restrain myself for your sake — forget it. As I noticed this pattern everywhere, I asked friends and colleagues for a word to describe the phenomenon, and finally Brenda Brasher came up with “demopath.”

The following editorial by Joel Mowbray shows that, if anything, CAIR’s gotten worse. Back in 1982, it was still possible to deny that Muslims didn’t blow up the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Ares. Today? Only the all too numerous conspiracy theorists who flourish among Muslims, including in the West, can have Muslims denying that Muslims are involved in these acts of terrorism. Few things so starkly illustrate the problem with Islam today.

CAIR’s duplicitous ways

July 12, 2007

By Joel Mowbray - While the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been busy attacking syndicated columnist Cal Thomas recently for supposedly “Islamophobic” comments, the media-hungry group did not condemn the foiled terrorist plots in London or the successful one in Glasgow, Scotland.

Though CAIR’s Web site has a video clip of the Chicago chapter director lamenting the events in Britain and the group helped coordinate a St. Louis press conference of Muslim doctors who spoke out against the terrorists, CAIR itself did not condemn the actions of the Islamic terrorists in Britain.

Given that CAIR played a role in promoting its Chicago director and the Muslim doctors, some might wish to give the benefit of the doubt. The organization’s history, however, shows that this artful dodge is simply part of its modus operandi.

CAIR has mastered the art of appearing to oppose terrorism, while at the same time leading the charge against those who seek to thwart it.

A case in point is its curiously neglecting to condemn Britain’s Islamic terrorists, while during the same week blasting as “Islamophobic” Mr. Thomas’ remarks on local radio station WTOP expressing concern about fundamentalists from the “Middle East and South Asia” who are integrating into the broader Muslim society.

In a story for WTOPnews.com, WTOP quoted CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper claiming, “We condemn extremism. We’ve condemned terrorism… We’ve issued dozens of condemnations on dozens of terrorism attacks.”

CAIR has, in fact, condemned what it considers to be extremism and terrorism — when targeted at Muslims. If a Muslim is the victim of a possible hate crime or has been subjected to a religious slur, CAIR is there. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. And the group is well within its rights when it routinely rails against the United States and Israel.

What CAIR does not do, though, is denounce Islamic fundamentalists who promote a paranoid worldview in which America and Israel are the enemies of Islam, achieved by manufacturing mythical massacres that whip their followers into a lather.

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Interesting account of a documentary on the demonization of Arabs in American films. It’s in fact the actions of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination League against True Lies in 1994 that first tipped me off to the problem of demopathy. They could get people to demonstrate against portraying the Arabs as terrorists, but when Arabs behaved as terrorists — for example the Buenos Aires bombing of the Jewish Community Center three days after these demonstrations — brought not a peep.

My sense is, that when you insist that we shouldn’t show Arabs as terrorists because it stereotypes them, but you don’t object loudly to Arab terrorists, then you are just throwing sand in our eyes.

Cast of Villains
‘Reel Bad Arabs’ Takes on Hollywood Stereotyping
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2007; Page C01

LOS ANGELES — A full house has turned out at the Directors Guild of America for the L.A. premiere of the new documentary “Reel Bad Arabs,” which makes the case that Hollywood is obsessed with “the three Bs” — belly dancers, billionaire sheiks and bombers — in a largely unchallenged vilification of Middle Easterners here and abroad.

“In every movie they make, every time an Arab utters the word Allah? Something blows up,” says Eyad Zahra, a young filmmaker who organized the screening this week with the support of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Arabs aren’t always vilified in the movies. In “Lawrence of Arabia,” Omar Sharif, right, appeared as Sherif Ali with Peter O’Toole.

As the documentary “Reel Bad Arabs” demonstrates, individuals of Middle Eastern descent often are portrayed as villans in the movies and on television.

The documentary highlights the admittedly obsessive lifework of Jack Shaheen, a retired professor from Southern Illinois University, the son of Lebanese Christian immigrants and the author of “TV Arabs,” “Reel Bad Arabs” and the upcoming “Guilty? Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11.”

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CAIR has responded to recent criticism in the NYT (fisked here), in a way that reminds me of how the hyper-critical Jews responded to getting criticized. No substance — just “YOUR TRYING TO SILENCE ME.” I only cite the opening lines here. Let the masochists go and read more.

CAIR: Attacks Seek to Silence Muslims
Source: Letters to the Editor

CAIR: ADVOCACY GROUP FOR MUSLIMS GETS QUESTIONS

ATTACKS SEEK TO SILENCE MUSLIMS

This New York Times article on the challenges facing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) exposed the relentless efforts by “a small band of critics” made up of racist right-wing and neo-Zionist extremists who seek to silence and marginalize American Muslims and groups that represent them by exploiting anti-Muslim fears in our nation.

Wow! This is how they handle criticism? Smear the groups that you don’t like? Fear-monger and hate-monger? The ADL may be Zionist. It’s hardly either neo- or extremist. And most of the critics of CAIR, including other Muslims, are not trying to marginalize American Muslims, but groups that, under the guise of defending American Muslims, are actually pursuing theocratic Muslim agendas.

CAIR’s purpose is very clear. It is a grass roots organization that serves as America’s largest and most visible Muslim civil rights group. CAIR is to the Muslim community what the NAACP is to the African-American community or what the ADL is to the Jewish community.

If only. Assertions will not do with a record like CAIR’s. It’s not enough to say, “Our critics are Islamophobes and Zionazis.” You’ve got to address substance.

For the record, CAIR unequivocally condemns terror attacks targeting people of all faiths and in all areas of the world.

Alas, only for the record. CAIR can get their folks out to demonstrate against movies depicting Muslims as terrorists — in honor-shame cultures face matters above all — but not to demonstrate against Muslim terrorists. On the contrary, they cheer on Hamas. Condemnations from CAIR of Muslim terror sound a lot like Otto’s apology to Archie in Fish Called Wanda… “I’m sssssssss…., I’m sssssssssh…”

CAIR operates under the strict guidelines of its core values. These values include: support for freedom of religion and freedom of expression, and a commitment to supporting policies that promote dialogue, civil rights and diversity in America and worldwide.

Okay. The rest you can read if you want. The issue here is: are these the words of demopaths or democrats?

I have a series of posts on the issue of self-criticism, in which I argue that, while most people do not like self-criticism, Jews, by training and culture, are so drawn to self-criticism that outside observers may mistake their harsh comments about “themselves” (i.e., Jews, Jewish institutions, Israel) for reluctant admissions of the truth rather than prophetic rhetoric designed to “whip the object of the criticism into shape.”

Shrinkwrapped has two posts that explore the opposite, the fragile sense of self that leads many — individuals as well as groups — to reject any criticism, no matter how accurate. It’s important to understand the world of the kind of person who cannot tolerate any criticism. From The Rising Tide of Narcissism ”

…the Narcissist’s self esteem is actually quite fragile. Since it is based on an inflated sense of the self, ie it is not based on a realistic assessment of the self, the Narcissist needs constant affirmation by the environment that they are, indeed, the “special” person they have always been told they were. Such people have a noticeable lack of resiliency. When the Narcissist inevitably smacks up against an indifferent environment, as when the young person graduates college and enters the work force, reality intrudes in unmistakable fashion. Your boss does not consider you special unless you can actually do a good job. It is very easy to see how the Narcissist, who already tends to use projective defenses to avoid knowing of his own short comings, can very easily slip into a paranoid position with the real world.

“Since I know I am special, and have never really been challenged, when my boss tells me I have done a poor job, it can’t be true. ——> He must have something against me!”

Now, multiply that attitude to a much larger scale. Major societal problems arise when a large group of people with fragile self esteem and a poor sense of self collide with modern day tribalism, ie, identity politics. Then the problem becomes the system, or the man, or the ruling class, or the Jews, or Bush and the Rethuglicans, or racism; never does the person take responsibility for their own failures because to do so risks a psychological catastrophe. Suddenly, one’s always fragile self esteem, artificially buttressed all these years by a facile environment, crumbles. The result is devastating despair. Alternatively, reality can be denied and the despair defended against by externalizing the rage and directing it at those you believe now oppress you.

This dynamic can be applied to those who