Jihadist groups active in UK universities

Some (but not all) universities in Great Britain, and some parts, but not all, of the affected universities, have been subject to infiltration and takeover of both relevant faculties (i.e., those dealing with the Middle East, Islam) and student organizations (such as the local branches of the National Union of Students, the group that gave Jack Straw his raybolgeresque start).

First, the faculties. Beginning some 30 years ago, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the U.A.E., pooled their resources and began setting up, or buying up, whole academic centers, Centers for the Study of Islamic This and MIddle Eastern That, centers where the donors might be able to vet all appointments, and follow closely the works and days of all those associated with those centers -- at Exeter, at Durham, and elsewhere. At least one scholar of Islam (Denis McEaoin, who previously received some harsh treatment at JW, not least by me) was slightly too honest about Islam to be forced to leave. At the same time, the Arabs began to do the same in the United States.

But in the United States, with thousands of universities and colleges, they had to concentrate their money. And so they did -- focussing first on Georgetown, the place where diplomats are trained, where members of the government may go for "expertise" (awful word, and always used awfully, as befits it), and where members of the Washington press corps may also repair to find what the answer to such questions as "What is Islam really all about" and "how should we solve the Arab-Israeli problem"" (now, more sinisterly, the "problem of Israel/Palestine"). A Lebanese Arab, an islamochristian who was the largest contractor, akin to the Bin Laden patriarch, donated millions to start, and maintain in the style to which the lean, mean, jogging, and tireless-on-behalf-of-Islam John Esposito (who deserves a study to himself, as an example of Academic Apologists who helped to make the case for Jihadists everywhere) became so rapidly accustomed. The "Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding" has been a guide to nothing at all, except to further delay the understanding of Islam in too-busy-to-study-and-think-so-let's-ask-Esposito official Washington. This has not been bad for a provincial boy from Holy Cross, now doing well by doing good -- good for his late "ustadh" ("master"), Mr. Al-Faruqi, for his collaborator and friend, the Hamas supporter and would-be-suicide-bomber Aziz Tamimi, for his considerably less-well-paid staff (Yvonne Haddad, John Voll) who in addition, do not job as much.

Also at Georgetown, other Arabs -- this time Muslim Arabs from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. -- founded the "Center for Contemporary Arab Studies" -- with Michael Hudson as its loyal director. About this Center, about its "scholarly" output, about what you might learn from it about the true attitudes of Saudi Arabia, and why it might have been a good idea, some 30 years ago, to put a large, steadily-increasing tax on gasoline and generally on oil, because Saudi revenues were destined to fund the Jihad, through the money given to mosques and madrassas all over the world, you would have learned -- nothing. About the nature of Jihad, the instruments of Jihad, the centrality of Jihad as a duty of Muslims, both collective and, at times, individual, you would have learned -- nothing. About the real nature of the Arab Muslim attitude toward Israel, which must sooner or later, in Arab Muslim eyes, cease to exist, for it is an affront to Allah and to Arabs, you would have learned -- nothing. About the danger that the mass migration of Muslims to the Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels, or Westen Europe and North America, to what is, for them (but not for their unwary and ill-informed hosts) a place behinid enemy lines, from which to conduct Jihad to spread Islam through Da'wa and demographic conquest, you would have learned -- nothing.

These centers in both England and America, essentially set up as outposts of pseudo-scholarly propaganda with the appearance, had ways of disguising their true nature. In the field of pbulications, here and there some odd bits of real, non-tendentious scholarship might be permitted, especially if it was on a topic too remote to matter, with such subjects as Arab Travel Literature before, or after, Ibn Battuta; Modern "Reformers" in Egypt; Remainis of Ottoman Law in the Former Lands of the Empire. Always good to disguise an agenda. Look at what has come out over the past 20-30 years in the MESA Nostra publications, read the titles -- and imagine you are Snouck Hurgronje, or Joseph Schacht, or Leone Caetani, and weep. No wonder that Bernard Lewis seemed to be a one-man monument of scholarly rectitude, and was taken (at first) as a brave truth-teller about Islam (when he turns out, alas, to be only like Miss Sadie the lady of easy virtue in the old song: "I may not be the best in town, but I'm the best till the best comes round.")

These "Centers" were not enough. Here and there and everywhere, Arab interests endowed individual chairs, the King Abdul Aziz This, or the Adjunct Professor of Islamic Law. These chairs were plushly upholstered. Sometimes an appointment would be in addition to a regular appointment. Thus at Harvard Law School a certain professor of law is, as well, an Adjunct Professor of Islamic Law. And the students of that professor are unlikely to have him discuss in detail the centrality of Jihad in Islam, the division of the world between Believer and Infidel. That professor's students are unlikely to be assigned the real texts that matter, such as that of Antoine Fattal on "Le statut legal des non-musulmans au pays d'Islam" or Joseph Schacht. More likely is the kind of apologist crap that is spewed out all over the Muslim world, and by Muslims (who are, without exception, engaged in apologetics) all over the Western world.

And I have not even gotten to the way in which MESA Nostra apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim, have clawed or crawled or slithered to the tenured top, and are careful to offer jobs only to their own kind, resulting in such things as Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies at Columbia (where once Gottheil, and then Jeffery, and then Schacht all taught). Take a look, dear reader, at "That Awful Mess on Morningside Heights" as an introduction. And Columbia is only an extreme case of a general failure. In the latest bland Bolingeresque prose that the President of Columbia offers -- with all that embarrassing and pious nonsenes about a "scholarly community" (good god, where is Virginia Gildersleeve, where are the university presidents of yesteryear, where is Jacques Barzun, where are all those who have given the matter of education sustained thought, and would never have allowed platitudes about the "scholarly community" (Plato, Comenius, Milton, Cardinal Newman, Jules Ferry, William James with his "Ph.D. octopus" -- thou shouldst all be living at this hour, so you could roll over, more or less simulateneously, in your graves) and would look with horror at the likes of the Sammy Glicks who claw their way from professorship to provost to that university president's salary, and the rent-free mansion, and the pliant staff, and the life of enforced luxury (for all you are doing is glad-handing among the rich -- that is your job, that is the "leadeship role" you assume).

That is the faculty, that is the administration. And then there are the students. In England this means lots and lots of Arab and Muslim students. And politics, and Islam, and the perfidy of Israel and America, and of all Infidels anywhere who dare to disagree, or seem to offer the slightest resistance to the demands of Muslims, to the attitudes of Muslims. It is a question of numbers. Take any university in Britain. Add up the number of Arab and Muslim students, for whom such matters -- matter, matter far beyond anything else. And then add to that witches' brew the numbers of Guardian-reading, Fisk-and-Pilger-and-Galloway-and-Redken formed minds, and you have an intolerable atmosphere, of intimidiation and group-think, and what student, what lone faculty member (think of Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, then multiply by a hundred his isolation, his woes) will dare to take on the lynch mob of students and the fifth-column of sinister faculty -- with their demonstrations, and denunciations, and marches, and bullying in and out of class and cafeteria and everywhere. Who wants to be taken to Tyburn tree, just for uttering some mild truths?

And that is how it goes. That describes what happens in many, but not all, universities in Greaat Britain. That describes some, but not many, universities still in the United States.

Is it reversible? Unfortunately, that will depend on the choice of university presidents (or, in England, on the government which disburses funds and should monitor universities more closely), on the ability of tenured (do not demand heroism of untenured faculty -- it is cruel and unreasonable to do so) faculty to speak out, as Alexander Gerschenkron did during the Harvard student takeovers some thirty years ago, correctly sensing the whiff of fascism in the chanting and screaming in Harvard Yard.

Everything was all right, said the Frenchman, until that moment quand la betise s'est mise a enser. When Stupidity Began to Think. And not only "began to think," but to get a doctorate. And not only to get a doctorate, but to get an appointment, and then a promotion, and then tenure.

Scarcely believable. Entirely believable.

Some (but not all) universities in Great Britain, and some parts, but not all, of the affected universities, have been subject to infiltration and takeover of both relevant faculties (i.e., those dealing with the Middle East, Islam) and student organizations (such as the local branches of the National Union of Students, the group that gave Jack Straw his raybolgeresque start).

First, the faculties. Beginning some 30 years ago, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the U.A.E., pooled their resources and began setting up, or buying up, whole academic centers, Centers for the Study of Islamic This and MIddle Eastern That, centers where the donors might be able to vet all appointments, and follow closely the works and days of all those associated with those centers -- at Exeter, at Durham, and elsewhere. At least one scholar of Islam (Denis McEaoin, who previously received some harsh treatment at JW, not least by me) was slightly too honest about Islam to be forced to leave. At the same time, the Arabs began to do the same in the United States.

But in the United States, with thousands of universities and colleges, they had to concentrate their money. And so they did -- focussing first on Georgetown, the place where diplomats are trained, where members of the government may go for "expertise" (awful word, and always used awfully, as befits it), and where members of the Washington press corps may also repair to find what the answer to such questions as "What is Islam really all about" and "how should we solve the Arab-Israeli problem"" (now, more sinisterly, the "problem of Israel/Palestine"). A Lebanese Arab, an islamochristian who was the largest contractor, akin to the Bin Laden patriarch, donated millions to start, and maintain in the style to which the lean, mean, jogging, and tireless-on-behalf-of-Islam John Esposito (who deserves a study to himself, as an example of Academic Apologists who helped to make the case for Jihadists everywhere) became so rapidly accustomed. The "Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding" has been a guide to nothing at all, except to further delay the understanding of Islam in too-busy-to-study-and-think-so-let's-ask-Esposito official Washington. This has not been bad for a provincial boy from Holy Cross, now doing well by doing good -- good for his late "ustadh" ("master"), Mr. Al-Faruqi, for his collaborator and friend, the Hamas supporter and would-be-suicide-bomber Aziz Tamimi, for his considerably less-well-paid staff (Yvonne Haddad, John Voll) who in addition, do not job as much.

Also at Georgetown, other Arabs -- this time Muslim Arabs from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. -- founded the "Center for Contemporary Arab Studies" -- with Michael Hudson as its loyal director. About this Center, about its "scholarly" output, about what you might learn from it about the true attitudes of Saudi Arabia, and why it might have been a good idea, some 30 years ago, to put a large, steadily-increasing tax on gasoline and generally on oil, because Saudi revenues were destined to fund the Jihad, through the money given to mosques and madrassas all over the world, you would have learned -- nothing. About the nature of Jihad, the instruments of Jihad, the centrality of Jihad as a duty of Muslims, both collective and, at times, individual, you would have learned -- nothing. About the real nature of the Arab Muslim attitude toward Israel, which must sooner or later, in Arab Muslim eyes, cease to exist, for it is an affront to Allah and to Arabs, you would have learned -- nothing. About the danger that the mass migration of Muslims to the Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels, or Westen Europe and North America, to what is, for them (but not for their unwary and ill-informed hosts) a place behinid enemy lines, from which to conduct Jihad to spread Islam through Da'wa and demographic conquest, you would have learned -- nothing.

These centers in both England and America, essentially set up as outposts of pseudo-scholarly propaganda with the appearance, had ways of disguising their true nature. In the field of pbulications, here and there some odd bits of real, non-tendentious scholarship might be permitted, especially if it was on a topic too remote to matter, with such subjects as Arab Travel Literature before, or after, Ibn Battuta; Modern "Reformers" in Egypt; Remainis of Ottoman Law in the Former Lands of the Empire. Always good to disguise an agenda. Look at what has come out over the past 20-30 years in the MESA Nostra publications, read the titles -- and imagine you are Snouck Hurgronje, or Joseph Schacht, or Leone Caetani, and weep. No wonder that Bernard Lewis seemed to be a one-man monument of scholarly rectitude, and was taken (at first) as a brave truth-teller about Islam (when he turns out, alas, to be only like Miss Sadie the lady of easy virtue in the old song: "I may not be the best in town, but I'm the best till the best comes round.")

These "Centers" were not enough. Here and there and everywhere, Arab interests endowed individual chairs, the King Abdul Aziz This, or the Adjunct Professor of Islamic Law. These chairs were plushly upholstered. Sometimes an appointment would be in addition to a regular appointment. Thus at Harvard Law School a certain professor of law is, as well, an Adjunct Professor of Islamic Law. And the students of that professor are unlikely to have him discuss in detail the centrality of Jihad in Islam, the division of the world between Believer and Infidel. That professor's students are unlikely to be assigned the real texts that matter, such as that of Antoine Fattal on "Le statut legal des non-musulmans au pays d'Islam" or Joseph Schacht. More likely is the kind of apologist crap that is spewed out all over the Muslim world, and by Muslims (who are, without exception, engaged in apologetics) all over the Western world.

And I have not even gotten to the way in which MESA Nostra apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim, have clawed or crawled or slithered to the tenured top, and are careful to offer jobs only to their own kind, resulting in such things as Middle Eastern/Islamic Studies at Columbia (where once Gottheil, and then Jeffery, and then Schacht all taught). Take a look, dear reader, at "That Awful Mess on Morningside Heights" as an introduction. And Columbia is only an extreme case of a general failure. In the latest bland Bolingeresque prose that the President of Columbia offers -- with all that embarrassing and pious nonsenes about a "scholarly community" (good god, where is Virginia Gildersleeve, where are the university presidents of yesteryear, where is Jacques Barzun, where are all those who have given the matter of education sustained thought, and would never have allowed platitudes about the "scholarly community" (Plato, Comenius, Milton, Cardinal Newman, Jules Ferry, William James with his "Ph.D. octopus" -- thou shouldst all be living at this hour, so you could roll over, more or less simulateneously, in your graves) and would look with horror at the likes of the Sammy Glicks who claw their way from professorship to provost to that university president's salary, and the rent-free mansion, and the pliant staff, and the life of enforced luxury (for all you are doing is glad-handing among the rich -- that is your job, that is the "leadeship role" you assume).

That is the faculty, that is the administration. And then there are the students. In England this means lots and lots of Arab and Muslim students. And politics, and Islam, and the perfidy of Israel and America, and of all Infidels anywhere who dare to disagree, or seem to offer the slightest resistance to the demands of Muslims, to the attitudes of Muslims. It is a question of numbers. Take any university in Britain. Add up the number of Arab and Muslim students, for whom such matters -- matter, matter far beyond anything else. And then add to that witches' brew the numbers of Guardian-reading, Fisk-and-Pilger-and-Galloway-and-Redken formed minds, and you have an intolerable atmosphere, of intimidiation and group-think, and what student, what lone faculty member (think of Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, then multiply by a hundred his isolation, his woes) will dare to take on the lynch mob of students and the fifth-column of sinister faculty -- with their demonstrations, and denunciations, and marches, and bullying in and out of class and cafeteria and everywhere. Who wants to be taken to Tyburn tree, just for uttering some mild truths?

And that is how it goes. That describes what happens in many, but not all, universities in Greaat Britain. That describes some, but not many, universities still in the United States.

Is it reversible? Unfortunately, that will depend on the choice of university presidents (or, in England, on the government which disburses funds and should monitor universities more closely), on the ability of tenured (do not demand heroism of untenured faculty -- it is cruel and unreasonable to do so) faculty to speak out, as Alexander Gerschenkron did during the Harvard student takeovers some thirty years ago, correctly sensing the whiff of fascism in the chanting and screaming in Harvard Yard.

Everything was all right, said the Frenchman, until that moment quand la betise s'est mise a penser. When Stupidity Began to Think. And not only "began to think," but to get a doctorate. And not only to get a doctorate, but to get an appointment, and then a promotion, and then tenure.

Scarcely believable. Entirely believable.

It was so good Hugh I am happy to read it twice.

These days we have the internet to give us an insight into the minds of Muslim students. Many are enthusiastic bloggers. These are ordinary Muslims, mind, not 'extremists', just ordinary, God-fearing Muslims. And what they're thinking is no less - perhaps even more - alarming than the extremists we're all meant to be 'vigilant' about.

This is a blog entry I read earlier. It's from an 'ordinary' British Pakistani-origin (female) medical student:

I have decided, from today, that inshallah there is no way I am living in and bringing my children up in a kuffar country.

I feel sorry for myself, and all my generation who are brought up in this mixed-up environment, in this sick kuffar sex-obsessed culture. And may Allah make it easy for me to pick up my bags and leave this country as soon as humanly possible. And in the mean time may He give me and my family patience and keep our iman strong.

Ameen.

Will this young woman let the 'kuffars' she sits next to in class know how she feels about them? No. Perhaps they experience a certain lack of warmth when they talk to her - do they understand why? No they don't. They have no idea they're 'inferior' to this person they share lessons with. They don't know the contempt she feels for them, and their 'drinking games' in the student bar, and their snogging sessions with their girlfriend/boyfriend. There's no objective humanity in her mindset. Just 'us' and 'them'.

Every day, another 'kuffar' wakes up to the reality of this religion. And the poison it puts in minds.

Our northern universities have been the worst to b infiltrated. Jewish and Hindu students are singled out for various forms mental torture. A cousin of mine is at Brunel Univ, she says Muslim students there are encouraged to woo "infidel" girls for monetary rewards...

A good read Hugh.

I had a brief email discourse with Georgetown's John Esposito shortly after 9-11....(interesting how his dhimmi 'Center for Muslim-Chistian Understanding' appropriately gives top-billing to Muslims even though it resides here). Anyway, in a perfect example of deliberate obfuscation, he likened Bin Ladin to David Koresh and Baruch Goldstein, with the usual bullshit about all religions having their extremists (King Tolerance's favorite rant).

I tried to point out the telltale factor of EXTENT as a prime differentiator...that unlike Osama in relation to Islam, Koresh and Goldstein are obvious abberations of contemporary Judeo-Christian tolerance. Esposito would have none of it and terminated our dialogue.

As for the broader issue of academic freedom, David Horowitz is truly today's version of the biblical David, fighting the epic fight with a staff of three against the Goliath of the Association of University Professors. He's making slow but steady progress in exposing the extent of ideological uniformity in the halls of academe and he's despised for his successes.

My concern is that this is a long-term struggle and David is in his late sixties, has already battled prostate cancer and is stretched incredibly thin as it is. His single-handed efforts have been nothing short of Herculian.

Is there anyone you know of who loomes on the horizon as a potential successor to David Horowitz in the nobel fight for academic freedom in America's universities? The man will be a hard act to follow.

I don't much care for empire-builders, self-promoters, rakers in of the cash from eager groupies and admirers, and those who leave it up to a staff to do the work, or still worse, to have that staff commission pieces from others.

After all, it leaves so little left for me.

I don't believe in anyone who doesn't do all of his own writing, who either affixes his name to, or somehow takes credit for, or raises money on the basis of, the commissioned slave-work of others. And that includes a number of these brave Battlers Against the Forces of Islam and the Corruption of Our Universities and all the rest. Brothers under the skin to the making-out-like gangbusters people on the Soros payroll, or Americans for the American Way, or whatever those groups are called. Twins, or possibly enantiomorphs.

That is not the way it is done at JihadWatch, where the sole proprietor gets up often at 3 a.m. to post, gets no help from me on that (he discovered to his horror that I cannot get the hang of putting articles on-line), and gives credit wherever credit is due. That is why there is Jihadwatch, and not the Empire of Jihad Watch, with an emperor to whom one must click one's heels and do his bidding.

As far as who to look to, what about the Beautiful and Intelligent Past. How 'bout dat for a guide, hmm?

Give me Jacques Barzun. Give me Jacques Ellul. Give me Jack-in-the-box and Jack-in-the-pulpit, give me Jean-qui-rit et Jean-qui-pleure. Give me Jack-be-nimble-and-Jack-be-quick.

That's my comment on the paean of praise offered above.

thecid:

Spencer is interested in your offer. I am posting this on multiple threads in the hope that you'll see it. Contact him at director@jihadwatch.org.

Well, it's quite evident you don't think much of David Horowitz. I can understand the fact that you have pronounced philosophical differences with him on certain issues (Iraq for one), but to suggest the man doesn't do his own writing...why would you slander him in this way? He's written at least 20 books by his own hand.

You know Hugh, I've always thought humility is the most enlightened of all human qualities. You might want to give a try sometime.

Hugh,

Perhaps you know David Horowitz personally and developed your disdain for him first hand. Perhaps you've been privy to some gossip or innuendo about him and formulated your opinion that way. Or perhaps it's his political views that bother you...(though that wouldn't explain the nature of your attacks on him).

I don't know the man. But I've read most of what he's written...at least over the last two decades. Horowitz has challenged head-on the holy grails of leftism in the universities and in the culture at large, with some impressive results.

He's dealt effectively in his work with almost all the major issues of our time. I'm convinced that someday soon college courses will be offered on his writings.

And here we have Jihadwatch's self-exalted Vice-President with all of his own life's accomplishments - (what were they again?) - snearing in evident disdain at David Horowitz.

Hugh, for all your Machiavellian schemes to induce inter-Muslim bloodletting; for all your advocacy that America should intervene here and there (Sudan and Kurdistan) while walking away from its actual commitments in Iraq; for all your obliviousness of the constraints put on US policymakers by public opinion and Congress, I realize how much you have yet to learn about genuine statecraft.

Maybe you're a visionary and I'm just too pedestrian to grasp your vision. It's certainly possible.

But intellect and wisdom are two different things, and in my humble opinion, you are sorely lacking the latter. I might attribute it to youthful exuberance, except that I don't know your age.

Humility Hugh. Adopt that word as your new mantra and you might just grow a little.

A poster above doesn't like my not agreeing with him that the various people who are more or less on the right side of things (very much "more or less") are entitled to my admiration. Why? If they run little empires, if they rake in a good deal of money, if they exploit their staffs that make a good deal less, if they rely on the contributions of outsiders who are paid a pittance, if they keep crying wolf about money and demand more and more and more despite the fact that if you toted up their take from lectures alone, it would be equivalent to what the best-paid university presidents make -- well, count me out. But I wasn't writing only about this or that egregious example. There are many such people, Brave Battlers Against Islam, Brave Defenders of Education. And then there the others, the non-empire builders, doing the same thing. I like the latter.

How much did Jacques Barzun take in, rake in , for his unanswerable series of articles on the modern university? What about Ibn Warraq -- what is he making for his indispensable work?

I don't people being paid reasonably. I have my hand out for anyone who wishes to send me something, by god, care of Robert Spencer. Check or PenPal will do nicely. But I am not building an empire. I am not publishing on-line at my site (for god's sake, I haven't even put up my own teeny-tiny cute little site, now have I?)the works of many others, who receive a small sum and "exposure" (southern or northern, I forget which).

When you write a paragraph such as this:

"Horowitz has challenged head-on the holy grails of leftism in the universities and in the culture at large, with some impressive results.

He's dealt effectively in his work with almost all the major issues of our time. I'm convinced that someday soon college courses will be offered on his writings."

I laugh, I cry, I don't know what to think. Courses "on his writings"? Well, I suppose if Edward Said is taken that seriously, why not those who are a cut above, as long as they are from the other side, who apparently never went in search of the Holy Grail, but rather "challenged head-on" the "holy grails" of "leftism."

What I say to that is: A pox on all prefabricated political houses, left and right. A

But not only do I disappoint by not sharing your enthusiasm or enthusiasms (Say, Do you have a brother? Do you like pretzels? If you had a brother, would he like pretzels?), for those who take upon themselves the Role of Brave Smiters of Leftism (I can't stand words like "leftism" and hope to be forgiven for using any words that have come close in their mental coarseness), but there is something else, something about me, that you think requiresyour advice, your lesson, your life's lesson-plan.

Here is how you put it:

"in my humble opinion, you are sorely lacking the latter. I might attribute it to youthful exuberance, except that I don't know your age.

Humility Hugh. Adopt that word as your new mantra and you might just grow a little."

I like a lot of this. I like that "in my humble opinion." I like that "youthful exuberance" except you have forgotten that I already owned up to being 98. I like that avuncular tone: "Humility Hugh. Adopt that word as your new mantra and you might just grow a little."

I won't deal with the presumption and pomposity. I will leave it there on the page, for all to admire.

In his Norton Lectures some 30 years ago, the late Lionel Trilling traced the development of "sincerity" as a desideratum in Western literature that was, in his view, not a constant in Western culture but of recent vintage.

Similarly, though Pride is one of the Seven Deadlies, and therefore goes Way Back When, and though long before the Seven Deadlies there were such pride-goeth-before-a-fall figures as Achilles sulking in his tent to the measured beat of Homeric hendecasyllabics ("Time wounds all heels," as my mother once summed up The Iliad), nonetheless the kind of phony, wearing-it-on-your-sleeve humility which all our Famous Figures, Captains and Kings of Industry, Politics, the Media, Entertainment Tonight and Not Tonight, Darling, seem to think is now a requisite part of their essential and truly sincere phoniness -- well, I don't.

Golda Meir complimented someone (I forget who), who then promptly went into some spiel about how truly humble he was, and how undserving, and how gracious it was of her to say that, and finally getting sick of it all, Golda Meir shut him up with this:

"Oh, don't be so humble. You're not that great."

Apparently you don't like the way I took that advice to heart. But I know I'm not that great, and have refused to flaunt, like a peacock with his feathers, my "humility."

You, proffering your "humble opinion" that I learn the lesson of "humility" that, one must assume, you have thoroughly mastered, have barked up the wrong tree. I refuse to play that phony game. Here's what I do that is 'umble: I don't write about things I don't know about. But as for displaying my 'umbleness, never getting mad at silliness, never allowing any hint of the fury that not only I, but all sorts of people must share with me at the kinds and extent of stupidity on display, even on parade, from folksy 'umble Tom Friedman, to all those 'umble Hollywood stars, and 'umble tycoons who clawed their way to the top, and 'umble recipients of honorary degrees and plaques and other things which, when they receive them, somehow always leave them "truly humbled."

Not me. I'm too sweet, too nice, too -- too humble, really -- to play that game.

What impressive razzle-dazzle. You went through an awful lot of effort "not to play that game."

PS - I'll bet the Golda Meir story is one of your favorites. You probably feel compelled to recite it at social occasions of all kinds in order to justify yourself.

What I found particularly humorous was YOUR reference to MY pomposity. I don't think the irony was lost on anyone.

Hugh - and unlike yourself, I'm man enough to address you by name - it IS possible to retain your passion, verve and wit...without being arrogant.

Think about it.

Which is it you charge me with -- pomposity, or arrogance? I reject the first, am willing to consider the second, but only within certain limits, and on the condition that certain justifications for a limited arrogance, or self-assurance, in a very small number of areas, may in fact be reasonable, or even well-founded, if the amount of effort put into preparation for the pronouncements I make were to be known and given a sympathetic hearing, justifications at present known only to me and the other 26 of my multiple personalities.

As for the no-nonsense puncturing of pretense that I borrowed from Golda Meir, this is only its second appearance at JW, and it is not my party trick or rhetorical staple. In my entire extra-JW life ("extra" as in "India extra Gangem"), I could not have used it on more than four or five occasions.

Surely you do not begrudge me the opportunity to use that story in the brazen-faced, Janus-faced, here's-looking-at-you-kid way that was presented to me on a platter. Only a fool would pass up such an opportunity -- and an 'umble fool at that.

Fair enough.

No one can accuse you of not having a sense of humor. Mine often comes up MIA. Thanks for the laugh.

I suppose that subconciously (or perhaps conciously), I was extending an olive branch in my initial post, trying to engage you in a dialogue that temporarily put aside our disagreement over Iraq. I had no way to know you felt about Horowitz the way you do. It wasn't the opinion you expressed per se - though it surprised and disappointed me; it was the belittling tone at the very end of your initial response that I suppose got under my skin.

I'm not necessarily thin-skinned, but neither am I a reptile. I'm human enough to react emotionally on occasion.

I don't know man...don't know what to make of you. I do admit that my own education is filled with holes and I sometimes find myself in over my head. But if there's one thing I know about, it's Soviet history...intense and prolonged study of the Stalin epoch has created in me an instinctive revulsion for the totalitarian model...(hence, my hatred for Islam).

Left and right may not be as neatly delineated as many ideologues think, but they do exist as distinct phenomenon. In my opinion (I'll leave out the word 'umble), it is the Left that threatens the Western tradition of intellectual, political and economic freedom.

As for Horowitz, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. I happen to admire the man and don't begrudge him his successes.

Carry on Hugh. Knock 'em dead.

Nu, ladno. Dovol'no so vsej etoj chepukhoy.

Chto proidyot, to budet milo.

Right?

For the record, "holy grails" should've been "sacred cows"....too much Marqeus of Queensbury in my youth.

University campuses have always been places where Marxists and communists operated throughout the fifties. sixties and seventies. The eighties was a bit of an arid spot and then we have the emergence of Militant Islam in the nineties and the alliance with the left through the anti-Israeli groupings which has been written about so excellently by David Horowitz in "Unholy Alliance." When Marxism was smashed through the fall of Stalinism, all that fanatical ideology needed somewhere to go. Galloway is a typical example of an ex Stalinist who has now found the Militant Islamic bandwagon to climb on. Some of the old socialist stalwarts at the al-Guardianistan such as Polly Toynbee are extremely worried by the trend to form alliances with Militant Islam and has spoken out against it - bravely in my opinion.