Another superb piece from Diana West:
The media love a martyr. And I don't mean "martyr" in the context of modern-day jihad. I mean the sort from our pre-Islamic consciousness, the long-suffering "victim" of "witch hunts" and moralizing of a singularly "right-wing" and "puritanical" kind. Such martyrdom never dims — and I'm thinking, say, of Alger Hiss, or, on a different level, Bill Clinton. It beams on in perpetuity, alight with liberal pieties projected by a media culture that, in turn, basks in reflected martyrdom.Tariq Ramadan, a Eurabian intellectual with a string of associates linked to terrorism, is becoming just such a media martyr. The State Department recently turned down his request for a visa — and for a second time. (Go State!) But over at the New Yorker, George Packer is invoking no less than Thomas Jefferson to help proclaim "the national good" that would accrue to us through exposure to Mr. Ramadan's "ideas." "Truth is great and will prevail [over] error," Mr. Packer quotes Jefferson as saying, "unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate."
I'm not sure whether Mr. Packer is calling Mr. Ramadan "truth" or "error," but one thing is clear: We have exposure galore to his "ideas," as media ink spilled over his "plight" attests, not to mention the trove of books by Mr. Ramadan readily available, for example, via Amazon.com. Such "ideas," as Mr. Packer styles them, include arguing for "a large role for religion in Arab-Muslim states" (sounds like Shariah to me) and "an assertion of Muslim identity alongside citizenship in the West" (ditto). Then there are his "ideas" about Israel. (Indeed, it was Mr. Ramadan's contribution to a Hamas "charity" that led Uncle Sam to nix that last visa request.) As Olivier Guitta notes at the Weekly Standard, Mr. Ramadan "strongly favors the elimination of the Jewish state." Which is an idea, all right, but should it win the guy a trip to Coney Island? I don't think so.
Denied the privilege, Mr. Ramadan is busy snatching media martyrdom from visa defeat, which he attributes to U.S. government "paranoia." And such paranoia, he wrote in the Washington Post, comes out in the "the fear of ideas" — his own, natch. As someone who opposes and yes, fears, the incremental imposition of Shariah on the Free World now in progress, I don't think "paranoia" is as apt a term as, say, "survival instinct." But I digress. We've got his "ideas." We hardly need to give him a key to the city in return.
The case of Robert Redeker, a French high-school teacher, marks a serious contrast. For having written a passionate op-ed in a French paper criticizing the tradition of violence modeled by Mohammed and inherent to Islam — the threat that fulfills Shariah's promise — Mr. Redeker received death threats from Muslims that forced him into hiding under police protection. It's not that he didn't receive a visa to visit another country; he's no longer safe in his own.
So let's get this straight. The U.S. government has determined (mirabile dictu) that we, the people, can get along without Mr. Ramadan, which is not at all to say that anybody is blocking his lousy "ideas." The would-be assassins of Robert Redeker plot to kill the teacher for his "ideas" critical of Islam and Mohammad, thereby trying to deter him or anyone else from repeating them. So where is the crime against free speech? Where, to go back to Thomas Jefferson, is the real "human interposition" disarming truth of her "natural weapons" — free argument and debate?
It is in this nightmarish climate of public intimidation that the intrepid scholar Robert Spencer has come out with his latest book, "The Truth About Mohammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion." Relying exclusively on Muslim sources, Mr. Spencer crafts a portrait of Muhammad that, for about the first time since political correctness gave Mohammad a pacifist makeover, places his violent, misogynist, and supremacist example and teachings under an analytical light. Why? "The question of Mohammad — of who he was, what he did, and what he believed — is key to understanding today's global conflict with the jihadists, and what we must do about it," Mr. Spencer writes.
Sounds like an important topic for "free argument and debate" — maybe as important as Mark Foley's IM's, or, for that matter, Tariq Ramadan's visa. Will our media martyrs initiate free argument and debate about it? Let's hope. Without her "natural weapons," it is truth who becomes the martyr.
Diana, thank you very much, but no such luck. With the exception of some (but most certainly not all) of the major conservative talk radio hosts and a large number of the smaller shows, the media blackout about this book is already in full swing. And of course, I didn't expect anything else -- although I am grateful to all those hosts who have had the courage to discuss the issues this book raises, and I know their influence among the American people is considerable.
Nevertheless, guts are generally in short supply. Fear and political correctness still very much rule the day.
Before making pronouncements on Tariq Ramadan, Packer and others should study carefully the record of Ramadan in France and Switzgerland. Intelligent defenders of the laic state, who by now have gotten used to the masters of taqiyya, have carefully collected Ramadan's long history of lies and evasions, and noted exactly how they are lies and evasions. The full-length study by Caroline Fourest -- "Frere Tariq" -- could be supplemented by others. Perhaps most important are the observations by Magdi Allam, in his appended (Appendix #2) "Lettera aperta a Tariq Ramadan" in his last book. Allam, an editor for the Corriere della Sera, and a frequent guest on television shows for the RAI, was born of Egyptian Muslim parents and is intimately familiar with the background of Tariq Ramadan, the mental environment out of which he comes, and which -- even in Europe -- formed him so completely. Ramadan's outward attractiveness combined with his preternatural slipperiness, make him a useful propagandist for the Jihad. And that is what he is: a propagandist. He is not a "scholar" of Islam. He is intent on weakening the defenses of the West, of luring his listeners into a relaxed and hopeful state, to lull them still more, to insist that a "European Islam" or, should he attain his goal, an "American Islam" -- an Islam which he never defines, and never could distinguish, from the Islam we all know, as set forth in Qur'an, hadith, and sira.
The naivete of those who, in the middle of a war -- a war whose chief instruments, of the enemy, are neither terrorism nor any form of military encounter (despite what Bush, whose sense of things is painfully deficient, may believe), but rather Da'wa and demographic conquest. Tariq Ramadan is cunning and sinister. One does not, in wartime, admit into one's midst, so that he might more effectively ply his sinister trade, enemy propagandists.
Invocation of Jefferson, or any of the framers, or all that stuff about the "free marketplace of ideas," will not do. Lincoln, who in wartime was prepared to do all kinds of things that would, no doubt, have offended many today, and one doubts that those intelligent and cultivated defenders of free speech, with their assorted tests and understandings -- Holmes and Brandeis, Learned Hand, Alexander Meiklejohn, Alexander Bickel -- would have for one minute argued that the American government, and its equally hapless citizens, should have to deliberately permit into their country, one of the most effective propagandists for the enemy, at the very beginning of a much-misunderstood war.
It is madness. Programmatic, ideologically-driven, attitudinizing fools among us are willing to insist that the rest of us expose ourselves to quite unnecessary risks.
Go back. Read. Caroline Fourest. Magdi Allam. Start, but do not finish, there.
Diana West is one of my favorite female writers! I'm on my way out the door to buy two copies of your book Robert... nice post Hugh... don't get me started on the media.
Any talks with a hollwood producer for "The Truth About Mohammed" movie?
Maybe you could cast Danny Glover in the Part of Mohammed.
Don't just lament the ridiculous and suicidal media blackout of "The Truth about Muhammed".
Try this: buy two copies, one for yourself and one for your local public library. My local library gladly accepted copies of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam".
Both these books are needed in our libraries to counter the islamic apologist books currently stocking their shelves.
Consider sending a copy to your local high school principal or local newspaper editorial board. They need this information.
kypete
walterc, we are more likely to get a hollywood tribute to tariq ramadan, with the comical george clooney cast in the role of the "hero".
walterc, we are more likely to get a hollywood tribute to tariq ramadan, with the comical george clooney cast in the role of the "hero".
Maybe I've missed something on this site, but has anyone approached Glenn Beck to have Robert Spencer on this CNN show?
I can't imagine he'd wimp out; he's very clearly saying lots of non-PC things about Islam & our troubles with it's practioners. I bet he'd love to talk to Robert about his book.
Robert is right on about the guts thing.
When I mentioned that I had ordered some t-shirts that may be considered derogatory to many Muslims, some of my my co-workers were shocked.
Can you believe it?
And this is just a small die shop somewhere...
Can't wait to wear my offensive shirt to work!