Harvard prof: "Boston is part of the Islamic world"

Strange how "interfaith dialogue" seems to be pretty effortless if not completely redundant with everyone except Muslims.

Stupidity and cupidity and steadfast determination to deny reality seem to drive this Diana Eck to the edge of her befuddlement...

Because of Saudi money thrown at Harvard and this eyesore of a mosque in the making Boston is now 'part of the Islamic world?'

Lets buy her a burkha and promise to whack her with a cable if she ever takes it off...

But then again, sounds like she is the kind of female who might just like that kind of treatment, but who am I to judge? LOL!

http://sheikyermami.com/2006/12/19/muslim-woman/

Strange how "interfaith dialogue" seems to be pretty effortless if not completely redundant with everyone except Muslims.

Posted by: Jesus Christ Supercop at December 27, 2006 08:04 AM

Islamic "interfaith dialogues" are Infidel-friendly "Da'wa" wrapped in "taqquiyya".

"Our local efforts to overcome ignorance and fear may not be able to solve the searing conflicts of the wider world, but we can make a big difference in the climate of Boston."

The "ignorance and fear" that must be overcome is her's.

The whole point is that the Islamic Center she craves will not be dedicated to "interfaith outreach and education," but to jihadist indoctrination.

",,,we can make a big difference in the climate of Boston", says Diana Eck.

I think maybe they can. But I doubt that it will be a difference for the better.

Dixi

Boston is part of the Islamic world.

If Boston is indeed a part of dar al-Islam then it is by definition, illegally "occupied" by Infidels in accordance with Islamic law. Muslims are therefore obligated by the Koran, Hadiths, Sira and centuries of precedence set by Islamic jurisprudence, to regain that territory by acts of war if it is not promptly surrendered.

It is useful idiots such as this bird brain who openly invite the perpetrators of violent jihad to our shores. More than a thousand years of history apparently somehow doesn't register in the brains of these "scholars".

… Jewish-Muslim relations in Boston have become tense, undermining honest and difficult dialogue at the very time we need it most.

What’s needed most is this long overdue confrontation, the only path to honest dialogue, however difficult this particular "interfaith dialogue" may be, unlike most such Kabuki dances this one will produce clarity.

* 2:61 * 2:64 * 2:96 * 4:41 * 4:47 * 4:55 * 4:160 * 5:13 * 5:41 * 17:7 * 5:59 * 59:2 * 88:1 *

It was Allah who drove the Jews from their Medina homes and into exile. They refused to believe. You did not think that they would go away. And they imagined that their settlement would protect them against Allah. But Allah's torment came at them from where they did not suspect and terrorized them. Their homes were destroyed. So learn a lesson O men who have eyes.
--- God getting hard on anti-Semitism in Koran

I have eyes. Do Harvard professors have eyes?

Some past postings in which Diana Eck has been mentioned:

1.
“This is only a start. Larry Summers [then still President of Harvard] needs to investigate how Islam is taught, or not taught, both to undergraduates, and at the Divinity School, and for that matter at another hotbed of apologetics, the Law School. Too much Arab money has been accepted, and been sloshing around, for too long. Nor is it simply a question of chair-holding hirelings.

Nonetheless, one can be sure that no apostates from Islam, such as Ibn Warraq, will ever be allowed to lecture, or be invited perhaps to give a course, on Islam and Human Rights, or Islam, Jihad, and Dhimmitude -- either at the Divinity School under Graham, or for that matter at the Law School, where Islamic matters are firmly in the grip of those who owe their Muslim and Arab donors something, and whose mental set is unlikely to be affected by a sudden desire to really learn about what Islam teaches its adherents, or how , over 1350 years, Muslim conquerors have treated the non-Muslims they conquered. Reality must not be allowed to get in the way of the latest fashionable projects -- whether that might be the impossible dream of the "reformation of Islam" (what Qur'anic verse, what hadith will be downgraded, or excised or interpreted away, to cause this reformation to come about?), or the latest version of Why-Can't-We-All-Get-Along schoolgirl gush (remember, Harvard is the Law School that actually awarded tenure to Roger Fisher, the Ichabod-Crane-like promoter of moral neutrality, whose views are reflected in his simpleminded "Getting to Yes" mantra that all conflicts are solvable, that everyone means well, and that it is only a question of finding the right words, and the right compromises and pushing the right buttons. Getting to Yes. Yes, if only Roger Fisher's "Getting to Yes" had been available to smooth out those little problems with Adolf Hitler, or Admiral Yamamoto, or Joseph Stalin, or any one of a million Muslim groups or groupuscules, absolutely convinced that Islam is "to dominate and not to be dominated," and that it is absolutely necessary for dar al-Islam to swallow up dar al-Harb, and that the surest way to Paradise is to engage in the Jihad.
Aside from Graham among the apologists, t the Divinity School contains the Egyptian Leila Ahmed, whose field is “Islam and Women Her views on Israel and the West are notably hostile for one who has had a chance to live in the West, away from the hothouse atmosphere of Cairo, with its culture of hatred whipped up in every newspaper and on every radio and television channel. This hostility, expressions of which come through thinly veiled in both lectures and writings, toward the United States, which provides her with safety, security, economic wellbeing beyond the dreams of all but the corrupt generals and camorra capitalists who run Egypt, is singularly unappealing. Her pretence that what is wrong with the position of Muslim women has almost nothing to do with Islam, which others specializing in the same hot topic – “Islam and Women” – also often share, like the shameful Nobel-Prize winning Shirin Ebadi. One wonders what the real defenders of the rights of women under Islam, such as Azam Kamguian and others who know that the problem lies with Islam, make of such apologetics.
Still another faculty member at Harvard Divinity School is Diane Eck. It is passing strange that she should have become such an enthusiast promoter of, or defender of, Islam; one wonders if she has investigated some of the reasons why Pim Fortuyn, for example, viewed Muslim immigration with such alarm as a threat to the tolerant moeurs of Holland. Eck’s book-for-tenure was one of those Patricia-Williams-like narratives that are a substitute for scholarship of the fuddy-duddy old-fashioned sort that our brave new world can apparently do without, a book based on a year she spent living in Benares. Despite that being the holiest of Hindu cities, Eck apparently came away with a profound respect, based one hopes a respect based on ignorance, for it would be far worse if such were to be based on real knowledge, for Islam, its theory and practice. Or perhaps she later developed it. At her recent wedding, it was not surprising that one public well-wisher was Karen Armstrong.
Eck is involved with, indeed perhaps the prime mover of, the "Pluralism Project." Apparently she has noticed something that had escaped the rest of us: that America is not inhabited just by Christians and Jews anymore. She has made the astounding discovery that, throughout the United States, one can find Hindu temples, and Buddhist temples, and Sikh temples, and Jain temples and -- mosques, mosques, mosques. And as a devout celebrator of diversity she touts this wonderful pluralism, a tribute to -- well, a tribute to something. Could it be American wonderfulness? Somehow I doubt that that is what she has in mind. In any case, something with the name "Pluralism Project" no doubt attracts grant money (and just as the Development Office is the beating heart of any American university, so is grant-getting the beatng heart of any academic undertaking), for conducting "studies" or doing "research." No, let it be given its due.. Make that "in-depth studies" and "in-depth research."
What this celebrator("I-hear-America-praying")of religious diversity has failed to realize is that there, amidst all this diversity, there is one belief-system whose adherents do not share Eck's delight in diversity, not for one minute. They are the adherents of Islam, the religion that is “to dominate and not to be dominated.” They do not believe in religious pluralism. If they pay lip service to it now, and that only occasionally, it is because for now, as a distinct and at the moment uneasy minority, Muslims find that promoting pluralism serves their purpose. It helps them deflect criticism, it helps make them seem to share views that others really do share. But Islam is dead set against pluralism, if by pluralism we mean something like equal treatment of those of faiths other than the majority one, and has 1350 years of aggressive or violent history, and immutable Qur’anic passages, and hundreds of hadith, to prove it. No amount of blarney about Islamic “reformation” can get away from the fact that the Qur’an comes immutably from God, that the hadith – having been winnowed down to the “strong” or accepted hadith by such muhaddithin as Bukhari and al-Muslim – are almost equally not susceptible to change – and that these canonical texts are not subject, either, to any interpretive give, since the “gates of ijtihad” (interpretation) swung conclusively shut with a bang nearly a millennium ago. No amount of forehead-clutching by the Iranian Sorroush, or by publicity hounds like the Islamo-Canadian Irshad Manji, will change that. Many intelligent and disaffected Muslims have tried, over history, and especially during the last two centuries, to tamper with the texts. Been there. Done that. It has always failed.
The “Pluralism Project” is absurd because it fails to confront, it pretends not even to see, the greatest challenge to pluralism in the Western world: the direct threat, to all other belief-systems, of the belief-system of Islam. It is not so much a question of what is acted on now, or even discussed. It is a question of how Muslims have behaved wherever they have had the upper hand. If there were a single example, in the 1350-year history of Islam, of any Muslim polty or people practicing genuine pluralism – and dhimmitude, which is the instiutution imposed on non-Muslims after Jihad conquest, could only be called a welcome example of “pluralism” by someone who was both a historical and a moral idiot. The proper test is not what Muslims, out of self-interest and for self-protection, say that their goals are in the United States, or Canada, or Western Eurrope. What is important is what they want in those countries where Islam now predominates, because one can assume that there, where any arrangement favored or promoted by Muslims will prevail, one can see what it is that they would have in the countries that for now are still outside Muslim control, if they were ever to gain such control. Do we see “pluralism” in Saudi Arabia? In Pakistan? In Malaysia or Indonesia, do we see anything like equality for non-Muslims? What about Egypt – how are the Copts doing, lo these many centuries? And how have the Maronites been faring ever since the French lost interest in them, and the Israelis were forced by the outside world to stop supporting them? What about the Muslim attitude toward Buddhists in southern Thailand, or Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan? How do Muslims treat Christians in the Sudan, or northern Nigeria, or anywhere that Muslims and Christians meet – and necessarily collide. And how do the Muslims of Bangladesh treat the Hindus and Christians in that country? One could go one, but why bother? There are no counterexamples, none, to demonstrate that in the great pluralism project that is modern America, Muslims are just as supportive, and just as inoffensive, as all those Hindus and Buddhists and Sikhs and Jains and Confucians who have contributed their ingredients to the religious stew bubbling away in the U.S. A.

It is too bad that Eck has not been able to take time to read and study, as part of her pluralism project, which naturally grades into comparative religion, more deeply in the area of Islam – and not only what Karen Armstrong briskly impart, with such breathtaking because baseless self-assurance.She might take the time to read some of Ibn Warraq’s writings, beginning with “Why I Am Not a Muslim” and his essay “Islam and the Middle East and Fascism,” and then looking into the testimony of the many piercing analyses of Islam from ex-Muslims – Ali Sina, Azam Kamguian, all the contributors to “Leaving Islam” who offer testimonies as to the real teachings of Islam that are so often hidden from Infidel view, or Infidel understanding. She might read “The Decline of Eastern Christiantiy Under Islam” by Bat Ye’or, or “The Dhimmis” and “Islam and Dhimmitude” by the same author. She might consult all the useful scholarly articles at www.dhimmitude.org, or go to the websites that the University of Southern California provides, with different translations of the Qur’an and of the hadith.If she gave it just five or six or seven months, she could learn a lot. She could read K. S. Lal on the legacy of Muslim rule, and on the 60-70 million Hindus killed by Muslims under that rule. She could read the historian of Zoroastrianism Mary Boyce on what happened, under Muslim rule, to the Zoroastrians who were once almost the entire population of Persia. She could find out why it was that in the end, the Muslim rulers decided to treat the Hindus the same as Christians and Jews – permitted to remain alive, but forced to endure the humiliation and degradation and permanent insecurity of dhimmi status so that their required payment of the “jizya” or head tax would support the grand luxury of the Mughal court. She could read the reports about the treatment of Armenians and Jews left in the mid-17th century by Arakel of Tabriz. She could read, perhaps with some amazement, the casual accounts of mass slaughter of Hindus, and of their subsequent enslavement, by the Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta in his “Rihla.” She could begin to read the reports of British and French and Italian travelers and diplomats, reporting from the Ottoman Empire, over the 19th and early 20th centuries. She could read the acute observations of Edward Lane’s “Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians.”. She could read Laurence Loeb’s account of living with Jews in Iran in the 1970s, just before Khomeini arrived on the scene to see Sharia justice done.
But, of course, why bother with all that silly study and booklearning? Why, one is sure that if the likes of Graham, or Eck, need to find out about Islam, all they have to do is turn to their Muslim colleagues, so as to shoot down a canard about what it says in the Qur’an, or to disbelieve someone’s assertion that the most authentic hadith insist on such and such. No need to bother to check this – would a Muslim colleague lie, or fudge the truth, about what is dearest to him or to her – Islam itself? Why, of course not.

Summers may not realize that one cannot, at Harvard, as it stands now, either at Harvard Divinity School, or at Harvard Law School, take a course that will teach the real tenets of Islam, and will use the scholarship not of apologists but of serious Orientalists -- Margoliouth, Schacht, Snouck Hurgronje, Dufourcq, and a few dozen others. One cannot learn, fully and truthfully, either about Jihad or about dhimmitude. It is not that Harvard is singled out for a campaign of desinformatsiya, or disinformation. The situation is even worse at Columbia. But the situation has to be recognized. Departmental autonomy, or a hands-off policy on those who have acquired that appetizaing thing, a full professorship, does not absolve the administration from looking into the scandal, a scandal with many disparate features, in what Harvard undergraduates, graduate students, and Law and Divinity students, learn, or carefully do not learn, about Islam.

Until Summers and others begin to make inquiries and begin to take a real interest in this matter, Harvard student who wish to learnabout Islam, are urged to try autodictacism (no, it need not be conducted in private, or only between consenting adults). Ibn Warraq, and Bat Ye'or, Michael Cook's very short introduction to the Qur'an, Wansbrough and Patricia Crone on the origins of Islam, Christoph Luxenberg once he has been Englished, Majid Khadurri on the Law of War and Peace in Islam, Elie Kedourie, Joseph Schacht, Margoliouth, Bernard Lewis (keeping in mind his reticence -- to retain his "effectiveness" with his would-be Muslim audience -- about Jihad and dhimmitude), and many others who have written in French, Dutch, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish are all readily available. The Index Islamicus is on CD-Rom. The Encyclopedia of Islam is retrievable from any university computer. . You can learn about Islam better, faster, and far more accurately, without enduring such pabulum as Michael Sells' sanitized Qur'an, or sly apologetics from instructors, on your own.

The Zayed Center does, indeed, sponsor those who claim that 9/11 was the work of Jews and those who deny the Holocaust. But however unacceptable that all is, it is tangential to the greater effort – which is to prevent Westerners from really finding out about Islam, its tenets and its history. The Zayed Center is dedicated to making sure, for example, that the real treatment of Mizrahi Jews under Islam (virtual slaves in Yemen, prosperous but constantly under physical threat even in Baghdad, once the second Jewish city of Asia, after Jerusalem).. The whole matter of dhimmitude is angrily denied, and pious assurances about “tolerance” (“tolerance” under Islam has nothing to do with tolerance as that word is understood in the West nowadays) are substituted. The Muslim Arabs hope that the real history of Muslim treatment of non-Muslims (and, for that matter, of Arab Muslim treatment of non-Arab Muslims) will be overlooked, forgotten, simply never to be examined in any systematic and serious fashion.
Decades of Arab money, and of bullyboy tactics within the profession, so that those who do not toe the apologist line are simply not given jobs, or denied tenure, has ensured that Harvard, and Columbia, and many other schools, are full of “scholars” of Islam or Islamic matters who insist that everything is fine with Islam, it’s just a few extremists, or people with justified grievances against the colonialist West or beastly Israel, and please, Eric-Idle-like, let us all "look on the bright side" and, mixing Rodney King and Roger Fisher and Pollyanna, "focus on what unites us, not what divides us" (in other words, forget about 1350 years of Islamic history, forget about the Jihad, forget about dhimmitude forget about those Internet sites proudly showing the decapitation of Infidels, or praising suicide “martyrs” and just keep in mind we are all fellow montheists, all members of “those abrahamic faiths” that Muslim apologists at mosque Open Houses just love to keep prating on about.
The members of MESA must be getting just a bit anxious. Too many people, too many highly intelligent and articulate people, are learning about Islam on their own. How dare they? Don’t they know only Muslims can teach about Islam – or a few special someones, like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito and Michael Sells? Sorry. All those people who have so carefully spent their entire academic careers writing about “the construction of Palestinian identity” and other transparently pro-Jihadist political tracts disguised as scholarship, are on their way out. They have had their day. They may keep their jobs, and their undeserved tenure, undeservedly awarded in the first place by other undeserving false scholars. But so what? Their hollow scholarship, the worthlessness of their instruction, are now easy to demonstrate because more and more people have been educating themselves, and everyone can view what the daily news offers, and begin to make tentative sense of it. We need not rely only on Infidels, but on the ex-Muslims, well-versed in Islam, who are not about to endure, or let pass, such nonsense. and just remember we "all are all abrahamic faiths"), must be getting a little anxious. Too many people now know too much about Islam, in some cases a good deal more than the Ecks and the Grahams and the Armstrongs and the Espositos.
One wonders, just off the top of one’s head, how many of them have read Margoliouth or Snouck Hurgronje or Dufourcq or Fagnan or Bat Ye’or – and read them with attention and an attempt to understand. How many of them, perhaps pooh-poohing the centrality of Jihad, know exactly not only what Ibn Taymiyya wrote about it, but what the famous al-Ghazali, or Ibn Khaldun, wrote about Jihad? The information is there; it is coming out; there is no stopping it. Those who continue to insist that not the tenets of Islam, so amply confirmed by the behavior of Muslims over 1350 years, but rather what America or Israel "have done" explains the monstrous behavior of Muslims, looks more ridiculous as a proposition every day. Those who keep on mouthing the same phrases, and attempt the same distractions, and summon up the same hollow indignation, instead of looking steadily and whole at the evidence, are like those Christian theologians who, long after Copernicus, and Kepler, and Tycho Brahe offered the theory that explained all of the observable data, and had predictive value for whatever data would be collected in the future, nonetheless kept insisting that of course that the heliocentric theory had to be wrong because God wanted the Earth to be the center of the universe. The theory that the threat from Islam comes from anything but what Muslims learn, what is inculcated into them, and what has caused them to behave toward all non-Muslims as they have for nearly 1400 years (not to mention the economic, political, intellectual, and moral failures of Islam, which could be briefly disguised by unearned oil revenues, but that disguise is now threadbare – at least to most of the world).
The cavalry is coming. Its officers and men will not necessarily remind you of Cary Grant or Errol Flynn or John Garfield, or anyone who might conceivably play, in another western, The Durango Kid. Holding the reins in one hand, under each rider’s free arm will be, not a rifle, but a book, and that book will contain home truths about Islam. And what’s so great about the truth? Well, plenty. For one thing, The Truth Shall Make You Free.
Posted by: Hugh at July 29, 2004 10:07 PM
2.
Meanwhile, the egregious Diana Eck defends to the death, in the pages of The Boston Globe, the right of a known taqiyya artist, Tariq Ramadan, to enter the United States to conduct his soft-voiced propaganda. A true rustic, somehow Diana Eck managed, with her travelogue of a year in Benares, to climb that greasy pole and graspingly get tenure. She has done everything fashionably right. She is not a scholar of Hinduism, however (ask real Hindu scholars). She is a Defender of the Faith, the faith being Islam. With William Graham, the Dean of Harvard Divinity School, a man who never managed to receive tenure even from his own Middle Eastern Department, but as an administrator has apparently managed to pocket something like tenure (that's the Modern University Today) and is himself not only a tireless defender, with Eck, of Islam, but simply a handpuppet manipulated, by all accounts, by the sinister smiling Egyptian Leila Ahmad, who has single-handedly prevented anyone semi-decent from being appointed as a scholar of, rather than an apologist for, Islam.
Posted by Hugh on February 2, 2006

3.
October 17, 2005
Fitzgerald: Endorsements for a Qur'an of peace
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explores the implications of Muslim attorney Tom Nelson's assertion that a bellicose version of the Qur'an distributed in Oregon is somehow anomalous:
"This version of the Quran was printed before the Sept. 11 attacks, when jihad did not have the same holy war connotations as today, Nelson said." -- from this article
It was an earlier version, an uncorrected version, of the Qur'an that was distributed in Oregon. Please ignore all previous versions. They are full of typos. Read only the new edition, the one that has on the cover the special "For Americans Only" lettering across the top, and the CAIR Seal-of-approval ("Tells you all you really need to know about Islam") and a scholarly introduction by Professor Michael Sells.
Or, if you wish, you can get the even more thoroughly abridged version, from the same company that, for last-minute and lazy students, offers a version of Anna Karenina in eleven pages and King Lear in three. And that 8-page version of the Qur'an will naturally carry blurbs:
"This is certain to be, for Infidels, the most painless way to learn about the Qur'an. This book should be -- no, this book definitely is -- required reading for today's crop of Infidels. And if its lessons are understood, then the whole family may be ready for the full text. Why make life even more difficult for your children than it would be otherwise? Read this book now. Read it as if your life depends on it." -- Douglas Hooper, Washington, D.C.
"In the breathtaking poetry of its misty vistas, from the highest hill of humanity where nightingales and roses bloom along the verdant slopes of the high uplands of justice which has always been the voice of the oppressed speaking truth to power, even when that power has gone out, but if one knows where to find the light-switch of the human heart, this is the book which can turn that light-switch of that human heart, not to mention the sometimes also necessary lungs, spleen and pancreas, on again, so that not only mere man but Man is made whole, the earth is made whole, the whole universe is made whole, and made whole in the best and only possible way -- holistically. Read it, again and again and again. The purest poetry that like a tree only God could have made, only God, or quite possibly Edward Said, had one of his admirers only been able to have been there for him, when he needed me, to take dictation." -- Hamid Dabashi, New York City
"If we are to avoid a conflict of civilizations, we will need to replace conflict with dialogue, attachment to our old ways of thinking with a willingness to accept entirely new ways, and to give up those silly concepts of 'Us' and 'Them' for a much broader 'They Are We' and 'We Are They.' Since it is 'they' who are now among 'us' and not 'we' who are among 'them,' surely the most sensible and painless solution is for 'us' to give up our shopworn and outworn and useless categories, and to try to do whatever 'they' require of 'us' so as to 'reassure' them.
"And just as they -- Muslims -- need reassurance that we are not out to get them, after the Crusades, after colonialism, after Israel's brutal oppression of unarmed Palestinians, after the cruel way that Saddam Hussein, that brave Arab leader, was removed, after the neo-colonialism and then the post-neocolonialism which has no sell-by date and therefore goes on forever as long as Infidels continue to exist, not only do 'they' (the 'Muslims') need some sign from us (the so-called 'non-Muslims') that 'we' are not out to get 'them,' but just as important, we need to study the Qur'an, and much more than the Qur'an, in order to reassure ourselves. We need to reassure ourselves that we have not lost our moral bearings, not retreated into some cruel dungeon or Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib of our own narrow mindedness, need to make sure that we have not lost our moral bearings, lost all of our own habit of, or habitat for, humanity.
"And there is no better indication of our own willingness to listen to others with compassion and understanding and acceptance as they tell us what they think or what they think we should think they think, and also tell us what to think, saving us the trouble, which given all of our advantages and our privileges and our narrow-minded indifference to all those who are different from us is the least of what we should be prepared to do in this diverse world of diversity that we live in.
"When the oppressed people of this earth, in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates and in so many other places, want so clearly to reach out to us, to affect us, to help us see things as they see them, what better way to engage in that dialogue than to read, study, read again, study again, the book that means so much to them, means -- everything to them. Personally, I've read the Qur'an from cover to cover, and I've come to love it more every time." -- James Earl Carter, Georgia
"If you can only read one book in your life, let this one be it. Sometimes, you come across one book that makes all the difference. This is that book." -- Statement of the Joint Committee on Civilizational Literacy, a cooperative effort of the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Presidents, the American Association of University Professors, and MESA Nostra
"The book our generation needs." -- Britney Spears, Honorary President of the What-Our-Generation-Needs Foundation (a 501 (c)(3) organization)
Posted by Hugh at October 17, 2005 10:00 AM

[Hugh: I have been looking for more info on that Statement of the Joint Committee on Civilizational Literacy, but can't find any on the web. Do you have any links? Esp from MLA,etc.?]

I'm sorry you couldn't locate that Statement of the Joint Committee on Civilizational Literacy, but actually, I'm not surprised.
If still interested in obtaining more information, you might telephone Dwight Bolinger, Office of the President, Columbia University, and ask for more information about the Statement on Civilizational Literacy. Or you could contact some of the well-known professors who helped generate that Statement. I would recommend you start with Professor Diana Eck, who heads the "Pluralism Project" at Harvard Divinity School, and University Professor Cornel West at Princeton. Remember -- their students certainly do -- that these are extremely busy people, world-class authorities at our world-class research universities, and terribly busy with important ongoing projects. Professor Eck is working on a model for all mankind, for all time, of religious, sexual, and all other conceivable forms of difference requiring tolerance, including tolerance of both tolerant and intolerant people alike. Needless to say, the model shows great promise of being accepted by people everywhere without further ado -- or at least, just as soon as the multi-year foundation grants supporting the work come to an end and a relevant U.N. resolution or two is passed. Professor West is not one whit less busy, given that he is now working on the permanent establishment of World Peace and an End to Poverty. No, sorry, I got confused. It is Professor Jeffery Sachs of the World Institute at Columbia who is Ending Poverty once and for all, if only people will let him. Cornel West has decided to limit himself to establishing World Peace. Don't be disappointed if neither Eck nor West returns your call. But do let me know, and I will supply the names of others to contact. So many lay behind the creation of that Statement, that I couldn't possibly list them all.
Posted by: Hugh at October 17, 2005 03:17 PM
4.
The BBC MUST be investigated, and so should PBS (I would start with the fantastic idiocies, and constant apologies for Islam, of "Dick" Gordon, the smarmy host of "The Connection," who sees his role as that of Defender of the Faith -- the Faith being Islam -- for a good example, listen tonight to the re-run of his interview with Tariq Ramadan, the wonderful, smooth-talking, lover of "dialogue" and arch-practitioner of taqiyya (he hardly needs to, since the likes of Gordon and Scott Appleby and Diana Eck the Montana cowgirl turned "Pluralism Project" promoter, are all too willing to do his work for him.
Posted by: Hugh at September 6, 2004 12:03 PM

5.
Other enlightened despots were the Shah of Iran, who was by far, when it comes to the treatment of Infidels, the best of the lot, though not in constraining Islam, as Ataturk did, through a series of coherent and clever measures. Still another was Habib Bourguiba, and his Destour Party, who had little use for real Islam and was quick to raise the status of women; his legacy is maintained by a mild police-state, and thank god for that. And finally, there was Ataturk himself, whose measures, from the Hat Act to eliminating use of Arabic script to giving women the vote, to discriminating in government and army service against those who showed too keen a faith either because they insisted on wearing the hijab, or studied in a madrasah, or were seen reading the Qur'an with a bit too much fervency. Ataturk's lessons -- his understanding that there was no "reformation" (a favorite topic of young Muslims trying to get tenure these days -- it's the hottest and the latest shtick to fool the Infidel academics voting on your future -- hell, what do they know? And perhaps you can even fool them into thinking it will bring in all kinds of government grant money -- you know, the "Reformation Project"? Can Esposito, can Diana Eck, can Abou El Fadl, can Hamid Dabashi be far behind?
Posted by: Hugh at September 7, 2004 12:26 PM

6.
While Scott Appleby at Notre Dame (disastrous head of the Joan Kroc Center That Will Bring World Peace, which takes as its reminiscent motto "More Than Six Billion Served") and Diane "The-Pluralism-Project" Eck, take time from their busy grant-getting lives to join forces to help the ACLU get Tariq Ramadan into this country where, he devoutly hopes, he may better ply his taqiyya-and-tu-quoque trade, having come to the end of his rhetorical rope in France (see the book-length treatment of him by Caroline Fourest, "Frere Tariq"; see the television debates in which he was exposed, first by Nicolas Sarkozy and then much more devastatingly, by Alain Finkielkraut), those who were born into Islma but are not full-time apologists for it have seen right through him.
I'm not talking about the contempt Tariq Ramadan arouses in such truth-tellers as Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. No, I have in mind rather those like the Egyptian writer Gindy above. And if you go to www.memri.org, that samaritan organization, you might also wish to read the "Lettera aperta a Tariq Ramadan" by Magdi Allam, appended to his last book. Allam is an Italian citizen, a native of Egypt, where he was raised as a Muslim. He continues to call himself a Muslim, and describes with passion his modest, decent, no doubt Islam-limited-to-the-Five-Pillars-of-individual worship parents, but unlike some who, unable to shed out of filial piety their self-description as Muslims, has no desire to serve as an apologist, and can recognize the Muslim Brotherhood past and present connections of Tariq Ramadan, in a way that a non-Egyptian Muslim might not.
Gindy and Allam -- not Appleby and Eck -- are the authorities to be studied if you wish to know about Tariq Ramadan. If, say, you are the president of a university, and someone has had the bright idea of "hiring Tariq Ramadan" and need to find out more.
Posted by: Hugh at February 17, 2006 08:34 AM
6.
The Globe has outdone itself. Who wrote this idiotic thing? Martin Baron? Or was the "old Middle East hand," who knows nothing about Islam, but a lot about how awful the Israelis are, H. D. S. Greenway, called in to provide his "expert" judgment?
If one had the sense that any of these people felt the slightest obligation to actually study what is in the khutbas (they can find plenty of them online at www.Memri.org), or tried to find out just what is in the Qur'an -- they can get it online at www.usc.edu, with at least four different translations that can be compared side-by-side, and they can find relevant and reliable commentators), if one thought that they had taken the trouble to look at a few hundred hadith or even to begin to understand why the hadith are so important, if they had, further, consulted the sira (and the most detailed and scrupulous biography of Muhammad in English, that of Sir William Muir, can now be obtained -- an abridged version, but still enormous -- from Amazon), if one thought, in other words, that before commenting on what Muslims think of Infidels, of how they regard the Bilad al-kufr, of how likely it is that they will accept Infidel ways, Infidel moeurs, that at least one had did a good deal of investigation, had studied, had learned about dhimmitude, had even read a book or two by Bat Ye'or, or one or two by Ibn Warraq, had consulted the websites that are not those of the apologists -- oh, if only one thought that this had happened, and that even so, one still spouted this nonsense, then at least the situation would not be so maddening.
It is the incredible arrogance of whoever wrote this editorial in The Globe -- an assumption that this person "knows" all about Islam -- oh, who helped him? Was it someone in the Middle Eastern Department at Harvard? A dinner-party conversation with Roy Mottahedeh? Diana Eck of the Pluralism Project? Seemingly tenured (but only his Department knows for sure) William Graham, Dean of the Divinity School and apologist à ses heures?
Bring back Uncle Dudley. Bring back people who know how to think, and how to express themselves.
The Globe, as they used to say about Pravda in the bad old Soviet days, goditsya na podtirku.("is fit for wiping"). One knows what those scatological Muscovites meant -- such examples of idiocy and ignorance help make the daily (and Sunday) Globe quite an absorbing -- no, I mean absorbent -- read.
Posted by Hugh at November 9, 2004 12:17 PM
No one should lose sight, for one minute, that all of these comments are directed at the harm they do to the ultimate goal of Muslims: to spread Islam until it covers the globe, to ensure that there are no remaining obstacles to Islam which, of course, requires the subjugation (if not the killing, or conversion) of all non-Muslims, reduced to the status of dhimmis, which means a status of humiliation, degradation, and permanent insecurity. This is in the canonical texts; this, and this alone -- not the pious nonsense presented taqiyya-fashion either by cunning Muslims or non-cunning non-Muslims of the Armstrong/Esposito/Diana Eck/Michael Sells variety, peoplel who should be either mocked or locked up (I prefer the former, but then I have an incurably kind disposition).
[Posted by: Hugh at September 4, 2004 09:57 PM]

7.

"Teaching at Yale..."
-- from a posting above

Or a University Professorship at Princeton (well-appointed office right next to that of Cornel West, nubile secretary and adoring studentesse, the whole works), or possibly a Visiting Professorship arranged by Leila Ahmad, William Graham, and Diana Eck at Harvard Divinity School, under the auspices of the Pluralism Project. Not to speak of the unspeakable MEALAC program at Columbia. Oh, there are so many possibilities, so many possible slots that Tariq Ramadan, the natural inheritor of the scholarly mantle of Joseph Schacht and Arthur Jeffery, could fill.
Posted by: Hugh at September 27, 2006 02:44 PM

8.
It may not be possible to recreate an atmosphere in American universities, or in other universities of the Western world, in which disinterested study, rather than transparent apologetics, would be offered to innocent students. Certainly the number of schools where such study is possible has diminished over the past 30 years. Esposito is the rule, not the exception. But one should at least try. And administrators at Yale and members of other departments, such as the history faculty at Yale, now have a duty to inform themselves fully of the extent of the scandal, and not to permit the fellow-travelers of MESA Nostra already ensconced at Yale to manage to smuggle in one more of their number. This was, incidentally, tried recently at Harvard Divinity School by Leila Ahmed, trying through her tools William Graham and Diana Eck to push through the appointment of Omid Safi. Fortunately, she was foiled. Surely those pushing, pushing, pushing for Juan Cole -- because he is one of them, and they are with him all the way -- can also be foiled at the last minute. They must be -- for the sake of Yale's innocent students, and for the continued support of Yale. For all of the faculty will suffer in the end from a decline in financial support that such an appointment will at this point, and fortunately, automatically trigger.

They might start by reading up on the phrase "MESA Nostra." They can even, if they wish, enter the "MESA Nostra Contest." Yes, their entries will be given special consideration.

[Posted by Hugh at April 24, 2006]

I beg to differ. I have no qualms about taking Saudi money. I have qualms about doing anything for the Saudis with that Saudi money. The money may be pocketed -- just the way Egypt and Pakistan have for years pocketed American aid, or the "Palestinians" pocket Jizyah-aid from Europe and America. But what is done with it has to be watched like a hawk. It cannot be left to those who, one after the other, have crept into, and risen high, in the departments of Middle East Studies or studies in Islam. Look what a determined Leila Khaled can do with a little help from that very aggressive Diana Eck, and that very timid (afraid people will begin to discuss why he never received tenure from his department, but has silkily, at a moment of divinity-school crisis, managed to slip his way into the deanship) William Graham, both of them apologists for Islam (say, did anyone hear the Muezzin's Wail at 1 p.m. this past Monday, right in Harvard Yard? With his megaphone? It was all part of "Muslim Awareness Week" at Harvard.)and both manipulated by Leila Ahmed, the so-called "feminist" who has suddenly drops any real interest in protecting battered (in all kinds of senses) Muslim women when it looks like one of the parties to be charged might be Islam itself. She has failed, Leila Ahmed, to push her absurdly unqualified candidate -- Omid Safi -- onto the other members of the Divinity School, but she'll keep trying. And she is not the only one. All over the Western world, with or without Arab money, apologists for Islam are doing their best to make sure that American students of Islam never quite find out about Islam, never quite encounter or study the Qur'an as can still be done here and there in Europe (as at Aix-en-Provence, or the University of Leiden or in certain German universities).

[Posted by: Hugh at March 1, 2006 09:22 AM]

Is it conceivable that, for example, Harvard Divinity School's faculty, ignoring the machinations of William A. Graham (its accidental Dean), and Diana Eck (friend of Karen Armstrong, who spoke at her wedding, and director of that grant-getting undertaking, the "Pluralism Project"), and Leila Ahmad, might extend an invitation to Prof. van der Horst? Might Boston University's School of Theology do so, for surely Paula Fredericks and others would like to hear Prof. Van Der Horst? What about Boston College's Jesuits? Or what about the Epicopal Theological Seminary, or Andover Theological Seminary, or Princeton Theological Seminary, and all the seminaries across the land, where Prof. van der Horst might give that farewell speech the full text of which was denied him, and his students?

[Posted by: Hugh at June 18, 2006 01:53 PM]

And Diana Eck? After thanking Karen Armstrong for those kind words at Eck's wedding, no doubt she got back to self-promoting her self-promoting "Pluralism Project" which has become a Defense of Islam Act. You see, even though Islam is the ONLY belief-system among the world's religions that still rejects pluralism completely and whose adherents, whenever they can, subject non-Muslims to a regime of dhimmitude, and have done so over 1350 years, from Spain to western China, Eck seems to believe that Tariq Ramadan could not possibly support this kind of Islam. But of course he does; he wants what Bin Laden wants, but through the softly-softly of demographic conquest and conversion ("reversion") of Infidels from within. And while he pretends to deplore the superficiality of the West, with its celebrity culture and so on, he is himself an obvious beneficiary of that celebrity culture. That's what he is: a mediagenic celebrity, his grandfather's grandson. As for being a serious philosopher, because he drops in a line from Heidegger or Husserl -- puh-leeze!. Everyone knows that a small army of unemployed Ph.D. recipients in philosophy is marching across this land, completely without hope of gainful permanent employment, and the painful and primitive gibberish of Ramadan, in thrall to a belief-system that abhors free and skeptical inquiry, that is indifferent to scientific curiosity and artistic creation outside of calligraphy and mosque building, and has been for at least a thousand years -- this is what a self-respecting university, this is what the Diane Ecks (she knows nothing, incidentally, of Islam, has not put in the time necessary to study it in depth, has not read Schacht, Margoliouth, Snouck Hurgronje, Abel, Vajda, Papoulia, Dadrian, and a hundred others -- one can be sure of that). Please, spare us. You want to listen to Ramadan -- go ahead, buy his tapes, play them for your students. Should be fun. But the rest of us, who do not posture about "free speech" (for god's sake, this isn't Bertrand Russell, an independent thinker, whatever his faults, who is being kept out, but a taqiyya-master who has made his views very clear, to those who know what taqiyya and kitman are).

[Posted by: Hugh at September 7, 2004 12:41 PM]

9.

"Outside of the university they [these academic apologists for Islam] are only qualified to flip hamburgers.."
-- from a heated posting above

Not all, but some. A Marxist of the old Pyotr-Struve school (he, Struve, died as he lived, at his desk at the Bibliothèque Nationale) should be welcome on a university campus. Or some gentleman-marxist of the old school, Barrington Moore-ish, could and should be represented. But the most doubtful characters of the old days seem like Giants in the Earth compared to what we have now. That "fit only for flipping hamburgers" fate you suggest disturbs me, because it carries with it an implied insult to people who do this rather than that for a living. I have known too many garbage men, too many cooks, including those who flip hamburgers, whose lives were not always fashioned by themselves alone, but by fatidic dates, and expensive and faithless mates, and any number of things. To propose that some are good enough "only to flip hamburgers" is not only to inadvertently insult those who do, but also to inadvertently exalt those who happen to enjoy positions of prestige that, more and more, we have evidence they do not merit. The reverse of your medal is to accept the self-image, say, of the tenured professor. That professor may be Jacques Barzun, or he may be Cornel West or Ward Churchill or Hamid Dabashi of Said-eulogy fame.

There is a difference.

Still, it would be wonderful, wouldn't it, to go into a hamburger place located just off some campus, and see the present-day version of yesterday's apologists for Marxism, that is today's apologists for Islam -- say, Professors William Graham or Diana Eck -- scraping the encaked grease from the stoves at Bartley's Burgers.

[Posted by: Hugh at March 20, 2006 02:32 PM]

She doesn't know what she's asking for... she's trying to be a good neighbor - kind of like the good, solid Kansas family that let those fellows in to make a phone call right after they got stranded along the cold, lonely, dark highway in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

Too bad Ms. Eck doesn't realize it. Too bad she doesn't see that 'the Islamic world' displaces all other worlds. What a well meaning idiot.

Well isn't this just great news, I guess that college visit to Berklee we have planned for this summer is off. I wonder if there are any music schools in Alaska? Muslims don't really like the cold... right?

Malmo, Sweden.

Ah, isn't that sweet -- a Christian praying for the completion of a mosque. These sorts of Christians are everywhere here in Canada. They are the biggest boosters for Islam. They open the door for the establishment of Islamic centers; for Islamic prayer rooms in businesses, at schools, at universities; for Islamic dawa facilities; for chairs in Islamic studies; the list is endless. Little do they seem to realize what they're actually promoting -- that's hatred of Jews, hatred of women, hatred of homosexuals, hatred of all that's not based on a collection of pre-modern, illiterate superstitions. Yet these same Christians pretend to be "liberal" and "well-educated." Yeah, sure. They exhibit the height of ignorance and stupidity. (And, no, Muslims aren't deterred by cold weather -- so forget about Alaska or Canada as a safe haven).

Only in their dreams.

The well-meaning idiots will continue to believe their ecumenical fantasies until the rug is pulled out from under their feet and replaced with an oriental prayer rug. Then it will be too late.

I think it better to incur all the tongue-clicking disapproval from these types and continue to pursue an anti-jihad agenda. They'll never thank us for saving them, but this shouldn't stop us in the slightest. Why Pres. Bush would be constrained by his critics is beyond me. Recently I've been thinking I've projected my wishes into the administration too much. They are careerists with no framework of consistent behavior or principle. This fight will outlive the Bush Administation, to be sure. Too bad Bush didn't actually believe the words he spoke pre-2004 and too bad he didn't have the fiber to simply apply those words consistently though his administration ( even if he didn't believe them ). It won't be over when Bush leaves.

Oh, and, Hugh...your mention of Dick Gordon -- that imbecile? In the event you're unaware, yeah, he's a Canadian. I recall shortly before he left the CBC -- one of his last reports (I believe it was in the fall of 2000). This was when the Palis in Israel were revolting (when aren't Pals revolting?), anyway, Gordon was ooooh and ahhhing a kindergarten classroom -- and what the little Arab children had posted on their school's bulletin boards. No, it wasn't fall leaves, or snowflakes, or pictures of puppies and kittens -- it was pictures of suicide bombers who had managed to murder unsuspecting Israelis. And Gordon thought this was just oooh sooooo sweeet, so wonder-ful, so fabulous! He was just all a twitter. (I guess this is why PBS was anxious to get him -- the Dhimmi extraordinaire! or Cana-duh's number one export to the States).

As this Christain (There used to be Christains and Fundamental Christains) will find out, the more she explores Islam, the more she will break out in a cold sweat.

Good comments about Saudi money above by Hugh and others. Harvard is, however, happy to prostrate itself for Saudi money. Why? Because the Saudis and Harvard want the same thing, to blame everything on America.

Harvard's been following the Saudi program for decades. That's their "business" model.

Mrs Ick, you ma'am are one stupid b*tch.

Dear Diana Eck,

Yes, the climate of Boston will indeed be changed. You will notice that it will become much colder!!!!

Part of an article that appeared in the Boston Globe in December 2004. By Diana Eck in regards to her campaign and other defenders of Islam as they tried to sue Condoleza Rice and the US state department, along with the Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff for not allowing Tariq Ramadan into the US.

By Dianna Eck:

"In November 2004, Ramadan did deliver a keynote address, sitting at a bare table somewhere in Canada, speaking to us on a large-screen video monitor. Ramadan articulated the themes he has long emphasized. He spoke of the ''new reality" of American Muslims and of the importance of being ''fully Muslim and fully American." Without a trace of bitterness, he spoke of the ''ethics of citizenship" and participation as Western Muslims. Western Muslims must be able to say ''This is our country. It is not an alien space in which we forever perceive ourselves as foreigners. It is our home." He spoke of the ''silent revolution" of reformist Islam taking place today. And he spoke of the critical significance of interfaith dialogue, grounded for him in the Muslim doctrine of tawhid, the oneness of God. It was a stirring message by a Muslim theologian delivered to us from the other side of the walls we ourselves have built. While heartened by his message, I felt saddened, ashamed, and fearful for my country."

Hugh, I hope your optimism above about these folks having "had their day" in the academy is correct. Lord knows these people are not scholars in any real sense. Nietzsche once wrote that 99 out of 100 scholars had no real aptitude for it. Unfortunately, in a democracy, that's a winning coalition.

When I studied Classics as an undergrad, I always made sure to read outside the syllabus of "approved" interpretations. I used to tell my friends that I considered it an act of intellectual rebellion. The more thoughtful ones understood exactly what I meant.

Read this critique on Tariq Ramadan by Caroline Fourest

http://www.icapi.org/tariqramadan

Caroline Fourest Activist, feminist and specialist in religious extremist movements, Caroline Fourest has published an in-depth analysis of the books, tapes and speeches of Tariq Ramadan

Islam and leftism have several things in common

(1) Intolerance as their main form of communication. Infidel = Bigot.

(2) Take over the world

(3) Increase human population far beyond the sustainable level.

As a consequence of their population growth policies, both cause a mass extinction of species that lowers the sustainable population level. The greater the gap of current population to sustainable population, the more species go extinct. The more species go extinct, the lower the sustainable population.

(4) Both agree the West is at fault for this, to the extent they admit it.

(5) Infidels and Bigots inhabit the lowest levels of hell.

(6) Infidels and bigots must over time become extinct, even before the rest of the species from their population policies.

(7) They praise lavishly what is actually harmful.

(8) They don't tolerate the truth about themselves, but respond with excesses of hate in unison. They all gather instantly to express hate whenever any non-member says anything but praise for them.

(9) They don't tolerate apostasy.

(10) No actual contribution to a functional economy or society. When Lenin got into power in Russia he said that Marx actually had no instructions on what the state should command people to do. Marx was all intolerance for capitalism, but contained no actual instructions on how to coordinate human behavior productively.

The list goes on.

My alma mater, Harvard's JFK School of Government, has become a hotbead of pro-Arabist sympathy. Think of Professor Walt, the Jewish conspiracy theorist. Think of the Kennedy School's new Dubai branch, run by the same Barbara Bodine who obstructed John O'Neill's effort to investigate the Cole bombing and to stop 9/11.

Gee, I wonder how many Jewish students and faculty are allowed to work at the Dubai Kennedy School?

Disgusting.

While she is at it, perhaps Diana Eck could pray for the rapid construction of a cathedral in Riyadh.

The Mosque is:

"At the heart of Boston in Roxbury Crossing"

That's the ghetto folks!

I irony of all this is that some of the worst useful idiots are the ivy league elite. Can you imagine going into years of of debt to send one of your kids to college to be mentored by someone if this ilk? I'll keep my kids at the community college...they'll get a more objective education there.

"Boston is part of the Islamic world."

Well, that's one way to resolve the gay marriage issue in Massachusetts.

BOston Red Sox now the Boston Mullahs
New England Patriots now the New England Bedouins.

Marx was all intolerance for capitalism, but contained no actual instructions on how to coordinate human behavior productively.

Actually, Herr Karl did leave behind one instruction. That was his theory of historicity, where the aspiring commies were to wait for a country to go through a robust stage of capitalism so as to build up wealth. Marx's instruction was, when the wealth was built by the evils of capitalism, then the commies were to move in a divvy it up.

Lenin got even that single instruction wrong, for he had not the patience to wait for Russia to undergo capitalism (Russia was still largely a feudal pre-industrial economy when the commies took over).

I saw a Moslima emerging from the Hennepin County up here in Minneapolis, bursting through the door and into the icy winds, as she shuffled through her stack of gubmint checks she looked pretty happy to me.

A mosque built in the heart of the Boston ghetto? That figures. They'll be busily proselyting to get blacks into the pre-modern world of Islam. Gain converts like that CAIR dupe -- Ellison. Wonderful.

All,
If possible, please write to this Dumbo Bimbo Diana Eck. I am sure the people who read Jihad watch can put some wholesome knowledge of Islam and how violent it is into this dumbo's head. Here is her e-mail:

dianaeck@ fas.harvard.edu

Thanks in advance.

And, no, Muslims aren't deterred by cold weather -- so forget about Alaska or Canada as a safe haven).

Posted by: J.S.

If not the cold, how do moslems handle the long days at high latitudes in the summer. It must be rough to fast all daylight hours on Fridays in June in Finland or Alaska or Yukon territory. And Ramadan must be a real bitch when it falls in June! Or is there a special dispensation -- an abrogated sura, or a fat wad from the Ayatollah Ali?

That's a very interesting question, Ebonystone. Past the Arctic Circle, the sun does not set on the summer solstice (24 hours of daylight); and in the winter, there's 24 hours of darkness on the solstice (and for weeks thereafter, there's only a small arc as the sun rises and sets on the horizon). I don't think many people live beyond the Arctic Circle -- just some isolated Inuit communities -- but even so, it does raise an interesting theoretical question! I'm guessing that any Muslim Inuit pay a bribe.

Off topic:

Muslim World League Wants Lawsuits for Abuse of Islam and the Prophet

Ummah News Links

I know that there is some clear oderless gas that surounds universities. It seems to deprive the employees there of oxygen. I know, my sister is a PHD at one of these institutions. I was trying to explain to her about Islam and the Koran/Quran/......, and her comment to me was, "I think that these problems will just have to be faced by the next generation." This comment was made at the thanksgiving table with her two sons. Not only was she ignoring what I was telling her, she was ignoring the fact that the next generation was sitting there in absolute rapt silence.

PHD=piled higher and deeper.

And so it goes.

Where are a few truck-loads of hogs when they're needed. An "accidental" release of a couple hundred hogs into this area and the drivers and others "chasing" them through the area of this eyesore should do great wonders for the holiness of the whole area.

By the way, if Boston is a part of the is-lame-ick world doesn't that mean that they are at war against the rest of us "infidels?"

This odious Eck seems to part of the gay community that is in awe of Islam
Eck is a Finnish or Swedish last name by the way

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/teachers/teachers.php?id=264&g=
Eck and her partner Dorothy Austin are currently serving as Masters of Lowell House at Harvard.

"Meanwhile, Jewish-Muslim relations in Boston have become tense, undermining honest and difficult dialogue at the very time we need it most. "

.......Are such relationships amiable anywhere in the world? Where ever Muslims appear, poverty,despair, and death soon follow. Islam feeds on the weak,intices those who are weak-minded, and destroys those who oppose.

The dialogue of "Hell no, we won't go" is not a difficult one.

"Last month, as I stood under the great dome of the mosque at Roxbury Crossing, I prayed, as a Christian, for it's speedy completion."

Now that's got to be one of the dumbest statements I've ever read. What she really means is: "As a Christian, I am praying, fervently, for the destruction of my religious beliefs and my country's cultural identity."

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

It's amazing that in the United States university professors get away with teaching what they want the world to be, not what it is. The humor I would derive from this at these dupes being destroyed by their own folly will be tempered as they take me and mine down with them.

Harvard is part of the Islamic world overflowing in Wahabi money. This creature has not lifted her head out of the sand long enough to realize that the ISB has sued not only the David Society but newspapers, news stations and a Muslim scholar Ahmed Monsaur who pointed out hate inspired Saudi literature found in Boston mosques and terror links to some of the directors of the Islamic Society of Boston. Not to mention the illegal manuvering of a Muslim within the Boston Redevelopment Agency.

Send your kids to TRADE SCHOOLS and not places like Harvard where this type of ilk will "educate" them.

Islam is speaking through the disjointed, dysfunctional speech and thought patterns of this retarded female.

When we think "Islam" why is it some of us don't think "beheadings" and "violence"?????

Is it because someone doesn't want us to?

The saga of liberty and democracy will be punctuated with a period because the dhimmis like this ivory tower idealist don't understand Islam is antithetical to democracy.

The dhimmis are searching from light from the window of the towering mosque; Paul Revere should be turning over in his grave.

What interfaith dialogue is being invoked in Somalia? Indonesia? Turkey? Russia?

What is so disgusting about this type of lack of thinking is that it's coming not from some backwater like the U. of Western Dakota at Hoople (renowned for Prof. Peter Schickele) but from Boston, the center of the universe, the home of Harvard and MIT, which should be filled with the "best and brightest". Instead it has the dullest and dimmest. How far American higher education has fallen in the last 40 years.

too bad s. arabia, iran, & dubai arent part of the christian world