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Christiane Amanpour, despite her family background, has no real experience or knowledge of Islam. Herself secular, and married (in a mariage blanc) to James Rubin, she is confused about Islam. She knows Iranian Muslims who are nothing like the Iranian Muslims now in power, but she fails to recognize that those she knows were never the real thing. She doesn’t realize that they were unrepresentative, as unrepresentative of Islam as was, say, Maxim Litvinov of the Soviet regime -- even though he served that regime as Foreign Minister and as ambassador.
She is defensive about Islam without knowing about it, and without knowing how the primitive Muslim masses think. Yet that is what should count in Infidel calculations, and not the suave and often deceptive exceptions -- whether they are Chalabi and other westernized Shi'a exiles inveigling the Americans into removing Saddam Hussein, or plummy-voiced Prince Hassan, a real performance artist, capable of impressing the impressionable.
Amanpour has never studied Islam, never quite grasped the significance of its texts. After all, apparently her own parents were capable of ignoring large parts of them. Nor has she studied the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims and destruction of non-Muslim cultures, although as someone of Iranian descent, she might well have bothered to do so. Her name gives her, for audiences, a false authenticity, and allows her to be endowed with an authority her level of knowledge does not actually entitle her to claim, or to have attributed to her.
Meanwhile, there is that CNN glory. There is that money. There is that celebritydom. There is that Washington wedding, attended by le tout Clinton administration, and that marriage of convenience, that mariage blanc.
Petro-dollars explain part of it. Stupidity another part. In the case of Amanpour, one wondered how she would come out. Would she realize, in the manner of so many Iranians in exile, that Islam and not merely the Islamic Republic of Iran, was the problem? Would she move from her older positions, like Oriana Fallaci, and see what Islam was all about? Or would she play her "Islamic" card for all it was worth to her -- in entree here and there (to the Hajj, for example)? She is a careerist hell-bent on furthering her career. And what better way to further her career at this point in history than in being a Muslim? Not a real one -- her faith is as sham as her marriage. Instead, she is almost a "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslim, who does what she does out of a curious blend of monomaniacal careerism and ambition, together with filial piety. There is also in play for her all sorts of misremembered nostalgia for that jeunesse-doree life as a spoiled child in Teheran -- a child of the very class that benefited financially from the ancien regime, that corrupt, stupid, and unaware regime, that when confronted with Khomeini did not know where to put its feet and hands.
She used to be tolerable -- just. No longer.
Why does the press, why does television, who do political leaders simply refuse to even hint at the truth? Do they think this makes things better, makes us more able to conduct ourselves in what is a permanent war? When, to give one example, 60 Minutes some time ago had a segment devoted to Muslim mistreatment of women among the immigrants in France, the bland and blind though endlessly self-assured Amanpour never, not once, mentioned the word "Islam." When one of her interviewees explains the oppression of young girls -- mass rapes, burning to death, that sort of thing -- as being the result of "tradition," she lets that vague word stand unchallenged and unglossed.
What will it take? Must there be bombs in Jain temples, or at a Confucian altar, sufficiently publicized to make clear to all but the hopelessly stupid and those who are wedded to false symmetries and pat phrases (not just Amanpour, but Tom Friedman, with his platitudes and fake plongitudes, comes nautically to mind)? How much evidence had to be assembled before Copernicus could dare suggest that, after all, the earth really did travel around the sun? How much evidence needs to be accumulated about what is happening now, and what has been happening for 1350 years of Islam's aggression against all non-Muslims, for people to become their own little Copernicuses, and arrive at the unstoppable and ineluctable and unavoidable explanation of what is going on? How much evidence needs to be accumulated for even Christiane Amanpour to do so?
Posted by Hugh at January 19, 2007 12:32 PM
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Amanpour must be "Islam with a human face" reminiscent of Czechslovakia's "Socialism with a human face" in 1968. No matter how much one sugarcoats these sorts of things they still are rotten to the core.
Posted by: ISLAMSFORLOSERS![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 19, 2007 1:20 PM
Yesterday I asked you about her and I got a rather cold response.
You made up for it today, Mr. Fitzgerald...
With your permission, may I reprint your article on my blog?
Also, it would be interesting to get your opinion on the other perps from CNN, like the hyserical Brent Sadler, Jonathan Mann, Blitzer & Zain Verjee, this obvious shill for Islam. There's always more, but its good to put it in context, to add a picture to the BS, every little bit helps...
at January 19, 2007 1:40 PM
Yes, reprint away.
I used to see Christine Amanpour quite regularly on CNN but for some reason I was not invited to her wedding. I don't know the others. When that invitation was not forthcoming after I had gone and bought something at Tiffany's, nicely baby-blue-boxed, for the two of them, my feelings were hurt, and I changed the channel, permanently.
Posted by: Hugh at January 19, 2007 2:03 PM
Hugh, your writing suggests Amanpour claims to be a "Muslim," even if only superficially.
Yet her first name Christiane surely suggests otherwise, and from this bio (http://usliberals.about.com/od/thepressandjournalist1/p/Amanpour.htm) we learn that she attended Roman Catholic schools in the UK from age 11 on.
Where have you seen/heard her claim to be a Muslim?
at January 19, 2007 2:12 PM
I think Amanpour is the product of a mixed marriage. As for attending Catholic schools in England, many among the semi-secular Muslim elite send their children to good, i.e. Christian or Western schools, both in the West and within the Middle East. Chalabi and Allawi and many others in the Iraqi elite attended Baghddad College, run by Jesuits. Musharraf went to a Christian school in Pakistan. Edward Said went to Victoria College in Egypt. In Kuwait, the most advanced Kuwaitis send their children to the American School. At one time many of those in the political establishments of Egypt, of Syria, of Lebanon, of Iraq, and elsewhere, were graduates of AUB (the American University of Beirut). Others have gone to the American University of Cairo. In Turkey, there was Roberts College. In choice of education, as in choice of medical care and in so much else, Muslim elites who can choose anything choose what the non-Muslim West has to offer. They're no fools. , the observable behavior of is standard for the secularized elites of Islam, either in exile (as her family may then have been), or even in the Middle East.
But is this ever pointed out? Does anyone ever note that the Muslim elites prefer, for their own children, a Western education because it is the only one that is any good in the Muslim world? No. No one does. And the farce of filial piety toward Islam continues, even among those whose behavior shows, in every way, that deep down, they recognize, even if they will never say, the deep and permanent intellectual failures of Islam -- failures that go with the political, economic, and social failures that are a natural result of the belief-system of Islam.
Posted by: Hugh at January 19, 2007 2:29 PM
"How much evidence needs to be accumulated...?" -- Hugh Fitzgerald
There are two different scenarios whereby evidence accumulation functions to change a mind:
1) With rationality and l'ame ouverte relatively unhampered by various ideological boxes, a principle similar to Occam's razor operates, whereby what constitutes a sufficient amount of evidence by which to shift from one interpretation to another -- even diametrically opposed if need be -- interpretation, is usually as small as possible, and every last smoking gun by which to connect the dots is not necessary.
2) With, however, rationality and l'ame ouverte hampered by various ideological boxes (particularly the one Super-Box of PC Multiculturalism currently dominant), what constitutes a sufficient amount of evidence by which to shift from one interpretation to another is inordinately large, and any attempts at any shift that go against the grain are, furthermore, obstructed by pre-fab axioms which enjoy social and intellectual strength by their interlocking logical contiguity within larger paradigms that have become mainstream.
The simple answer to Hugh's question above is that it is probably not quite as hopeless as Bob Dylan's rhetorical questions in Blowin' In The Wind; but, on the other hand, it is very likely that the sufficient accumulation of evidence to shake the majority in the West out of their Box will, tragically, comprise the horrible deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and terrible damage to infrastructure.
Posted by: remote_control at January 19, 2007 2:49 PM
Mrs. Amanpour is the child of an English mother and a Persian father. But not only is she half English/half Persian-
I am convinced she's half man/half woman
Whatever surprise Mr. Rubin got on wedding night, he seems to have taken it in stride.
Speaking of their wedding night; I can't shake the image of Jamie Rubin, the morning after, standing on a 4th floor balcony of the Watergate Hotel, waving a bloody sheet and gesticulating wildly above a frenzied mob of Washington pool reporters- ululating, firing off rifles and waving copies of the New York Times-
WHY?
The marriage of Rubin and Amanpour(Rubinpour?) is truly a match made in Woody Allen's Hell. They were married in 1998- at the time, I actually thought the Kosovo War was Madeleine Albright's gift to the newlyweds.
When I heard about Eason Jordan's charge that the US military were targeting journalists, I thought of "Rubinpour" and said to myself-
"Hell, it's about time!"
Posted by: november1981 at January 19, 2007 3:28 PM
amanpour hosting special about Britains "radical"
muslims on CNN at 5 p.m. pacific time saturday..
at January 19, 2007 3:43 PM
Okay, now that Huge and others have said what's essential .. I'll move to the crucial: Would someone please tell Ms. Amanpour to put her shirt/jacket collar down? It's so Saturday Night Fever. And has Christiane hired Tammy Faye Baker to do her makeup or what? She's positively gooey.
Posted by: Daisytoo at January 19, 2007 5:00 PM
remote_control posted:
"The simple answer to Hugh's question above is that it is probably not quite as hopeless as Bob Dylan's rhetorical questions in Blowin' In The Wind; but, on the other hand, it is very likely that the sufficient accumulation of evidence to shake the majority in the West out of their Box will, tragically, comprise the horrible deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and terrible damage to infrastructure."
Yep. It has to be something sufficiently awful that you can't draw attention away from it by saying, "Well, the price of gas just dipped below two bucks,..."
Posted by: freedomschool at January 19, 2007 5:04 PM
Hugh, thanks for the insight into the education habits of the muslim elites around the world. I was not aware of this but I am not one bit surprised, it's just a little more ammunition for my arguments with the ignorant liberal college students I work with. The 9-11 conspiracy crackpot professor Kevin Barret is speaking somewhere in my city right now and these moonbat potheads couldn't shut up about him today, all of them are islam apologists. As for Ms. Amanpour, I've never liked her or listened to her, hell I've never liked CNN either.
Posted by: NeverSubmit at January 19, 2007 8:57 PM
Hugh raises good points. The following article shows that Christiane Amanpour has no excuse to whitewash Islam.
"The New French Revolution
Population Of France Is Almost 10 Percent Muslim"
"Correspondent Christiane Amanpour reports."
quote
“There was a trial in Lille where a 13-year-old girl was gang raped by 80 men. Sometimes, it’s 80, or 50 or 10. It’s absolutely terrible,” says Bellil. “In the case of Argenteuil, it was horrible. A young woman was raped in a school. Of course, everybody knew, but they're so afraid of these young men that they prefer to close their eyes. That's the price of peace in the ghettos.”
When the verdicts came down in this case, the courthouse turned into a madhouse. Eighteen teenagers were convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl over a two-month period. But what really shocked France was how the mothers of those boys reacted.
“You call this justice, seven years in prison for some oral sex,” says one mother. “It's the girl who should be behind bars.”
end quote
quote
What is it about the projects that is at the root of this violence?
“I think it’s because of the tradition that make the boys think that the girls should be treated this way and not that way,” says Doudane. “It’s not France here.”
end quote
Posted by: Old Atlantic at January 19, 2007 9:38 PM
The above is the article Hugh was presumably referencing in his discussion.
Posted by: Old Atlantic at January 19, 2007 9:39 PM
Hugh, I agree with your well-written synopsis of Christiane, but I'm puzzled by the 'sham' reference to her marriage to Jamie Rubin. Am I missing something? Don't they have a kid? Mind you, she, no doubt, appears to wear the pants in that union, but the sham issue of convienance implies they got married to further careers or to hide something. That would be juicy; I'm just not aware of anything like that here, although it would make juicy gossip. Would you have expected anything else on Islam from her? I wonder if Jamie Rubin is still in bed with his Islamist pals in Kosovo? The blanc stuff is beyond me though. LOL.
Posted by: biorabbi at January 20, 2007 12:53 AM
Interesting subject, Amanpour. Isn't it?
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/01/17/is-cnns-christiane-amanpour-on-the-take-also/
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at January 20, 2007 1:13 AM
Amanpour is a total idiot. I don't agree with the Iraw war, neither do Hugh or Robert. But we don't suggest that the Iraq war has caused the radicalism that has occurred among Muslims in Britain. The cause of the bigotry of those young men in Britain is Islam. Not the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the Israel-Arab wars, the Crusades, Sobieski, Charles Martel or El Cid.
Posted by: DavidE at January 20, 2007 1:40 PM
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