Dhimmi Watch: Fitzgerald: What should The Times have been doing?

October 14, 2006

Fitzgerald: What should The Times have been doing?

What should The Times have been doing, not now, but for years, to cover Islam -- in and out of Europe -- appropriately?

In the case of Islam in Europe, it ought to have familiarized readers with the views of Oriana Fallaci, Pim Fortuyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jacques Ellul, and all the others who cannot be dismissed as "right-wing" -- and not one of whom can be considered a "fundamentalist" Christian or a mad-dog anything.

It ought to have shown the reasons for the immigration to different countries of Europe by different sets of Muslims -- for example, Pakistanis to England, Moroccans to Holland, Algerians and Moroccans to France, Somalis and Libyans and Egyptians to Italy, and so on. It ought to have provided figures on the Muslim population in those countries over the past 30-40 years. For example, would it not have been eye-opening for readers to learn that there were 15,000 Muslims in Holland in 1970, and now there are a million?

It ought, that Times of New York, that New Duranty Times, to have noted that everywhere, in every Infidel land, there were problems with Muslim immigrants, no matter the political or economic regime, or the background of the local Infidels. It ought to have noted, and not merely noted but attempted to explain to readers, why it was that in places as different as Denmark and Spain, or Italy and Germany, with widely disparate national cultures and expectations, there was always the grim problem of Muslims who viewed their new surroundings not with gratitude, but as a place that as if by right belonged to them. It ought to have noted that when those immigrants repeat, as they do, that "we are here to stay" and "this is our country," those phrases, which ordinarily might be found stirring, take on an entirely different and sinister meaning.

And The New Duranty Times might have tried to understand why it is that wherever there are Muslim immigrants in sufficient numbers to give them the impression that they need not disguise forever their real attitudes, there have been problems -- so that the problem must lie not with the hosts, but with the Muslim guests, and does not depend either on the nature of that host country, or of the place from whence those particular Muslim immigrants came.

And then it was the duty of The New Duranty Times to do a comparative study: to show how Hindus from India, Buddhists from Vietnam, Christians from sub-Saharan black Africa, Chinese who are Confucian or Christian or nothing at all, somehow have managed without untoward incident to fit in to the countries of Western Europe. No doubt in some cases there have been problems, but always without the sense that there is a permanent and irreducible problem. For there is a great difference between those who arrive ready to adapt to new customs and mores and those who arrive carrying undeclared, in their mental luggage, an alien and a hostile creed.

And then there is the most important thing of all, the thing that has prevented people from understanding or making sense of the very small amount of "Jihad News" that The New Duranty Times permits, almost reluctantly, to appear in its newpaper of its own dismal record (a record not worse than that of other newspapers in the United States, but no better either): there has been no attempt at all to actually inform readers about Islam. You would not possibly know a thing about the actual disturbing contents of the Qur'an from reading, diligently, the daily and Sunday New Duranty Times. You would know nothing of 9.29 or 9.5 or the entire Sura 9. You would know nothing, have read nothing, about the more than one hundred so-called Jihad verses in the Qur'an. You would have not been exposed to the Hadith or understood what they are, or how they have been ranked according to "authenticity." You would be at sea whenever the phrase "Qur'an and Sunnah" were to be invoked, as it is a hundred million times a day, by Muslim Believers.

And you would not only be unfamiliar with the most basic texts of Islam, but you would also not know "how to read the Qur'an." What do you do when you come across an obvious contradiction between two passages in a book that is the uncreated Word of God, and that cannot be tampered with, cannot be changed? And what is a poor Infidel to make of the detectable difference in tone between what are often described as the "Meccan" or softer verses (the ones presumably written when Muhammad was less powerful and still needed to placate or woo his enemies) and the "Medinan" or harsher verses, when Muhammad felt strong enough to no longer disguise his Will to Power, and the worldly goals of his militant and aggressive followers? Where, in what issue of The New Duranty Times, have you learned about "abrogation" or "naskh"? In what issue of The New Duranty Times have you learned who Al-Bukhari was, or Muslim, the two most important muhaddithin? In what issue of The New Duranty Times have you run across a single column by a single columnist other than the prating, clownish Tom Friedman (a pet of the businessmen's conventions, where Tom Friedman 'splains it all to you -- the world economy, the Middle East, the entire Future of Humanity, all kinds of immigrants -- for a mere $45,000 per appearance, and it's a bargain at any price) and the entirely ill-informed Nicholas Kristof, who still has no idea that the massacres in Darfur that he has made the subject of his Very Own Public Anguish have something to do, everything to do, with the Arab supremacism of which Islam is a convenient and powerful vehicle -- despite the outward universalist claims made for what Anwar Shaikh rightly calls "the Arab National Religion."

In what issue of The New Duranty Times will you find out how Islam is a belief-system that contains a Total Regulation of Life? In what issue will that set of regulations, of everything from clothes and hairstyles to the most intimate details of personal hygiene, be set down? In what issue will it be explained how in Islamic law life consists of that which is Halal and that which is Haram, and the entire universe is divided between Things Commanded and Things Prohibited? In what issue of The New Duranty Times will you find out about the Total Explanation of the Universe that Islam provides, so that the good Believer need not seek elsewhere for guidance, and ideally, will not? For the Qur'an contains everything -- including all of modern science -- if only we mere men have the minds to tease out its meaning, on everything. Yes, everything, including cosmology -- yes, no doubt we can find in the Qur'an predictions as to the anisotropy in the black-belt radiation as a result of our peculiar velocity, and the structure of recombinant DNA, and the origins of volcanoes, and fractals and chaos theory and the space-time continuum and positively everything, in this or any conceivable universe.

And where, in what past or present issue of The New Duranty Times, would one discover the nature of the God of Islam? In what issue would one discover how he is whimsical and obeys no laws, and is quite different, therefore, from the Christian God? In what issue is it shown how this difference helps explain the non-development of science in Islam -- that and the discouragement, at every step, of free and skeptical inquiry in Islam?

And where, in what past or present issue of The New Duranty Times, would you have learned that sculpture and almost all of painting is haram, forbidden, in Islam, that almost all music is similarly banned, and that the only outlets for artistic expression historically have been the architecture and geometric ornamentation of mosques and the Quran'ic or other calligraphy which compares -- not favorably, but compares -- to the much more spectacular and sophisticated art of calligraphy of China and the East?

Where would one find studies in The New Duranty Times on the collectivist nature of Islam -- where those who are persuaded or coerced, as so many have been over time, to become Muslims are seen not as individuals but rather as conscripts for the army of Islam, a belief-system in which the Umma or Collective is everything, and the right of individual conscience (as in exercising the right to leave Islam and choose another belief-system or none at all) is denied? Where would one find the information that individuals who dare to put their own thoughts above the good of the Umma al-Islamiyya can be punished, and should be punished according to the canonical texts, with death?

And where in all the back issues of The New Duranty Times, will you, dear reader, find any discussion of the division of the world between Believer and Infidel that is central to the Muslim worldview, and that arises naturally out of the tenets of Islam? Not all Muslims may accept that worldview, but they do so only by ignoring those tenets, by ignoring above all the figure of Muhammad.

And that brings us to another great lapse, in the series of unforgivable and unforgettable lapses by The New Duranty Times. This is its third challenge after its miserable coverage of Russia under Stalin in the 1930s (with the eponymous Walter Duranty pooh-poohing the truth, elevating the lies). Then at the same time The New Duranty Times minimized what Hitler began doing to the Jews of Germany in the 1930s, and what he planned to do on a much larger scale when he had the chance, until it was too late for hundreds of thousands of its trusting readers to understand fully the threat faced by their own relatives in Europe, so that they could move heaven and earth to save them. Thus does the Times have real blood on its hands, and forever. And now comes the third failure: the failure to cover Islam, to make sense of Islam, to tell us anything except what the editors of The New Duranty Times or their mediocre and hopelessly uncomprehending "foreign-affairs" columnists (Friedman, Kirstof) or the apologists they favor on their Op-Ed page want to hear -- all the while keeping out all those who might actually offer some disturbing home truths about Islam.

And what about Ibn Warraq, and Ali Sina, and all the defectors from Islam? When was the last time you saw any of them mentioned in The New Duranty Times? When could you have found out, in more than a passing reference, in a small, ill-informed, and unpleasant article by Craig Smith a few years ago, about the important work of Bat Ye'or on the institution of the dhimma, its legal framework, and the mental attitudes engendered by such a system not only in the Muslim overlord and the non-Muslim over whom he lords it in Dar al-Islam, but also, curiously, in the ways in which Infidel foreign aid to Muslims has come to resemble, in the attitudes of both the giver and the receiver, the classic Jizyah? No, nothing about Bat Ye'or or her important work. Indeed, if you wished to find out about the status of the non-Muslim or dhimmi under Islamic rule for nearly 1400 years, you would not find a word about it in the hundred thousand pages of print (well, often thin rivulet of print meandering between plump banks of swelling advertisements) that The New Duranty Times, the hideously inadequate New York Times, part of the hideously inadequate Western press, has published since 9.11.2001.

Posted by Hugh at October 14, 2006 8:39 AM
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Yes the New Duranty times has failed yet again to be proper use it's readers. Those whom, I know that read this insipid news-paper, are usually of a pretentious sort, that imagine reading the New York Times confers some faux upscale respectability and is demonstrative of their witty acumen and intelligence. Find me a avid New York Times reader, and we will have ill-read,ill-taught pompous p.c. moralizer. It is the Moron's Gospel according to Salzburger.

By the way a lot women my age are reading Thomas Friedmans tripe and roll that fact out as proof of their intelligence and that hey I not just some vapid twenty something, when in reality it is good way to thin the dullards out of the dating herd. Thomas Friedman readers make for dull and unpleasant company. Nothing gets rid of idiots out of their league like a little Thomas Friedman debunking. Those who find Mr. Sistani of Iraq to be an enlightened reformer type, need no further readership.The end.Case closed.

Islam sucks and so do those cannot or will not comprehend,understand and finally tell the damn truth.

Posted by: abdulalshirk

at October 14, 2006 9:14 AM

Perhaps the problem simply comes back to our American educational system.

NY Times writers I'm sure have gone to top universities and colleges. In the "tolerant" atmosphere at these schools, Islam has been portrayed (and treated) with the softest of kid gloves.

It starts with the all-embracing multi-cultural atmosphere. Check out this "What is Islam" blurb from the Muslim Student Association at the University of Michigan: http://www.umich.edu/~muslims/islam.htm

Muslims follow a religion of peace, mercy, and forgiveness, and the majority have nothing to do with the extremely grave events which have come to be associated with their faith.

...

Among the reasons for the rapid and peaceful spread of Islam was the simplicity of its doctrine-Islam calls for faith in only one God worthy of worship. It also repeatedly instructs man to use his powers of intelligence and observation.

In my college days, I even took classes on Middle Eastern studies, and nothing presented to me would dispel this perspective. Amazingly, however, even the MSA drops hints about just how dangerous Islam is:

Islam may seem exotic or even extreme in the modern world. Perhaps this is because religion does not dominate everyday life in the West today, whereas Muslims have religion always uppermost in their minds, and make no division between secular and sacred. They believe that the Divine Law, the Shari'a, should be taken very seriously, which is why issues related to religion are still so important.

Combine that view with their refusal to acknowledge the true connections between Islam, Muhammad, and today's world violence and conflict, and that's the totally wrong yet and totally prevalent view at the NY Times.

Posted by: kamala

at October 14, 2006 9:20 AM

A shameful part of the charade is the reach of the NYT here in Florida the stories ‎originate from NYT We have big newspaper buildings here but they are devoid of ‎‎“investigative reporters’ They wouldn’t have had to work very hard ..I directed them to ‎the salient text to ignore .‎

Posted by: KAOSKTRL

at October 14, 2006 9:43 AM

Fitzgerald, you are of course quite right !

The day people started getting degrees in Journalism as opposed to being journalists is when they learned that their opinion was more important than the facts.

That student essays could be published and the facts ignored, it was the "star reporter", the "opinion leader" that mattered, not reporting of information or fact.

Now facts are inconvenient, embarrassing, need to be buried or twisted - the usual pieties of journalists about their vital role look a bit stupid when you find how little they have reported of the "clear and present danger" to Western society......................it is as if William L. Shirer had not reported as European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune from 1925 to 1932,living and working in the Third Reich from 1934 to 1940; and had not worked with Ed Murrow................but had instead simply discussed what ladies fashions were, or how people felt about Adam Opel being bought by GM.

In fact the service provided by William L. Shirer and Ed Murrow from Europe was to bring facts into American homes via radio, and to form opinions from facts, not opinions without facts.

For years the world learned about the United States from broadcasts by Alistair Cooke which Americans could not hear. He took a fact and built a picture, not an opinion, a vivid, clear, and accurate picture from the fact.

Instead today we get thousands of words of warm opinion from the likes of Maureen O'Dowd, but no fact.

Posted by: Voyager

at October 14, 2006 11:25 AM

The Timesians, like most people, suffer from an acute form of "psychic interia," which is a curious intersection of human psychology and physics. It works like this:

I wake up on the first snowy morning of winter. I hop in my suv and head off to work. I always feel secure in my large, 4-wheel drive vehicle (4-wheel drive!) and so today is no different. Merely seeing the snow does not change the trajectory of my thoughts. I blithely sip my triple latte on the interstate at my usual 75 mph when suddenly--heavens to betsy what about 4-wheel drive!?--I'm moving sideways in the ditch.

Now I've learned my lesson.

In the afternoon, the sun comes out and melts away all the snow. By evening the snow is almost gone, and by morning there is almost no sign of it--nevertheless, I creep out onto the interstate at 45, eventually speeding up to 55, but keeping it really cool on the curves. I'll drive this way until I forget, in a visceral way, the unpleasantness of being high-centered in the snowbank. It will take about a day and a half.

SImilarly, all these bright lights in the media have learned their lessons well: all religions are the same. Christianity, no less than islam, is about structures of control, which the enlightenment cast off. So it will take an event--a spin in the ditch--in order for them to see it differently; to see that the enlightenment could not have happened without scholasticism and that scholasticism was inherently a vast relinquishing of control. There sat the world, out of the control of the church, ready to be investigated and understood by anyone with the wit and industry to do it. Indeed, this notion at the heart of Christianty that the world is intelligible (if imperfectly) apart from revelation creates a logical foundation for key achievements of the enlightenment: freedom of conscience and the scientific method to name just two.

Of course, Islam has no equivalent respect for the intelligibility of the cosmos apart from the Koran. But the idea that there is something more accommodative to modernity in Christianity than in Islam is utterly unthinkable to the contemporary media mind. It cuts across all of the trajectories their inerrant thoughts are used to travelling along: the church is the enemy of freedom, other religions have more "ancient wisdom," it's not cool to root for the home team.

These types will require quite a jolt to leave their familiar lanes.

Posted by: mountainecho

at October 14, 2006 12:01 PM

Pim Fortuyn,... and all the others who cannot be dismissed as "right-wing".
------------

What nonsense. If Fortuyn wasn't a right-winger I'll eat a pair of shoes.

Posted by: DrWolffenstein

at October 14, 2006 12:12 PM

Indeed, finding truth about Islam in the Duranty Times is like trying to find love in the Q'uran, you couldn't even find it in the index.

Nice work Hugh.

(P.S. After another pass through the Koran, I have come to the conclusion (well just reinforcing my view actually) that the Allah of Islam certainly isn't one for love, and certainly doesn't love me, and wouldn't love me even if I wasn't a shirker. And therefore about the only logical thing I find in Islam, is that the only response to the somewhat arbitrary and ever so distant and unknowable and really not quite coherent Allah is forced submission - courtesy of his followers of course, and complete with instructions on how to lose your head and wipe your bum.

What a singularly unattractive and undesirable and impotent god is this Allah; small wonder Islam has no redeeming features.

Posted by: saint

at October 14, 2006 1:03 PM

I have posted this before, but it is worth posting again. Here is an editorial by the NYT regarding Israel's raid in Saddam's nuclear reactor in 1981. The utter fatuousness of this article will take your breath away:

Copyright 1981 The New York Times Company ?The New York Times
?June 14, 1981 Editorial Desk? ?HEADLINE: THE FALLOUT FROM BAGHDAD
?"For all the brilliance of its execution, the raid incurred a terrible price. It further inflamed the Arab world and burdened the Moslem nations that are willing to accept the reality of Israel. It deepened the isolation of Egypt's President Sadat, whose diplomacy brought Israel more security than any of its recent military forays. It heightened distrust of America in the Middle East and opened new paths for Soviet intrusion.?Yet Americans who never dreamed a week ago of urging an attack on Iraq's reactor suddenly argue that we should all be grateful to the intrepid Israelis. They condemn President Reagan for responding even with a ritual reprimand. They pronounce France liberated from Iraq's pressure for nuclear fuel and presume Saudi and Egyptian delight at its humiliation. The cause of nonproliferation is said to have found a bold new champion. ''Anything that takes out a nuclear installation, I'm in favor of,'' says Senator Moynihan.?If that's the new realism, why stop at Baghdad? Why not throttle the Indians and Pakistanis by kidnapping their scientists? Why not sabotage or bomb the plants of Europe's nuclear exporters? …?It is no favor to Israel to keep admiring a military boldness that threatens to become a substitute for intrepid diplomacy…. A truly bold Israel would use this time of military superiority not to flaunt its power but to run more risks for accommodation, encouraging especially Palestinians to trade steps toward peace for hunks of territory."?

Posted by: Pavlov's dog

at October 14, 2006 4:34 PM

The New York Times subculture is part of the larger nebula of PC that holds sway over a much broader and deeper sphere than news media.

Posted by: remote_control

at October 14, 2006 5:07 PM

Nice work Hugh, especially about "Thus does the Times have real blood on its hands, and forever."

But its not just them, but hundreds of today's European elite who are responsible for it. That men will be injured is irrefutable - 14 policemen a day in Paris are injured in confrontations with Muslim immigrants - in areas where entire apartment blocks empty out into the street to protest about an arrest of (yet) another muslim criminal. Thats over 5100 a year. Just in Paris.

But people will die, and how many will eventually die is a matter of how long free immigration into Europe is permitted. The Barbarians are not just at the gate - they are running amok in the city!

Every week there's another muslim riot - two weeks ago it was Brussles (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1384 and /1384) - last week it was a 3-day bonanza in Windsor, where the queen lives (she recently opened a muslim prayer room in her castle - she's employing them!) next week they might go to Stockholm for a burn-up there.

No, the problem is an ongoing one that will result in many deaths as governments slowly and painfully come to realise that islam is not consistent with the values the democratic west holds. But this will take 20 years - the current generation of liberal twits and other Useful Idiots needs to be removed, and a new generation, suspicious and hostile to Islam needs to take power. And at that point things get ugly.

Now, the one thing that separates Europe today from civil war is (i) the still relatively low proportion of muslims - raise that to 10 or 15% and that makes a real difference, and (ii) economic recession - or even depression.

Now, Im not supporting any form of violence or discrimination against anyone, but the problem is that years of multiculti brainwashing cannot remove fundamental proletariat dislikes.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Europe will burn again, and it will burn within my lifetime. It is already smouldering.

I blame the French, mainly.

Posted by: Jerusalem

at October 14, 2006 5:36 PM

I blame the French, mainly.
----------- From above posting

I agree on that. Before this nightmare is over I hope that the French are destroyed and the entire area is repopulated with Danes, Dutchmen and Germans.

Posted by: DrWolffenstein

at October 14, 2006 5:45 PM

A small correction: there are in fact some Muslim minorities that cause no problems to the host country. Finland has had a small Tatar minority for the last 130 years or so, and they have never caused any problems at all, and still don't. The problems started coming with Somalis in late 1980s.

Tatars, however, are highly secularised and seem to know how peaceful other people's Islam generally is: they don't allow any Arabs, Somalis, etc. to join their mosque.

However generally speaking you are right.

Posted by: Vera

at October 14, 2006 6:02 PM

The NYT has long been a laughable rag that pretends that it's better than its two New York competitors because, after all, it's not a tabloid. That's why it's so snooty and smug-as well as unread in its home city, except by a few lefties and anti-US types that are equally insufferable. It may have been a respected (and respectable) newspaper at one time but that was long ago and survives today on sheer reputation. I, for one, will never read it until it changes its leftist screeching but it will probably fold before that happens. Thank God for the Internet!

Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS

at October 15, 2006 1:30 AM

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