National Review test drives several critiques of Obama's speech in Berlin. He is insincere?  Maybe, but "most voters don’t seem to buy this line of attack, and it risks making conservatives look bitter, marginalized, and defeated already."  They decide to go with the "utopian-radical foreign policy" critique, instead.

A much surer critique, arising directly out of the speech itself, is to point out that it is much too utopian... a world without nuclear weapons, a world without carbon emissions, a “new dawn” in the Middle East, a helping hand to the Bangladeshi child, the Chad refugee, the dissident in Burma, the voter in Zimbabwe, and so on...Obama may or may not be a left-wing radical. He is certainly a utopian radical. 

Given Bush's fundamental foreign-policy radicalism, and National Review's support of these policies,  this is ironic.  ("Radical" and "ironic" seem to be two widely misused words.)  

To simplify, Radicals see the political world as:

1.  Needing dramatic change, if not a complete revolution from the current state of affairs.  The status quo is Evil, and we must fight to replace it with the Good; 3. Perfectible, and hyper-rational. The political world can be perfected through reason, and Radicals have developed precisely the right plan to carry out their aims.  4. Unmarred by potential problems. All problems can be solved simply, by following the specified steps.   (The last point shows why "utopian radical" is a bit oxymoronic.)

The traditional Conservative--such as National Review, back in the day--defines him or herself as against the Radical, and the Conservative response to these ideas has been as follows:

1.   Dramatic political change, especially revolution, will most likely make things worse.  Revolutions, for example, inevitably end in violence and degradation.  2.  We are not rational, and "reason" is most often just a fig leaf for our cherished, unexamined views.  We are generally unable to distinguish between reality and sympathetic views of ourselves (as representing the Good, and our enemies Evil, for example); 4.  Some problems may be insoluble; and/or our favorite solutions may make things worse, and  will have many unintended consequences.  

The Bolsheviks, for example, were quintessential Radicals.  For the Conservative, therefore, Stalin's crimes were not a horrible deviation from the ideals of the Russian Revolution, but a predictable consequence of the revolution.  

Back to the ironic part.  NRO has been full-throated in its support of Bush's foreign policy, yet they warn against Obama's radicalism.  

Bush the Radical

Bush's friends and enemies agree that he has been a foreign-policy radical.  

In a paper called "A Radical Change," the Brookings Institution argues "President Bush has launched a foreign-policy revolution that has discarded or redefined many of the key principles governing how America engages the world."  The author decries this dramatic shift, but Radicals don't, of course.  

In "Bush the Radical," Daniel Pipes is thrilled by Bush's "jaw-dropping repudiation of an established bipartisan policy ever made by a US president...a break with a policy the US government has pursued since first becoming a major player in the Middle East."  Pipes happily lists three huge changes:  

Iraq: He brushed aside the long-standing policy of deterrence, replacing it in June 2002 with an approach of hitting before getting hit. 

Arab-Israeli conflict: "The most surprising and daring step of his presidency." He changed presumptions, imposing [his] vision on the parties, tying results to a specific timetable, and replacing leaders of whom he disapproved.

Democracy: The president renounced a long-accepted policy of... getting along with dictators – and stated US policy would henceforth fit with its global emphasis of making democracy the goal... [It was] "a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East."  

Fascinating, big-picture stuff, of course, but  "Bush is No Conservative."

True conservatives, following Edmund Burke, do not believe that a country can be shorn of its social, political, economic, and cultural ways and made anew from the ashes.

In true Jacobin, Bolshevik, Cultural Revolution, neoconservative fashion, the job Bush wants to accomplish is the deracination of Islam and the recreation of Muslim society in America's image. It is impossible to imagine a less conservative goal.

 

Zbigniew Brzezinski, erstwhile academic Sovietologist and Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, argues the Bush administration's foreign policy can be summarized in the following quote by the President: "If you're not with us, you're against us." It's a stance "straight from (Soviet leader Vladimir) Lenin."

 Francis Fukuyama seems to agree. 

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA:  I think there are these broad social and economic processes that lead to modernisation that ultimately drive countries to becoming democratic or adapting democratic institutions. And I think what my neo-con friends wanted to do was speed up the process by using American power to drive things forward. So that's the difference between Marx and Lenin. Lenin wanted to use power to bring the revolution closer and I think that the original Leninism didn't work very well and I think that the new American Leninism was a similar disaster.

TONY JONES: So Donald Rumsfeld effectively surrounded himself by a group of dangerous Bolsheviks?

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: There is an element of Bolshevism, in thinking that power can achieve these ambitious goals of social transformation and I think one of the things we've learned in the 20th Century is that that kind of ambitious social engineering really brings a lot of unanticipated consequences 

Lenin was supposed to have said, "You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs." Bush is more vulgar, but the thought is the same.  According to Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the supreme commander of all US troops in Iraq, Bush gave the following pep talk, which is worthy of a third-rate, first-generation Communist cadre.  

"Kick ass!" he quotes the president as saying. "If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! ...We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

Yet National Review fears Obama's utopian radicalism, with all that scary talk of "a helping hand to the Bangladeshi child, the Chad refugee, the dissident in Burma, the voter in Zimbabwe, and so on."  

One of the great enigmas of the modern Middle East is why, forty years ago next week, the Six-Day War took place. Neither Israel nor its Arab neighbors wanted or expected a fight in June 1967; the consensus view among historians holds that the unwanted combat resulted from a sequence of accidents.

Enter Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, a wife-husband team, to challenge the accident theory and offer a plausible explanation for the causes of the war. As suggested by the title of their book, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (Yale University Press), they argue that it originated in a scheme by the Soviet Politburo to eliminate Israel's nuclear facility at Dimona, and with it the country's aspiration to develop nuclear weapons.

The text reads like the solution to a mystery, amassing information from voluminous sources, guiding readers step-by-step through the argument, making an intuitively compelling case that must be taken seriously. In summary, it goes like this:

Moshe Sneh, an Israeli communist leader (and father of Ephraim Sneh, the country's current deputy minister of defense), told the Soviet ambassador in December 1965 that an advisor to the prime minister had informed him about "Israel's intention to produce its own atomic bomb." Leonid Brezhnev and his colleagues received this piece of information with dead seriousness and decided – as did the Israelis about Iraq in 1981 and may be doing about Iran in 2007 – to abort this process through air strikes.

Rather than do so directly, however, Moscow devised a complex scheme to lure the Israelis into starting a war which would end with a Soviet attack on Dimona. Militarily, the Kremlin prepared by surrounding Israel with an armada of nuclear-armed forces in both the Mediterranean and Red seas, pre-positioning matériel on land, and training troops nearby with the expectation of using them. Perhaps the most startling information in Foxbats over Dimona concerns the detailed plans for Soviet troops to attack Israeli territory, and specifically to bombard oil refineries and reservoirs, and reach out to Israeli Arabs. No less eye opening is to learn that Soviet photo-reconnaissance MiG-25s (the "Foxbats" of the title) directly overflew the Dimona reactor in May 1967.

Politically, the scheme consisted of fabricating intelligence reports about Israeli threats to Syria, thereby goading the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces to go on war-footing. As his Soviet masters then instructed, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser moved his troops toward Israel, removed a United Nations buffer force, and blockaded a key naval route to Israel – three steps that together compelled the Israelis to move to a full-alert defense. Unable to sustain this posture for long, they struck first, thereby, it appeared, falling into the Soviet trap.

But then the Israel Defense Forces did something astonishing. Rather than fight to a draw, as the Soviets expected, they quickly won what I have called "the most overwhelming victory in the annals of warfare." Using purely conventional means, they defeated three enemy Arab states in six days, thereby preempting the planned Soviet invasion, which had to be scuttled.

This fiasco made the elaborate Soviet scheme look inept, and Moscow understandably decided to obscure its own role in engineering the war (its second major strategic debacle of the decade – the attempt to place missiles in Cuba having been the first). The cover-up succeeded so well that Moscow's responsibility for the Six-Day War has disappeared from histories of the conflict. Thus, a specialist on the war like Michael Oren, has coolly received the Ginor-Remez thesis, saying he has not found "any documentary evidence to support" it.

If Foxbats over Dimona is not the definitive word, it offers a viable, exciting interpretation for others to chew on, with many implications. Today's Arab-Israeli conflict, with its focus on the territories won in 1967, accompanied by virulent antisemitism, results in large part from Kremlin decisions made four decades ago. The whole exercise was for naught, as Israeli possession of nuclear weapons had limited impact on the Soviet Union before it expired in 1991. And, as the authors note , "21^st century nostalgia for the supposed stability of the Cold War is largely illusory."

Finally, forty years later, where might things be had the Soviets' Six-Day War not occurred? However bad circumstances are at present, they would presumably be yet worse without that stunning Israeli victory.

Earlier Europol statistics are less clear, but a close review of the evidence conducted for me by Jonathan Gelbart of Stanford University shows 234 arrests made in 2005, 124 in 2004. and 137 in 2003.

Dr. Pipes' column is syndicated all over the world, appearing most prominently in The Jerusalem Post. It has also been republished at FrontPage Magazine and dozens of blogs.

Islamists benefit, in particular, from the access, legitimacy, skills, and firepower the Left provides them. Cherie Booth, wife of then-prime minister Tony Blair, argued a case at the appellate-court level to help a girl, Shabina Begum, wear the jilbab, an Islamic garment, to a British school. Lynne Stewart, a leftist lawyer, broke U.S. law and went to jail to help Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, foment revolution in Egypt. Volkert van der Graaf, an animal-rights fanatic, killed Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn to stop him from turning Muslims into "scapegoats." Vanessa Redgrave funded half of a £50,000 bail surety so that Jamil el-Banna, a Guantánamo suspect accused of recruiting jihadis to fight in Afghanistan and Indonesia, could walk out of a British jail; Redgrave described her helping el-Banna as "a profound honour," despite his being wanted in Spain on terrorism-related charges and suspected of links to al-Qaeda. On a larger scale, the Indian Communist party did Tehran's dirty work by delaying for four months the Indian-based launching of TecSar, an Israeli spy satellite. And leftists founded the International Solidarity Movement to prevent Israeli security forces from protecting the country against Hamas and other Palestinian terrorism.

Daniel Pipes

A typically well argued piece from Daniel pipes that is well worth reading is quoted above i invite my leftist friends to read and rethink  their position .

Cheers Comrades

;)

Bolton: Israel Strike On Iran ‘During Bush’s Term Makes A Lot Of Sense’

Whether Barack Obama is or, at one point, was a Muslim should be a trivial matter in any society governed by secular, democratic dictates that apply to all, on equal footage, regardless of race, gender or religion. But in a society that is taking a turn toward the right, the matter is anything but inconsequential.

According to estimates, there are anywhere between 1.2 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide, 8 million of whom are Americans. But Muslims feel threatened, and for good reason. After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Muslim communities have been shamelessly branded as the "enemy" to the point that in mainstream media today, the term "patriot" is juxtaposed with "Muslim" as if the two terms are irreconcilable.

The events of 9/11 have indeed politicized faith like no other past event — in a country where faith is already a powerful player in political affairs. Chris Hedges writes: "Dominionism, born out of a theology known as Christian reconstructionism, seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race, in this case American Christians."

Under these unfortunate circumstances, Obama's faith matters greatly. The presumptive presidential candidate of the Democratic Party is vilified on the question of his faith, often accused of being a "closet Muslim" — thus, supposedly, bearing wicked plans to destroy this country from "within." His detractors accentuate the claim, knowing fully that they have an audience, large enough to cause the energetic candidate some trouble along the way.

"Summarized, available evidence suggests Obama was born a Muslim to a nonpracticing Muslim father and for some years had a reasonably Muslim upbringing under the auspices of his Indonesian stepfather. At some point, he converted to Christianity," concludes rightwing columnist Daniel Pipes, known for his ardent anti-Muslim views.

Such commentators seem entirely oblivious to the fact that by digging up the "dirt" of Obama's past, as a third grader in Indonesia, to "prove" that at one point in his life he was raised a Muslim — thus should be disowned as a candidate of "change" in America — they compromise on the very nature of tolerance that America should be standing for.

They, although indirectly, envision their alternative view of the future of America, as one ruled by a religious fundamentalist intolerant group that would fight anyone who fails to adhere to their skewed ideology and preferred physical appearance. Also, considering how race and vote were intrinsically linked in individual party contests, one can conclude that being black, and a Muslim, are the antithesis of what these narrow-minded bunch stand for.

Obama, of course, is violating the very principles that he tirelessly preaches, by responding to "accusations" of his Muslim heritage as if he was warding off an incurable disease. Such claims are being deemed "smears" and "lies," and according to a debate on MSNBC, Obama declared that he had been "victimized" by such claims. He has been so tireless and fervent in disproving these "smears" that his very own religious intolerance and racism has been shamelessly disregarded.

"I've been to the same church — the same Christian church — for almost 20 years," he told a cheering audience last January. "I was sworn in with my hand on the family Bible." One of the many pieces of literature distributed by his campaign in past months featured photos of Obama praying with the words "COMMITTED CHRISTIAN" in large letters across the middle.

It says Obama will be a president "guided by his Christian faith" and includes a quote from him saying, "I believe in the power of prayer," according to an Associated Press report.

Speaking in a Florida synagogue, Obama tried to assure his Jewish audience that his name "Barack" has the same Semitic roots as the Hebrew name "Baruch." His supporters contend that the origins of the name are African, not Arabic. Even the clearly Arabic roots of Obama's name are now explained based on "African" and — as of late — "Semitic" roots. Obama was responding to a member of the audience who exclaimed that he would be more comfortable voting for someone named Barry, not Barack. Instead of lashing out at the man's bigotry, Obama once again, "fought off rumors" this time reinterpreting his own name.

As for being a Muslim, Obama has spent much time, energy and resources fending off the accusations, even starting FighttheSmears.com to prove — among other things — that he is not a Muslim.

Then on June 16, two Muslim women who attended an Obama event in Detroit were told they couldn't stand behind the candidate. One was told her head covering was an issue, and another was told that for political reasons they didn't want Muslims appearing with him on TV, reported National Public Radio.

Of course, this is anything but an identity crisis for the savvy Harvard-educated politician of "change." Obama must have comprehended, and early on, the implicit limits of tolerance in his country, and has decided to concede to the harbingers of racism and bigotry. Obama should have unapologetically responded to the speculation on his religion in a respectful manner, for example like this:

I would have been honored to be affiliated with the religion of Islam, one that is adhered to by one-fourth of humanity, and is the religion of my ancestors and millions of Americans.

But I am equally honored to be a member of a church, to be a Christian, a religion — like all great religions — that has taught me tolerance, peace and equality, principles that I will continue to cherish as long as I live.

What is he talking about?


Well, both Ralph Nader

and attorney, longtime activist and 24-year public defender Bob Fueur

say Congressman John Olver disclosed that Congress is terrified that — if Bush or Cheney are impeached — they might bomb Iran, declare martial law and suspend the 2008 elections.


Indeed, leading neocon Daniel Pipes said in a recent interview posted at National Review Online, that if Obama is elected in November, Bush will attack Iran in the remaining ten weeks of his term.


If what Olver or Pipes say is true, then Bush and Cheney are literally terrorists. And Congress is literally negotiating with them by saying - in essence - “please don’t bomb Iran or declare martial law and suspend the elections, and we won’t impeach you”.


I thought we didn’t negotiate with terrorists.


Impeaching, removing and convicting these guys is the safest approach. Covering up their crimes - which Congress is currently doing - is like telling a terrorist that we won’t spill the beans on his last terrorist attack if he doesn’t blow us up . . . an approach which will backfire and lead to more terrorism.


Disclosing their crimes, taking away their ability to carry out further mischief, taking away their base of power, and imprisoning them is the way to protect ourselves.

Posting on Pipes article: The enemy has a name.

Dr. Pipe could be trying to pinpoint the enemy, Islamism, but would be missing the wood for the trees.

Radicals are acting like an army committed to protect the civilians, the moderates.

Both have their roles cut out. And still both are part of one society.

When the chips are down, Muslim world unites at different levels with remarkable speed and unity of mind and purpose. The more Muslim world is subjected to stress and trauma, the more it reacts out of a sense of self-preservation.

Bush's war on terror was more of an imperialist campaign to conquer the world that remained to be conquered. So there was no reason to restrict its focus to one face. For Bush, the enemy has many faces. Under the circumstance, Dr. Pipes' analysis is reduced to a narrow self-serving proposition.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

--------------------------------------------------

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5629

The Enemy Has a Name

by Daniel Pipes

Jerusalem Post

June 19, 2008

If you cannot name your enemy, how can you defeat it? Just as a physician must identify a disease before curing a patient, so a strategist must identify the foe before winning a war. Yet Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the opponent in the conflict the U.S. government variously (and euphemistically) calls the "global war on terror," the "long war," the "global struggle against violent extremism," or even the "global struggle for security and progress."

This timidity translates into an inability to define war goals. Two high-level U.S. statements from late 2001 typify the vague and ineffective declarations issued by Western governments. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defined victory as establishing "an environment where we can in fact fulfill and live [our] freedoms." In contrast, George W. Bush announced a narrower goal, "the defeat of the global terror network" – whatever that undefined network might be.

"Defeating terrorism" has, indeed, remained the basic war goal. By implication, terrorists are the enemy and counterterrorism is the main response.

But observers have increasingly concluded that terrorism is just a tactic, not an enemy. Bush effectively admitted this much in mid-2004, acknowledging that "We actually misnamed the war on terror." Instead, he called the war a "struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world."

A year later, in the aftermath of the 7/7 London transport bombings, British prime minister Tony Blair advanced the discussion by speaking of the enemy as "a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam." Soon after, Bush himself used the terms "Islamic radicalism," "militant Jihadism," and "Islamo-fascism." But these words prompted much criticism and he backtracked.

By mid-2007, Bush had reverted to speaking about "the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East." That is where things now stand, with U.S. government agencies being advised to refer to the enemy with such nebulous terms as "death cult," "cult-like," "sectarian cult," and "violent cultists."

In fact, that enemy has a precise and concise name: Islamism, a radical utopian version of Islam. Islamists, adherents of this well funded, widespread, totalitarian ideology, are attempting to create a global Islamic order that fully applies the Islamic law (Shari'a).

Thus defined, the needed response becomes clear. It is two-fold: vanquish Islamism and help Muslims develop an alternative form of Islam. Not coincidentally, this approach roughly parallels what the allied powers accomplished vis-à-vis the two prior radical utopian movements, fascism and communism.

First comes the burden of defeating an ideological enemy. As in 1945 and 1991, the goal must be to marginalize and weaken a coherent and aggressive ideological movement, so that it no longer attracts followers nor poses a world-shaking threat. World War II, won through blood, steel, and atomic bombs, offers one model for victory, the Cold War, with its deterrence, complexity, and nearly-peaceful collapse, offers quite another.

Victory against Islamism, presumably, will draw on both these legacies and mix them into a novel brew of conventional war, counterterrorism, counterpropaganda, and many other strategies. At one end, the war effort led to the overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan; at the other, it requires repelling the lawful Islamists who work legitimately within the educational, religious, media, legal, and political arenas.

The second goal involves helping Muslims who oppose Islamist goals and wish to offer an alternative to Islamism's depravities by reconciling Islam with the best of modern ways. But such Muslims are weak, being but fractured individuals who have only just begun the hard work of researching, communicating, organizing, funding, and mobilizing.

To do all this more quickly and effectively, these moderates need non-Muslim encouragement and sponsorship. However unimpressive they may be at present, moderates, with Western support, alone hold the potential to modernize Islam, and thereby to terminate the threat of Islamism.

In the final analysis, Islamism presents two main challenges to Westerners: To speak frankly and to aim for victory. Neither comes naturally to the modern person, who tends to prefer political correctness and conflict resolution, or even appeasement. But once these hurdles are overcome, the Islamist enemy's objective weakness in terms of arsenal, economy, and resources means it can readily be defeated.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-6359496564280878608]

Notes :
1. Voir Deux combattantes de la liberté : Taslima Nasreen et Ayaan Hirsi Ali
2. Pour Wafa Sultan, il existe d'excellentes interviews sous-titrées en français, par exemple celle-ci : Wafa Sultan sur Al-Jaazira le 21 Février 2006
3. Civilisation : rien qu'en entendant cela, gauchistes et bien-pensants, adeptes du politiquement correct et paléo-marxistes vont se rouler par terre en bavant et en mordant dans les tapis.
4. Cf. Samuel Huntington, Le choc des civilisations, Ed. Odile Jacob 1997.
 
Daniel Pipes est un éminent docteur en histoire d’Harvard, où il a enseigné, comme son père, Richard Pipes, historien émérite spécialisé dans la Russie.
Il est un spécialiste réputé de questions stratégiques, de géopolitique et de l’islam. Il a été l’un des premiers à alerter, dès 1995, sur le djihad islamiste. Il dirige le Forum du Moyen-Orient qu’il a créé en 1994. Ce Forum parraine Campus Watch (Observatoire des campus) qui « observe, critique et améliore les études moyen-orientales ».
Daniel Pipes a exercé des fonctions diverses au Département d’Etat et à la Défense des Etats-Unis.
Il est l’auteur de 12 livres, dont quatre sur l’islam et sept sur le Moyen-Orient.
Son site internet est : www.DanielPipes.org

Interview et vidéo par V. Chemla et P. Benaïm pour Guysen. Cadreur : J. Hattab

Publié par spqr le 16 Juin 2008

Autres articles sur le même sujet :
Daniel Pipes : “l’Europe peut encore s’en sortir”
Civilisation contre barbarie

• The Washington Post's campaign factchecker awards three Pinocchios to conservative rottweiler Floyd Brown - and to his pseudo-academic alter ego, Daniel Pipes - for promoting the canard was a Muslim as a child and is hiding the fact: "Both Brown and Pipes base their arguments and conclusions on factoids that have appeared in the mainstream media. But they make no attempt to weigh the evidence fairly," the Post said. In other words, they're misusing some details to make up stories, as conspiracy theorists will. Pipes, we can be sure, will not be dissuaded from finding invidious Islamic plots everywhere.
• Will Obama be the first woman president? Susan Faludi explains that Obama rejects that the "gender ethic" guiding American politics for two centuries, which says that the president must play the role of macho rescuer on the frontier, protecting the women and children of the wagon train. Under the current excuse for a president, the frontier fallacy that a Real Man in the White House will break heads has put America neck-deep in the Big Muddy of the Tigres. The one flaw I find in Faludi's argument is her presumption that this is peculiarly American. Tzipi Livni's need to build herself a terrorist-hunting image is based on the same ethic and the peculiar burden it places on a woman candidate to out-macho the men.
• An adviser to the Obama campaign has responded to my criticism of O's statement to Aipac, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." The adviser, remaining anonymous, says that that the candidate really means physically undivided: Obama "has said before that Jerusalem is a final status issue to be negotiated by the parties, but that two principles that should guide any outcome is that it will remain Israel's capital and it should never be redivided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was from 1948-67." I'm satisfied with that as a position. I still think it was disingenuous and damaging to use the formulation he used before Aipac. The audience - in the hall, and around the world - heard "undivided Jerusalem" in the way that official Israel constantly uses the phrase, meaning politically undivided. That was red meat for the Aipac crowd. Saying "physically undivided" would have been a red flag. Afterward, Obama had to clarify, or backtrack, or write a midrash on his own words, in order to maintain his dedication to effective diplomacy. Better not to have raised the issue. But then, Obama was talking to a crowd inclined to believe both Pinocchio Pipes and the frontier fallacy. He faced the classic dilemma of a high school kid at the wrong party - being yourself and being popular just don't fit together.

Press TV
June 6, 2008

Although the Bush administration vehemently denies any plans to attack Iran, political pundits believe Israel is trying to persuade the US president to bomb the Islamic Republic before he leaves office.

Leading neocon Daniel Pipes (director of the Middle East Forum) said in an interview posted Wednesday at National Review Online, that if Barack Obama is elected, George Bush would attack Iran in the remaining ten weeks of his term.

“Should the Democratic nominee win in November, President Bush will ‘do something.’ and should it be Mr. McCain who wins, he’ll ‘punt,’ and let Mr. McCain decide what to do.

He called on powers such as Russia and China to prevent a US unilateral strike by helping Washington increase pressure on Tehran. “Look, if you don’t want an American attack, then you have to join us in being very serious with the Iranians and making clear to them we will attack if they don’t stop.”

Later in the interview, Pipes commented that Israel’s nuclear capability is “substantial.”

He prefaces his remarks with the following: "The deepest differences between Muslims and Westerners concern not politics but sexuality. Each side has a long history of looking at the other's sexual mores with a mixture of astonishment and disgust."

Pipes goes on to tell us about a weird case of child marriage in Yemen, an over-excited preacher in Saudi Arabia, and an odd tribal veiling custom in some backwater of Saudi Arabia. Of course, these stories are not representative of the "Muslim world." And even less surprising, there is no mention of the sexual weirdness that goes on in the Christian world (Catholic Priests in the USA, Austrians in basements, or Mormons in Texas, anyone?). So, if Pipes's article contains no worthwhile analysis, what is its point?

Obviously, the point is to whip up indignation against Muslims and their "backward religion." Pipes has a PhD in Medieval Islam Studies from Harvard, so he can understand that a titillating collection of anecdotes has little explanatory power. But there are a lot of people out there who see these isolated anecdotes as proof of Islam's inferiority. Here's a sampling of the comments section:

"Well, I can tell you,,they have a fight. we will never bow to that..and we are just about to let them know it..force is all they understand.. Yet millions of Muslims are converting to the true G-d and leaving Islam."

"Dont expect any peace or stability from their end. Terror and hatred is in their blood and genes... I can see a war in near future, a war which will destroy this planet and half the human race."

"You need to get out and read more. Christianity was the religion that truly was "hijacked" by evil people — not islam. Islam always was, and still is, evil — by the decree of allah. Seriously, do a little reading."

Statements like "hatred is in their genes," "their religion is evil," and "we can only hope they convert to the true religion" reminds me of Osama bin Laden's talking points. Demonizing entire groups of people is a very dangerous thing. I wish the people who said these things would spend some time in a Muslim country. They would be shocked by the warmth and hospitality of people who have "hate in their DNA."

Even if Turkey balances it's budget, ups its per capita GDP, and solves the Cyprus issue, prejudices such as these may derail the country's bid to join the EU.

Daniel Pipes, a far right-wing pseudo scholar who called the NIE report on the halting of Iran’s nuclear program a “shoddy, politicized, outrageous parody of a piece of propaganda,” said he believes that President Bush will attack Iran if a Democrat wins the White House in November. During an interview posted at the National Review Online, Pipes said that the U.S. and its allies should tell Tehran to “watch out” for “an American attack”:

What I suspect will be the case is, should the Democratic nominee win in November, President Bush will do something. And should it be Mr. McCain that wins, he’ll punt, and let McCain decide what to do.

The Political Carnival wonders, about an unrelated issue, just how it is that a President hated the world over, with a 25% approval rating and a 67% disapproval rating, feels that he has permission from the American people to pull this sort of unadulterated bullshit, and I'm inclined to second the question and apply it to this issue.

This is just adding to the din of mouthbreathing morons predicting military action against Iran. (Stupid, Stupid.)

So, some say November, others say August...which is it?

All this, even though a solid huge majority of Americans agrees with Obama's approach to Iran and to foreign policy in general.

Wake the fuck up, America. They're doing everything they can to shred whatever is left of this country's decency. What are WE going to do?

Islamism (the totalitarian ideology) does pose a real threat. But it's a threat that needs to be addressed with surgical precision, not blind hysteria.

Alas, Phil Orenstein's article comes across to me as hysteria-mongering: a flood of accusations against various people, combined with a blatantly fallacious dismissal of the civil rights concerns of Muslims. But his article has inspired me to research several topics more deeply this past week, including hate crime statistics and the recent history of bigotry against both Jews and Muslims.

• The quote from me, and my preliminary response
• The witchhunt mentality: guilt by association
• Pipes and "the enfranchisement of the Muslim community in America" - valid fears of Islamists and Jew-haters
• Hate crimes and civil rights violations against Muslims
• More guilt by association
• The two valid gripes of the anti-KGIA folks

The quote from me, and my preliminary response

Below is a copy of a comment I posted here in response to the recent FrontPage article:

To Phil Orenstein: Quote out of context, etc.

I'm quoted above as saying that Debbie Almontaser is “a traditionalist-leaning Muslim and as such, has ties to the more fundamentalist Muslim groups.” You left out a crucial first part of that statement of mine: "It does appear that ...." I don't know her personally, and I'm certainly no expert on her actual religious orientation, or on what groups she has ties to or how close any given tie is. The blog entry you quoted was merely my preliminary attempt to piece the story together from what people on both sides of the controversy had to say. I'm surprised that you deemed me worthy of quoting on this particular matter at all; don't you have any better sources?

By the way, if you were wondering what the campaign against Debbie Almontaser has in common with McCarthyism, it is precisely your obsession with guilt-by-association, even to the point of quoting not-very-knowledgeable sources (such as, in this case, me) about someone's associations.

There are other schools, elsewhere in the U.S.A., about which I think the anti-"Madressa" movement probably does have valid concerns. But it does not appear to me that the KGIA is one of them, as I explain in the blog post you quoted.

About your dismissal of the existence of hate crimes against Muslims: While the statistics you referred to do appear to show that hate crimes against Jews are a much more common occurrence, those statistics certainly do NOT show that "American citizens are showing more tolerance and respect toward Muslims than any other religious group." Rather, according to those statistics (on the FBI site here) Muslims are the second most frequent target of religiously motivated hate crimes. Furthermore, according to the graphic in the article you cited on this topic, there were many more hate crimes against Muslims in 2001 than in the year of the FBI report in question, 2006. Fortunately such crimes have decreased, but not to the point of total insignificance.

I'm concerned about bigotry against Jews too, especially the revival of classic libels against Jews. I've been focussing more on Muslims lately because of the need to strike a balance between legitimate concerns about the spread of Islamism (the theocratic imperialist political ideology) and avoiding undue paranoia about individual Muslims.

Although the links in my copy above do work, they didn't work in the original, so I posted the URL's in a subsequent comment here.

Now for a further response to Phil Orenstein's article.

The article is full of personal accusations against various people, plus quite a bit of wrangling over CUNY (City University of New York) faculty politics. I don't know how much truth there is to most of these accusations, and I don't have time to research them all. I'll just say that Phil Orenstein's citing of me as a source on Debbie Almontaser's religious beliefs and organizational affiliations, while ignoring the explicitly tentative nature of my statement on that matter, does not leave me with a favorable impression of his journalistic acumen. As we shall see later, he also cites such dubious sources as an editorial by someone who can't do math. That being the case, I would suggest that the reader take most of his accusations with a grain of salt.

In the remainder of this post, I'll comment on just a few points that leapt out at me, some of which I considered important enough to research further. Among other things, I spent quite a bit of time exploring Daniel Pipes's site.

The witchhunt mentality: guilt by association

In response to some statements about Daniel Pipes by Mona Eldahry, one of the panelists at the April 28 forum on “Academic Freedom and the Attack on Diversity at CUNY,” Phil Orenstein wrote:

... Daniel Pipes is an Islamic scholar well known for his respect and defense of the majority of peaceful Muslims, often asserting that while radical Islam is the problem, moderate Muslims are the solution.

Yes, Daniel Pipes does make that distinction. (See his writings on moderate Muslims, and see also Flemming Rose's interview with Daniel Pipes on The Threat of Islamism.) However, in practice, Pipes often comes across to me as overly quick to accuse someone of being a "stealth Islamist," often based on little more than guilt-by-association. For example, on this page, he says that Debbie Almontaser's "defense of CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations], more than any other statement by Almontaser, proves she is an Islamist." This supposedly incriminating statement of hers, quoted by Pipes, is as follows:

CAIR-New York is one of the most prominent civil rights organizations in New York City, as well as across the country. The president of CAIR sits on the Human Rights Commission of New York City. He was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg. So if Mayor Bloomberg has no issues with working closely with CAIR, I don't see why anyone should have any issues. CAIR, unfortunately, has been targeted, because it is fighting for the civil rights of Arabs and Muslims. And, you know, this organization, as well as other organizations fighting for civil rights of Arabs and Muslims, is very much needed.

Below are some pages dealing with the controversy about CAIR:

• Allegations by Daniel Pi;es and Sharon Chadha against CAIR
• CAIR's response to various allegations against CAIR
• ADL's page about CAIR
• CAIR's Open Letter to ADL
• ADL response to CAIR open letter
• CAIR page about Daniel Pipes
• Daniel Pipes's reply to CAIR

Even if it's true that CAIR is dominated by Islamists (those who aim to impose Islamic theocracy worldwide), it doesn't follow that everyone associated with CAIR is an Islamist.

Daniel Pipes also claims that, although most American Muslims are more moderate, Saudi-style Wahhabism/Salafism is disproportionately dominant in pretty much the entire American Islamic establishment, thanks to Saudi oil money. To whatever extent the latter claim is true, it would logically follow that there are probably lots of non-Wahhabis associated with Wahhabi-dominated organizations, simply because those Wahhabi-dominated groups are the only game in town.

Thus, an endorsement of CAIR does not necessarily mean that someone is an Islamist. And, by saying that Debbie Almontaser's "defense of CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations], more than any other statement by Almontaser, proves she is an Islamist," Daniel Pipes has thereby admitted that all his other "evidence" is even weaker.

In Daniel Pipes's article Debating the Khalil Gibran International Academy, he says the following:

I do think that - what I know of her record suggests that she is someone who supports radical Islam, that is to say, supports bringing in elements of the Shari`a, of Islamic law, whether it be by bringing in imams onto the advisory board or having lunch that is served according to Islamic regulations or receiving an award from, as Ms. Elliot noted earlier, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The advisory board included not just imams, but also Jewish and Christian Clergy plus the leader of an atheist/humanist group (the ethical culture society).

As for halal food in the cafeteria: I would see nothing wrong with that if there were also public school cafeterias that served kosher food in neighborhoods with a large Jewish population. According to the NPR radio show linked in Pipes's article, the Board of Education currently allows neither. There do exist CUNY colleges with cafeterias that serve kosher food. I see no legal or constitutional reason why gradeschools couldn't serve both kosher food and halal food too, as well as ordinary food, except that some school buildings might be too small to accommodate multiple kitchens easily. However, in a sufficiently large school building, I see no rational reason for anyone to feel threatened by either kosher food or halal food. As long as they are optional, they don't infringe on anyone else's rights.

Daniel Pipes writes:

Let me just note one thing, that the long-time national spokesman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said back in 1993, that "I don't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future, but I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education." So the long term plan of CAIR and other institutions has been to work with education.

Pipes seems to be insinuating that if a public school teacher or principal is involved with CAIR, then that teacher or principal will abuse one's position to promote, via "education," the idea of an Islamic government.

Note the word "I," not "we," in Pipes's quote from the CAIR "spokesman." Thus the "spokesman" was speaking for himself, not for CAIR. While an Islamic government might be an informal goal of some, perhaps even most, of the leaders of CAIR, it's not an official "long term plan of CAIR" itself (see CAIR's Vision, Mission, and Core Principles). Thus, the "spokesman's" statement certainly does not constitute proof that Debbie Almontaser intended to use her position as a school principal to promote the idea of an Islamic government.

Daniel Pipes has not found any evidence of Debbie Almontaser herself saying anything like, "The U.S. Constitution should be replaced by the Quran and Hadiths" or "Islam is the solution to all our social problems." Had she herself ever said any such thing, it would indeed be cause for concern - especially if she had said it in a classroom. But apparently she hasn't.

Furthermore, there are many people who know her, including even an ADL spokesperson, who have attested to work for mutual understanding between people of different religions. This doesn't sound to me like someone who wants to eliminate our secular government.

Debbie Almontaser does appear to be traditional in her practice, or at least traditional enough to wear hijab. But this, in itself, doesn't tell us much about her political and social goals.

Pipes says:

Let me also note that back in 2003, Ms. Almontaser took part in something called the "Grand Display of Muslim Unity" at Madison Square Garden, organized with the Islamic Internet University, and the mission of that university is to establish and support, "the Islamic institutions, particularly Islamic educational institutions, in this land."

Did she abuse her position as a public school teacher to promote this event at a public school? If not, I see nothing to complain about here. Teachers and school principals have the right to attend whatever religious and political events they choose.

Furthermore, to be an effective networker, a school's founding principal needs to attend a wide variety of social events. Among other things, a school's founding principal needs to be able to network with the Muslim community (as well as the Christian community, the Jewish community, etc.) as it exists now, rather than to be picky and associate only with small groups of modernizing reformers, as Daniel Pipes would apparently prefer.

Despite his scholarship, Daniel Pipes sometimes seems ignorant of basic logic. For example, he doesn't seem to know what the word "imply" means:

My problem, in the abstract, was that I've seen over and over again that the instruction of Arabic implies either a political or a religious agenda. I've documented this [taking place] in various places, such as Middlebury College in Vermont or in Algeria, or a whole range of schools around the country.

Apparently by "implies" he means "has often been accompanied by." Instruction in Arabic certainly does not logically imply "either a political or a religious agenda."

Daniel Pipes then has the gall to say:

That's not a witch hunt. That's noting something and criticizing it, and I wish my critics had the decency to respond to what I'm saying, rather than abuse me and call me names.

Well, I wish Daniel Pipes had the decency to avoid making personal accusations based on flimsy evidence (e.g. that Debbie Almontaser's support of CAIR "proves" she is an Islamist). It is precisely the flimsiness of his evidence that, indeed, does make his accusations constitute a "witchhunt."

In my opinion, he does have valid fears about the spread of Islamism. But it would be nice if he could be more measured in how he voices those fears. If Pipes is worried that a particular person might a "stealth Islamist," I think he should, at the very least, voice his suspicions about people in a more tentative manner, in the absence of real proof. He should be more careful to avoid making claims that are stronger than the evidence he presents.

Ironically, Pipes himself has been a target of similarly flimsy accusations based on guilt by association. Among other things, he has been accused of conspiring with Flemming Rose, publisher of the controversial Danish Mohammed cartoons, to stoke up "the Zionist Neo-Cons' ‘clash of civilizations,' the artificially constructed struggle to pit the so-called Christian West against the Islamic states and peoples." See his article Those Danish Cartoons and Me, in which he recounts what happened and then writes:

In today's vicious and vulgar political discourse, public figures must anticipate that their actions, however minor and innocent, might randomly be plucked out of obscurity and framed as part of some grand design.

He also has a page of corrections of other people's factual errors about him.

From his own experiences with other people's conclusion-jumping, one would think he should have learned to avoid jumping to conclusions about other people, too. Alas, he apparently has't.

Perhaps Pipes's accusations are correct. But, if they are, he should wait with making those accusations until he can present better evidence and not rely so heavily on guilt by association. I don't know whether the people he accuses of being "stealth Islamists" really are "stealth Islamists." But I do know that the evidence he presents, and his reasoning about that evidence, are glaringly flawed. I also know that a civilized society needs to uphold the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."

Pipes and "the enfranchisement of the Muslim community in America" - valid fears of Islamists and Jew-haters

In Fantasizing “The New McCarthyism”, Phil Orenstein writes:

She claimed Pipes wrote that the enfranchisement of the Muslim community in America is a serious problem for the Jewish people. When I tried asking for the source of such statements, I was curtly interrupted, and told “we have to move on now.

Well, I've dug up some sources. The most directly relevant source is his WorldNetDaily article A French lesson for Tom Harkin, which begins by quoting something he said to the American Jewish Congress in October 2001:

I worry very much, from the Jewish point of view, that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims, because they are so much led by an Islamist leadership, that this will present true dangers to American Jews.

See also Daniel Pipes's online collection of writings on Antisemitism, including the following:

• The New Anti-Semitism
• American Muslims vs. American Jews (another copy of which was published under the title of Islam's Big Threat in America)
• The Paterson 'Protocols'
• Deadly Denial [of Muslim Anti-Semitism]
• The Politics of Muslim Anti-Semitism

Another relevant article, not listed on his "Antisemitism" page, is The End of American Jewry's Golden Era: An Interview with Daniel Pipes.

Pipes's claim is not that Islam itself poses a threat to Jews, but that the hatred of Jews that is all too common among Muslims these days, in conjunction with the political ideology of Islamism, is indeed a serious threat to Jews.

As far as I can tell, based on my own admittedly much more limited research, he is essentially correct that bigotry against Jews has become very widespread among Muslims - not just opposition to the state of Israel, but a revival of old-fashioned European-style Jew-hating myths such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and even the medieval blood libel.

(Like many right wingers, Daniel Pipes has a tendency to confuse legitimate criticism of Israel with "anti-Semitism." But he does document plenty of instances of real hate crimes and libels against Jews too.)

I agree with Pipes that this is a serious problem. But I disagree with him on what to do about it.

I agree that it's important to acknowledge the threat. And I agree that it's important to encourage genuine moderates and modernizing reformers to become more visible in the Muslim community.

However, Pipes takes what I consider to be an overly heavy-handed approach. On the one hand, he is overly quick to accuse individual Muslims of being "stealth Islamists." On the other hand, he, a non-Muslim, has played a very active and visible role in trying to help moderate Muslims to organize. (See, for example, his pages on Stephen Schwartz and the Center for Islamic Pluralism and Responding to Joshua Muravchik about "Moderate Islamists".) Helping genuine moderates is praiseworthy, but I fear that he may be overdoing it.

Ironically, Pipes himself recognizes the dangers of a too heavy-handed approach in another realm, foreign policy. In Dealing With Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories, he writes:

Avoid bestowing the kiss of death. Conspiracy theories foster a widespread suspicion among Muslims that foreign powers covertly control their rulers; overbearing foreign support thereby undermines a Middle East leader's reputation and this redounds to hurt the foreign patron. In Syria, the government did so badly in the elections of 1954 in large part because it was seen as far too pliant to American wishes. Not accidentally, it was replaced by leftist politicians who viewed Washington with hostility, and these ruled for decades afterwards. The shah of Iran and Anwar as-Sadat lost their countrymen's respect because both were (wrongly) seen as agents of Washington. Hafiz al-Asad and the communist rulers of Afghanistan suffered from their too close association with Moscow.

I would encourage Daniel Pipes to apply this insight not only to the U.S. government's dealings with foreign governments, but also to his own and the American Jewish community's dealings with the American Muslim community and the organizations therein that he likes and dislikes.

In much the same way that a government which appears to be controlled by foreigners is unlikely to win the loyalty of its citizens/subjects, so too a Muslim organization whose agenda appears to have been dictated by non-Muslims is unlikely to attract very many Muslims. Thus, a strategy of aggressively urging everyone to blackball all Muslim groups except for a select few small, certified 100% pure moderate groups (with too much funding from non-Muslim sources) could easily backfire, it seems to me.

(P.S., 6/2.2008: To counteract the effects of Saudi oil money, I would suggest laws limiting the amounts of money that religious groups, educational institutions, and other organizations can receive from overseas sources.)

At the same time, Daniel Pipes needs to rein in his own "conspiracy theorizing" tendencies regarding "stealth Islamists," lest he unnecessarily alienate people via his propensity for conclusion-jumping accusations. The threat of "stealth Islamists" is real, but I think he needs be more careful to avoid crying wolf - and the appearance of crying wolf - about specific individual people. At least Pipes admits that he has made some mistakes in this regard. (See Identifying Moderate Muslims.) But he needs to become more careful about his evidence and how he presents it.

Hate crimes and civil rights violations against Muslims

In Fantasizing “The New McCarthyism”, Phil Orenstein wrote:

Nevertheless, the cries of widespread Islamophobia are false alarms according to FBI data which shows that hate crimes against Muslims have plummeted since 2001 and account for a fraction of overall religious hate crimes. In fact, in 2006, there were six times as many religiously motivated attacks on Jews as there were against Muslims in America, although Jewish and Muslim populations are about the same size.

Orenstein's link, in the above quote, doesn't take us to the FBI report itself, but rather to "Hyping Hate Crime Vs. Muslims," an editorial on the Investor's Business Daily website, Monday, December 03, 2007. This editorial says:

In 2006, a whopping 66% of religiously motivated attacks were on Jews, while just 11% targeted Muslims, even though the Jewish and Muslim populations are similar in size. Catholics and Protestants, who together account for 9% of victims, are subject to almost as much abuse as Muslims in this country.

Whoa! Here in the U.S.A., Catholics and Protestants greatly outnumber Muslims. So, the 11% of hate crimes directed at Muslims add up to a lot more hate crimes per Muslim than the 9% of crimes directed at Catholics and Protestants combined are per adherent of those faiths. The statistics certainly do not prove that Muslims are just slightly worse off than Christians in terms of the risk of being the target of a hate crime.

Let's hope that the Investor's Business Daily's pages about business and investments are written by people who are better at math.

Since neither Phil Orenstein or the Investor's Business Daily provided a link to the actual FBI report, I looked for it myself on the FBI website. The statistics on victims are here, on one of several pages of Hate Crime Statistics, 2006. I also found the FBI's announcement of this report, dated November 19, 2007, and a page listing hate crimes reports for other years.

Another very interesting thing I found on the FBI's website is the text of a speech by Jonathan Solomon, Special Agent in Charge of the Miami Division of the FBI, as part of a lecture series sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in Boca Raton, Florida, February 6, 2008. Jonathan Solomon starts off by saying, "The ADL has been an invaluable partner to the FBI over the years, and so I’m happy to be here to continue building our relationship." Later in the speech, he had this to say about the recent hate crimes report:

Unfortunately, hate crimes are on the rise. This past November, the FBI issued its annual hate crimes report based on data which was voluntarily submitted by police departments across the country. I’m disappointed to say that the data indicated that hate crimes had risen almost eight percent.

Over 7,700 hate crimes were reported. Over 50 percent were motivated by racial bias, and about 19 percent were motivated by religious bias.

Breaking down the numbers further, we learned that attacks on Muslims increased 22 percent. Attacks on Jews increased 14 percent. Attacks on Catholics were up almost a third. And hate crimes against Hispanics were up 10 percent.

Now, these numbers are from 2006. But in recent months, we have all read disturbing accounts of this upward trend in the papers.

So, while hate crimes against Muslims have not gone back up to 2001 levels, it appears that they are indeed rising again. So, Muslims are not utterly without reason to worry.

The Investor's Business Daily editorial alleges:

Every year the pressure group releases a report citing thousands of alleged civil-rights and physical abuses against Muslims, which largely are based on anecdotal reporting from members. Despite CAIR's obvious bias (and proven record of dissembling), the PC-addled media report its numbers unfiltered and without question.

I looked up CAIR's report on the Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2007 (PDF), which contains statistics for 2006.

On page 5, the CAIR report says: "CAIR received 167 reports of anti-Muslim hate crimes, a 9.2 percent increase from the 153 complaints received in 2005." Let's compare this with the FBI's list of Incidents, Offenses, Victims, and Known Offenders by Bias Motivation, 2006, which lists 156 incidents (with 191 offenses, 208 victims, and 147 known offenders) on the line for "Anti-Islamic" single-bias incidents. Thus CAIR's figure for hate crimes is somewhat greater than, but not wildly in excess of, the FBI's figure.

In addition to actual full-fledged hate crimes, the CAIR report also speaks of "civil rights complaints," a separate category from "hate crimes." The CAIR report says, "In 2006, CAIR processed a total of 2,467 civil rights complaints, compared to 1,972 cases reported to CAIR in 2005. This constitutes a 25.1 percent increase in the total number of complaints from 2005."

That figure must be the "thousands of alleged civil-rights and physical abuses against Muslims" which the Investor's Business Daily editorial allege to have been disproven by the FBI report. But the Investor's Business Daily editorial is comparing apples and oranges here. As we have seen, "civil rights abuses" are not the same thing as "hate crimes."

The Investor's Business Daily editorial then says:

But if you peel them back, you find they're mostly victimless crimes. For instance, in its 2006 report released in June, CAIR listed as a "hate crime" the following example: "A copy of the Quran was found in a toilet at the library of Pace University in New York."

If that copy of the Quran belonged to the library, or to anyone other than the perpetrator, then putting it in a toilet is not a "victimless crime"; it is at least theft and destruction of property. In addition, deliberately clogging a public toilet with a book or anything else is at least a mild form of vandalism. Flushing a Quran down a toilet would be "victimless" only if you purchase your own Quran (or make your own printout of an Internet copy) and flush it down your own toilet.

This incident is described on page 25 of the CAIR report, where it is said, "Initially, Pace University administration called the desecration 'vandalism'." The CAIR report doesn't say where the copy of the Quran came from. (Looking around for more information about this incident, I found this blog post, which doesn't tell us who the Quran belonged to either.) In any case, it would appear that this act was intended to be reminiscent of the controversy over allegations of Quran desecration at Guantánamo Bay.

The Investor's Business Daily editorial then says, sarcastically:

There are other atrocities, too, such as someone trampling on a "flower bed" at a mosque in Texas.

Not an "atrocity," but still a crime against other people's property. Whether it's a "hate crime" depends on the motive. Furthermore, the incident in question, described on page 25 of the CAIR report, involved other kinds of vandalism too, including spray-painted graffiti and smashing of exterior lights.

I'm sure that similar vandalism at a synagogue would be considered a hate crime too. Most likely, so would a Hebrew Torah found in a public toilet. (Daniel Pipes objects to an episode of desecration of Christian Bibles at an Australian Muslim school here on this page.) Indeed, according to the FBI report, 32.1 percent of the 2006 hate crimes in general (against the total of all targeted groups) consisted of "destruction/damage/vandalism." I would expect this to include lots of episodes of synagogue vandalism.

Anyhow, the hate crimes reported by CAIR do include violent crimes too. Some examples are given on pages 9 and 10 of the CAIR report.

Phil Orenstein goes even further than the Investor's Business Daily editorial in twisting the facts to claim that Muslims have absolutely nothing to complain about whatsoever. He even claims, "American citizens are showing more tolerance and respect toward Muslims than any other religious group."

That's quite an exaggeration. It's true that things aren't anywhere nearly as bad for American Muslims as they could have been, and it's true that there are many more reported hate crimes against Jews than against Muslims. But these aren't valid reasons to dismiss Muslims' concerns about hate crimes entirely. And they certainly aren't valid reasons to dismiss Muslims' concerns about civil rights violations either. Furthermore, American Muslims do have other valid worries too. See, for example, Jerry Klein’s 2006 Radio Experiment.

More guilt by association

In Fantasizing “The New McCarthyism”, Phil Orenstein then writes:

Eldahry, Almontaser and other self-proclaimed champions of diversity are crying “Islamophobia” in response to reasonable questions and concerns about the spread and infiltration of radical Islam in our public schools and colleges. Meanwhile they hide their true agenda under the cloak of multiculturalism and diversity allowing intolerance and disrespect toward America and Israel to prevail in the classroom.

His evidence for Debbie Almontaser's "true agenda"? Mostly, guilt by association. For example:

Almontaser and the KGIA public school are enthusiastically supported by a number of radical individuals and Islamic groups such as AWAAM, CAIR -- currently under federal investigation as an unindicted co-conspirator for terrorist financing, the American Muslim Association of Lawyers (AMAL) – which defended the notorious “6 imams” who threatened to sue passengers for profiling, cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal, unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, anti-Israel Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, and others.

AWAAM is an Arab group, not a Muslim group. There are plenty of nom-Muslim Arabs and non-Arab Muslims.

CAIR is an "unindicted co-conspirator" - why are they unindicted? Perhaps because there's not enough evidence even to indict them, let alone convict them? Does Phil Orenstein think we should all shun anyone who is even suspected of a crime? Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?

Anyhow, Orenstein's entire argument about whom "Almontaser and the KGIA public school are enthusiastically supported by" is pure guilt-by-association. So what if some disreputable people approve of her? Lots of other people "enthusiastically support" her too.

Further down the page, Orenstein defends guilt-by-association, as follows: "Any teacher will tell you that a student caught hanging out with troublemakers would be severely reprimanded." But the point, in that case, is to keep impressionable kids away from bad influences. Debbie Almontaser is an adult. As such, she is responsible for her own actions, not the actions of her acquaintances and defenders.

At most, a person's associations may be a good reason to ask questions. They are not, in themselves, proof of guilt.

Guilt by association is a logical fallacy. (See Fallacy: Guilt By Association on the website of the Nizkor Project.)

The two valid gripes of the anti-KGIA folks

It does not seem to me that the "Stop the Madrassa Coalition" has a valid church-and-state (or mosque-and-state) separation issue concerning the Khalil Gibran International Academy. And their accusations against Debbie Almontaser seem way overblown to me.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, they do have one valid complaint against the Board of Education, and they do have one valid complaint against Debbie Almontaser.

It seems to me that both Daniel Piples and the "Stop the Madressa Coalition" should have focussed more on demanding that the Department of Education be fully open about the KGIA's actual curriculum. I can't think of any good excuse for the DoE's lack of transparency.

As for Debbie Almontaser herself, their one legitimate gripe, in my opinion, concerns her defense of the "Intifada NYC" T-shirts. (See the New York Post article.) Oddly, Phil Orenstein doesn't discuss this in his article, except to refer briefly to "the inflammatory T-shirts with the slogan 'Intifada NYC' that ultimately led to the resignation of Almontaser." Even this, by itself, should not have been sufficient reason to fire her or force her to resign, in my opinion. But someone should ask her the following questions, among others:

• Should students in a New York City public school be allowed to wear T-shirts with the slogan "Intifada NYC"?
• Even if the T-shirt's intent isn't what it seems to be, doesn't it have a high risk of inciting violence, or at least creating a hostile and intimidating environment for Jews?
• Are you aware of the growing worldwide trend of violent hate crimes by Muslims against Jews? (Daniel Pipes documents this trend in some of his writings on Antisemitism.)
• Should students in a New York City public school be allowed to wear pro-Israel T-shirts? (To be asked if she thinks it's okay for students to wear "Intifada NYC" T-shirts.)
• What do you think of suicide bombers killing Israeli civilians?
• What do you think of the Hamas charter's endorsement of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
• Here in the U.S.A., how do you think the police and the FBI should go about tracking down terrorists and their accomplices, while at the same time avoiding, as much as possible, violations of civil rights?

Alas, I didn't think to ask her these questions at the April 28 forum. Neither did Phil Orenstein, though he did ask her a bunch of other questions.

In my opinion, both Daniel Pipes and the "Stop the Madrassa Coalition" should have avoided making questionable accusations against Debbie Almontaser and, instead, should have focussed on getting their questions answered. They should have waited with making any full-fledged accusations until they had real evidence.

(P.S., 6/6/2008: About the T-shirts: Debbie Almontaser's defense of the T-shirts should not be seized upon as meaning that she "really" endorses violence against Israeli civilians. The only valid concern here is what her policies would be if she were principal, insofar as the Board of Education allows principals any discretion at all regarding dress codes.)

An excerpt on cold-blooded indifference:

We can find out the names, including middle initial, of every American soldier who has been killed in Iraq in seconds. We can also find out exactly where he was killed, what day, what hour, and the circumstances under which he died. We can find out numerous info about American wounded in Iraq. How many, what types of wound, what sorts of treatment they are receiving . . . the amount of info and data available to us on American casualties in Iraq is staggering.

But Iraqi dead? Nothing. We "don't do body counts" for them.

And the irony-deficient shakedown of Iran:

The US accuses Iran, without a shred of believable or even coherent evidence, of "undermining" the Iraq government and aiding "terrorists" while at the same time the US passes bills in public that authorize funds for the . . . undermining of Iran's government and the aiding of terrorists in their country! That isn't sick deranged weird behavior? That isn't insane?

Source: http://thedailyburkeman1.blogspot.com/.

I hope supporters of Israel (I count myself one) pay close attention to the facts surrounding Malley and what they say about Obama himself. Obama says he is an ardent supporter of Israel, but he surrounds himself with people who are virulently anti-Israel and even anti-semitic.

Back in January, Ed Lasky of the well-regarded conservative website American Thinker posted a very thorough article on Malley and his political leanings. I revisited the article today and it was time well spent. Here is the link:

Barack Obama's Middle East Expert

Columbia sufría el legado de 1968 y la policía no se atrevía a meterse dentro de los asuntos universitarios aunque fuera para prevenir los enfrentamientos. Los agresores a menudo se aprovechaban de esa situación desafortunada y no dudaban en intentar dominar el campus con ideologías radicales como "Black Power" o el movimiento Chicano denominado Atzlan. A pesar de todo esto, muchos estudiantes de Columbia eran -- y son -- Judíos, y aunque pocos Judíos universitarios en Nueva York se identifican exclusivamente por su religión, muchos estudiantes del MSA (Muslim Student Association) y algunos otros grupos minoritarios demostraban su odio hacia este grupo tan particular y exitoso...veían a los Judíos, injustamente, como competencia y como enemigos.

Yo personalmente siempre me mantuve al margen de algunas de las trifulcas raciales y me abstuve totalmente de las borracheras y fiestas universitarias. Mi enfoque era, como ahora, mi trabajo y la política, y también aproveché las muchas oportunidades que ofrece una ciudad como Nueva York. Aparte de las clases y los seminarios interesantes, me dedicaba a dirigir el Columbia College Conservative Club, cuyo fundador es Ron Lewenberg, ahora presidente de los New York Young Republicans. A traves del Conservative Club, llegue a conocer y conectarme con los personajes intelectuales del mundo liberal en EEUU...personajes como el Sr. Daniel Pipes, el Sr. David Horowitz y la Sra. Ann Coulter, entre otros. Fue aquí cuando me di cuenta por primera vez que es absolutamente necesario preservar una alianza Atlántica entre países Europeos y EEUU, para defender con mas éxito los principios de la libertad y gobierno limitado, a pesar de estar en un campus conocido por sus alianzas con Comunistas radicales y otros cafres. Durante este tiempo también me motejó la izquierda del campus como el "Angry White Man" (hombre blanco enfadado), debido a que la izquierda considera, en EEUU, que defender ciertos principios responde única y exclusivamente a los intereses del hombre blanco. De la noche a la mañana me convertí, para muchos estudiantes, en una personalidad bastante conocida y, cómo no, controvertida. Todavía hoy no tengo claro el por qué de ese mote: ¿quizás porque me negaba a votar a favor de la discriminación positiva? ¿Quizás porque abrí una investigación policial sobre el CSSN (Columbia Student Solidarity Network) por sus conexiones ilícitas y delictivas? ¿O quizás sea porque algunos me acusaron, y me acusan, de ser socio de un grupo de “supremacistas” blancos por haber participado junto a ellos, sin saber que lo eran en esos tiempos, en una manifestación contra la discriminación positiva en el estado de Virginia? Sea cual sea la razón, y después de muchos intentos de manchar mi nombre, seguía con mi determinación para seguir adelante y continuar la lucha contra el socialismo y el adoctrinamiento en el campus.

When I lived in Cairo in the 1970s, I conducted a little experiment: What, using only Arabic-language sources, could I learn about Jews, Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish culture, and the like? The paucity of resources stunned me; basically, the best way to learn about these subjects was to read between the lines of antisemitic tracts.

It is therefore with delight that I read today that the American Jewish Committee, under the directorship of Yehudit Barsky, has launched a new website, Asl Al-Yahud ("origins of the Jews"), that deals in Arabic with these subjects, with an emphasis on the history of Jews in Arabic-speaking lands. As a press release explains,

The website offers information about Jewish lifecycle events, holidays and religious practice. The website also contains a timeline of Jewish history, audio and graphic components, and a special section for users to submit questions. An Asl Al-Yahud staff member will answer the questions, in Arabic, allowing users to comfortably inte