It's a Saul Alinsky tactic from Rules for Radicals: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." In other words, zero in on an enemy, isolate him, demonize him, marginalize him, and silence him. The hard-Left mainstream media and its Islamic supremacist allies are using this tactic with increasing frequency. They've used this tactic with fanatical, frenzied hostility against Pamela Geller; they've used it on me, and now they're going after the ace lawyer David Yerushalmi, who has represented us in our free speech SIOA lawsuits and has been instrumental in developing the anti-Sharia legislation now being considered all over the country.
For that transgression, as far as the New York Times is concerned, he must be eliminated. But now, in "NYT Searches for the Leader of the Anti-Shariah Movement, Finds Me Instead" in the American Thinker, August 11, he hits back:
I was featured, complete with pictures (and online video), in a 2,000+ word New York Times article about the anti-sharia movement in this country, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliot, which appeared in the Times' July 31st Sunday edition, front page, above the fold. Impressive, no? Unfortunately, Ms. Elliot exposed herself as biased and in denial, and has since given an interview to NPR in which she more openly evidences journalistic condescension, in addition to the bias one normally expects from the mainstream media. The story was quite explicitly intended to link a national movement to a single individual, me, and then to suggest that this individual -- again, me -- was manipulative, hidden, and controversial. This is evident from the title of the article: "The Man Behind the Anti-Sharia Movement."The truth remains at a distance, and this analysis will suggest only a more objective telling of the facts I say "suggest" because I am the subject of the Times "profile," and as such I cannot realistically claim objectivity. I will allow others more at a distance to weigh in. One writer, Ben Shapiro, whom I don't know, has already done that, and I must note my appreciation (see "In Defense of David Yerushalmi").
We begin at the beginning. Ms. Elliot and I have traded emails on sharia and related matters for about 3 or 4 years. We first "met" when she did a long profile of Dhaba (Debbie) Almontaser, the spearhead and one-time principal of New York City's failed Arabic-centric public school called the Khalil Gibran International Academy. (While KGIA's doors remain open, everyone both within and without the school's community of present and past teachers, administrators, students, parents, and early supporters admit it has failed as both an educational center and as a "multi-cultural" outreach.)
Ms. Elliot contacted me several months before the "anti-sharia movement" article was to run saying she wanted only background on the movement since she knew I was involved. I conditioned my agreement to provide background on an explicit commitment from her that the article was not about me. She agreed. When we finally sat down for a three-hour lunch, it was evident at the end of the "background" discussion that Ms. Elliot was focusing too much on personalities, me especially, and not enough on the substantive arguments against sharia. Every time I pressed her, though, she assured me that the story was "not about you."
Well, that little bit of journalistic dishonesty we all know is part of the tradecraft. Journalists will often deceive their subjects about the focus of an interview to get them to open up. My colleagues and I understood this and discussed the risks of any interview with Ms. Elliot and the New York Times. But we concluded those risks versus a major story by an acclaimed journalist, even a card-carrying member of the elite Manhattan progressive club like Ms. Elliot, were worth taking. Why? Because public policy work is as much about creating a serious discussion and framing it in some non-PC context as it is about suggesting actual legislation or new policies. [...]
Moving beyond Ms. Elliot's purposeful deception that she was not writing about me, we come to her writing style (we'll deal with substance as a final matter). Ms. Elliot treats her targets -- me and the "anti-sharia movement" -- more broadly in similar fashion. She begins by describing the "movement" as a kind of simplified ignorance. She accomplishes this by implicitly ridiculing a politician in Tennessee who, rather than dealing with the serious matters of the state's unemployment, home foreclosures, and the like, is dealing with the problem of sharia as a threat to the U.S. and to Tennessee.
Everyone will of course recall, but not because Ms. Elliot mentions it, that Carlos Bledsoe was an African-American Christian living in Tennessee, where he was converted and "radicalized" sufficiently to attack an army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas, leaving one soldier dead and one injured. And, many will recall, again not because Ms. Elliot mentions it, that it is the Obama administration's attorney general, Eric Holder, who informs us that homegrown jihad terrorism inspired by the likes of Yemen-based Awlaki is "one of the things that keeps me up at night" because "[t]he threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens -- raised here, born here and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born."
While Ms. Elliot will no doubt plead that her reporting was a "fair" and "objective" narration of facts, a "fair" and "objective" assessment belies this claim. Beyond her not-so-veiled ridicule of the anti-sharia movement, she allows herself this bit of rather subjective "analysis" of the merits of the anti-sharia movement: "Yet, for all its fervor, the movement is arguably directed at a problem more imagined than real." Of course any assertion of fact to support a policy can be "arguably" something else. In this day and age, you can find "authoritative" voices to argue about anything (battling "experts" in courtrooms across the country demonstrate this point).
But, Ms. Elliot positioned the "arguably" irrational anti-sharia movement as fighting phantoms without bothering to actually articulate what the threat from sharia is, or "arguably" is. That is, she set up a straw man. Thus, she turns the sharia threat into a caricature of a Tennessee politician ignoring "real" problems for "imagined" ones and then attaches a "fervor" to all of us who understand sharia as the enemy's common threat doctrine. The word "fervor" of course is to lend a sense of faith-based, that is, not real, religiosity to the "anti-sharia movement."
There is much more. Read it all.
The New York Times, and smear piece, are synonymous.
Setting up straw men, are about the best that the Shanes and Elliots can do, to try and counter some " Inconvenient truths ".
If they were to be really objective, the Times would lose what remains of their paying customers.
Tickle the ears, and tell the people what you want them to hear. And a few subtle jabs, never hurt either.
Elliot is another lying propagandist, who's been exposed.
Great article! I'd love to see this exposed on air. Do you think NPR will be contacting David for an interview? LOL. I expect this type of tactic will continue for as long as it is successful. Perhaps we can, little by little, show them for what they are, as Paul Hoffman posts before me..."lying Propagandists."
Keep up the good work. We count on you.
Saul Alinsky putatively worked to improve the condition of the down-trodden and under-represented. What is to stop the increasingly down-trodden and under-represented population of this country from using the precepts that he enunciated to raise the miasma that has fallen upon our leadership and media?
The miasma is, I believe, due to the unexamined self-satisfaction that many in positions of political or journalistic influence appear to have. The aphorism "Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity/laziness/ignorance," that important corollary to Occam's Razor, is apropos here. The stupidity/ignorance/laziness of the leaders or journalists in question is also susceptible to being targeted, frozen, personalized and polarized. The more articulately, cooly, quickly and widely this is done the better.
http://shariah4america.com/Shariah/The-Islamic-State-24-Hours-after-Implementation
The Islamic State: 24 Hours after Implementation
From Shariah 4 America
The White Masjid
Have you ever wondered what America would look like under Shari’ah? The ongoing campaign to bring the US and indeed the entire world under the authority of Islam has compelled sincere Muslims to draw up realistic plans for changes that are likely to occur once all obstacles in the way of implementing the Shari’ah are removed.
http://shariah4america.com/Washington/The-White-Masjid
Read a bit the article by Andreas Elliott, has she asked herself the question:"On what is Sharia law based?"
It is based in part on the Koran.
And the Koran is the heart of Islam
She should know:
The Koran approves freeing slaves...but it's Conditional,only With the Master's Approval
Has she studied Islam,really studied it....NO.
http://www.antisharia.com/2011/03/11/koran-encourages-freeing-slaves-but-its-conditionalif-the-master-approvesplus-other-statements-on-slavery/
Guys,
Did you know that in all Muslim history till the 20th century there was only 1 solitary Muslim woman ruler?
While Europe has had many women rulers as queens and empresses,as SUPREME RULERS
Read the story of the Sultana/Sultaness of Egypt...deposed after 2-3 months because SHE WAS A WOMAN
She began as a sex-slave and ended a Sultana
http://www.antisharia.com/2011/08/12/shajarat-al-durrthe-only-woman-ruler-of-islam-till-the-20th-centuryfrom-sex-slave-to-sultana-of-egypt/
PLUS READ
1.answeringmuslims.com
2.answering-islam.org
3.thereligionofconquest.com
4.See the videos (click on "online videos") of abnsat.com(like "Jihad Exposed","Debate","Jesus or Muhammad").
The videos are also on youtube,write "abnsat".
Plus a new blog about the Persecution of Christians(mostly by Muslims)
http://www.persecutedfourchrist.blogspot.com
5.Also PYEM Ministry:
http://pyemministry.blogspot.com/
(very critical of Islam)
6.The blog "Debunking Quranic Science":
http://debunkingquranicscience.blogspot.com/
7.WIKISLAM(with 1,400 articles):
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Main_Page
8."Confident Christianity by Mary Jo Sharp":
Home Page:
http://confidentchristianity.com/
Her blog:
http://www.confidentchristianity.blogspot.com/
Also read:
antisharia.com and:
avraidire.com:
http://www.avraidire.com/
(in French and English),you can translate the French by copying and pasting with Google Translate:
http://translate.google.com/#
If Andrea Elliot is not against sharia law then she is for it! She is advocating stoning to death adulterers, amputations of hands/feet of theives, hanging homosexuals, descrimation against women and nonmuslims in courts etc. In summary Ms. Elliot is in favor of a terror filled apartheid state like Iran!
What is particularly sad is that all the dirty tricks modern jounalists like Andrea Elliot employ are now so par for the course that journalists have become oblivious of just how unethical such tactics are. Or, in the alternative, they are aware of the unethical nature of many of their techniques but justify them because the person or persons they are used against "deserve" them, that the higher truth they are in touch with justifies what they do to those who are not part of the Anointed element of mankind. Either way, so many modern journalists live in a bubble of their creation. They're "bubble people" and I for one find them very tedious and deeply ignorant of the way the world really works.
Ms Elliot and her MSM colleagues assume that if you can successfully destroy the messenger, you can undermine the validity of the message. They 'conflate' the messenger with the message - to use a 'liberal left' word.
Of course, as each day passes, the people of the free world (the non-Sharia world), see brutal examples of Sharia in action on a global scale. Understandably, each example of brutality validates the message and the messenger who brings it.
In this sense, the passage of time will show Ms. Elliot to be wrong, and Mr. Yerushalmi to have been right all along.
The clock is ticking .....
minoria,
You have enough material there to develop your own blog and reference it rather than just a marginally on-topic sprawling comment with minimal commentary. maybe you will even get on JW's blog roll.
just a suggestion - after all, it's not my blog either.
keep up the good fight.
Beyond her not-so-veiled ridicule of the anti-sharia movement, she allows herself this bit of rather subjective "analysis" of the merits of the anti-sharia movement: "Yet, for all its fervor, the movement is arguably directed at a problem more imagined than real."
...............................................
Several problems here.
For one thing, the idea that Shari'ah has never been taken into account in legal cases in the US simply is not true, As Jihad Watch has pointed out.
Moreover, given the heavy importance of precedence in American law, waiting until Shari'ah is an everyday problem will find it already entrenched in US law.
Also, many of those sneering at the spectre of Shari'ah law act as though there was no midpoint between solid Western law and stoning women in the streets.
This could not be further from the truth. One can trace a precise progression of Shari'ah imposition from the US and Canada to the countries of Europe, to countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, to the states of the Mahgreb and the Levant, to reaches of Dar-al-Islam such as northern Nigeria and Pakistan, and, finally, the deepest Shari'ah states of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Somalia.
We can see *exactly* the path the accommodation and final imposition of Shari'ah law would take if we let it.
There is also the manifestly false idea that there is nothing short of amputation and stonings in Shari'ah law that is inimical to the freedoms of the West. But even short of that, Shari'ah is a terrible set of laws that enshrines inequality, oppression, and violence—the *very opposite* of civilized Western law.
David Yerushalmi is worth his weight in gold.
A stroke of genius by Pamela or just a great deal of fortune, whatever....
Fact is, that suddenly the orthodox Jews pay attention, because he is one of them.
That is a game-changer.
It must be a humbling experience to be called the leader of the anti-sharia movement, an untruth for sure but it has to be at least tempting to indulge in a bit of deceit and just for a second smile and say, yep, that's me! That 'title' could never be felt as a blow by anyone who understands the true nature of Islam. But of course they have to throw in the old standby: racist, an accusation even a true racist does not appreciate.
I am very glad to see Mr. Yelshalmi respond. When I read the Time article, without knowing anything about him, it was obvious to me that the article was a personal attack.
However, the author's attempt to "expose" "the man behind the antisharia movement" thereby discrediting and demonizing the movement failed, and she ended up exposing herself, at least in my view. So I filed the article under "media bias."
Lets take a look logically at the problem (we dont need religion in this case so lets leave it out (for the record I am a very conservative Christian) for the sake of arguement). We have a system which historically (muslims hate repeated facts of history) has killed whole groups of people and taken the technology that they have. When in control they rule with a Iron hand which permits no debate, no reason and therefore no growth. Foreigners are permitted however closely monitored and heavily taxed. At any time and place the muslim is always right no matter what. If dealing with a person that is not a muslim you are allowed to cheat, steal and kill that person with little or no penalty. If you see reason and wish to get out of it you to will be killed as an example of those who wish free discourse. This has nothing to do with religion this is a secular state it is against the individual or free thought of any kind it is the lock step type of government that the west has and should always oppose.
On Saturday, August 6, the New York Times printed four letters on "The Campaign to Ban Islamic Law".
Three of them are in favor of Shari'ah, and all have impressive bylines—a Princeton professor, the Chairman of the Muslim Writers Guild of America, and The Executive Director of the ACLU in Tennessee.
The writer with qualms about Shari'ah law—polite and careful to note that he is no "Islamophobe" as he is—is just some schmoe from NYC.
This is no accident—it immediately gives more weight to the opinions of the writers who claim Shari'ah is no threat.
Sardar Anees Ahmad sets us straight:
"Contrary to David Yerushalmi’s claims, America has nothing to fear from Shariah.
Islam requires that people must voluntarily abide by Shariah in order for it to be applied...[ludicrous Taqiyya alert—GI]
Concocting stories regarding Shariah — now that is something to be feared."
Read them all here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/opinion/the-campaign-to-ban-islamic-law.html