Intellectucally disarming the United States, buying higher education lock, stock, and barrel, was a brilliant move by the Islamists and jihadis. Is it merely a lucky coincidence Orientalism came out as Iran went to Khomeini and Wahhabism went on full export?

Now it's impossible to get any traction with ideas which should be blindingly, glaringly obvious. To wit: explicitly violent passages within Islamic scripture used by jihadis all over the world to justify mass murder are ruled out by people who are actually *gasp* paid to think about such things. But enough of the money flows from Gulf Arabs to make the obvious, relevant, and dispositive not worth pursuing. Not to mention the leftists who still think of Shia radicalism as a blow against the Shah and NATO. Never mind the fact Khomeini long ago put their fellow travelers up against the wall.

There's not much point in taking the war overseas when we're letting the jihadis recruit many of our best and brightest here at home. The new Triangle of Death will be partially bounded by Durham and Raleigh, among many others.

Posted by: Beagle at February 17, 2007 12:27 PM

"Sinister" barely begins to cover it.

One of the most important weapons the anti-jihadists can put in their arsenal right now would be to press the US govermment into putting legislation in place that would effectively outlaw higher education institutions from receiving money from nations that are or are known to be harboring enemies of the United States (particularly if they are a known threat national security). This should have been a law anyway!!!

THIS TYPE OF LEGISLATION IS PROBABLY HOW AMERICANS ARE GOING TO STOP CORRUPT PROFESSORS FROM COMMITTING TREASON AGAINST AMERICA as we see in the above article.

Everyone at this blog needs to contact their government reps and seriously discuss this issue and the drafting of effective legislations to correct the problem.

The situation is critical. And there is no time like now to get busy fixing it.

Posted by: pythagoras at February 17, 2007 2:43 PM

Is there any cleric in the Catholic Church anymore like Sixtus V, who said that "While I live, every criminal must die!" Read jihadist for criminal, and you get the drift....

Sixtus V said that he would not distinguish between bandits, and the various lords who harboured and made common cause with the bandits, who at that time, made the Papal States a precarious place for travel.

And that edict was not a dead letter.

He executed the bandits and their lords, beheaded them, spiked their heads and displayed them on the bridge of San Angelo.

It was said that during his papacy "there were more heads on San Angelo than there were melons in the marketplace."

He accomplished what few tried before, he made the Papal States a safe place for travel.

He executed over 20,000 criminals, and did so within a FIVE year span, for his papacy only lasted five years.

AND NOW, we get clerics LAMENTING the execution of a mass-murderer.

And what's more, we get this Patrick Gaffney, this item of Irish idiocy, uttering one stupid utterance after another.

Let 'em have it Fitzgerald!

Posted by: Dan at February 17, 2007 3:42 PM

This is why sites like this one with JW and many other anti-jihad sites are so important.

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at February 17, 2007 6:52 PM

Its a well known fact that the academic leadership in our leading universities have been sourcing their drugs from those students wanting the better grades.

Posted by: credit man at February 17, 2007 10:10 PM

Brilliant one from Hugh Fitzgerald.
(How he manages to organize his "choochoo " thoughts without rage amazes me. My choochoo runs helterskelter...hence no punctuation marks whatever:))

Beagle:
"Intellectucally disarming the United States, buying higher education lock, stock, and barrel, was a brilliant move by the Islamists and jihadis".

Yes, you are right. indian pc media indian charlatans, Infinity Foundations of Rajiv Malhotras who make millions trillions whatever as "grants" .They are actually moonlighting employees....it is so atrociously SHocking and Egregiously Ungrateful of them.
How could such scum badmouth America in American Soil and Land Itself ?
Hugh knows their ploy. (Sorry can't find the url) Provide lavish display of food...This way I would curse them much more venomously. They have only contributed to OBESITY EPIDEMIC in America too. I am not being flippant at all. Am very Serious.

Posted by: Crows&Cows at February 17, 2007 10:14 PM

Father Gaffney should familiarize himself with what his Pope said about the irrationality of Islam:

http://islamic-danger.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-pope-really-said-what-did-pope.html

Posted by: unicorns62000 at February 17, 2007 11:07 PM

one theological idiot talking about other religious idiocy. who cares about mainstream religious idiots?

but sadly they control politics, what a pathethic world we live in. how ridiculous.

Posted by: leonthepigfarmer at February 17, 2007 11:56 PM

I have heard this same kind of assertion regarding Islam from so many heralded academics. It begins, "every religious traditions has its...", and you complete the sentence.

Hugh Fitzgerald's devastaing criticism above deserves a response. But, if folks are too lazy to do so, then could at least a few 'intellectuals' admit that beginning sentences with sweeping generalizations like this make the likelihood of a very common fallacy a matter of concern, namely, hasty generalization.

Isn't one purpose of higher education and learning to avoid these sorts of covering statement? Isn't a purpose of academic training to train the mind to see the individual traits of the trees rather than the general traits of the forest?

Then, let's stop talking this kind of language when it comes to Islam. Rather, let's talk about Islam itself as Mr. Fitzgerald does so above.

So, what say you?

Posted by: JTF at February 18, 2007 1:09 AM

On a different thread on this site I have inveighed against the stupidity and cupidity of false academics. I am surprised only that I have to do so again so soon after the last time (at http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015299.php#comments ).

Patrick D. Gaffney stands condemned as a total illiterate PC leftist out of his own mouth - read his own words (pretty meaningless, incidentally) at http://alumni.nd.edu/~ndc_sjsv/shmrck0202.pdf

Here, for your benefit(!) are some of them:

"For most Americans, the Islamic world has long seemed a far-away place characterized [sic] by a vague mix of oriental charm, petroleum wealth, and religious fanaticism. While new versions of the old stereotypes continue to dominate standard media reports and many strands of popular culture, massive changes have taken place in the Middle East [really, just what are these 'massive changes' and why do so many of us find them hard to detect?] and elsewhere, which are substantially reshaping modern Muslim identity [really, prove it!] . The factors underlying these movements, together with their politico-religious implications on the national and international levels, cannot be fully understood when viewed solely from the outside [of course not: we westerners are always bound to wrong because we don't understand Arabic and Arabic society because we are inferior, of course]. An examination closer to the ground of the ways different regions of the Islamic world have experienced today’s complex pressures [caused by us?] and possibilities and how they are seeking to respond, points to a fascinating variety of answers [including 'jihad', one presumes?]. Furthermore, as contemporary Muslims continue searching for ways to overcome what they perceive [aha, at last, some honesty] as cultural domination, economic injustice, political tyranny, and moral corruption [correctly or incorrectly, in your opinion - please say so and don't leave a hanging point of false argument], they are also forced to address difficult questions about the use of violence [nope, they don't address violence, they just continue using it; are you blind or stupid? Is it really that difficult to categorise violence as wrong - oops, course it is - for a moslem and for you, Gaffney!]. By gaining a better recognition of the specific causes [the implication is that we and our beliefs, attitudes and politics are the causes] behind what can be described as civil war in nations such as Iran, Algeria, Lebanon, Sudan, Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Somalia, many negative prejudices as well as certain volatile generalizations, including an obsession with “terrorism,” can be put in a more intelligible perspective, opening the way to a much richer and more realistic grasp of the challenges currently facing many Islamic nations [and what about the challenges facing us because of the islamic nations' reliance on, as Gaffney puts it, in inverted commas, "terrorism". There, doesn't that make you feel better because he put a bad word in inverted commas. It doesn't really exist, you see, except in your mind!]

Once again, we have here an academic who simply doesn't get it. A man who, quite simply, cannot think. He has no grasp of fundamental logical principles. He is incapable of arguing from first, and obvious, principles towards a rational conclusion. The very words which he uses and the way in which he strings them together indicate, quite clearly, a compleat inability to accept and use logical and rational European thought processes.

How the hell did this man get tenure at Notre Dame? What are you Americans doing to allow this? How, in the name of all that's Holy, did this man ever get listened to in the first place. He is, quite simply, an idiot - a sub-standard academic (barely that, actually: given his amazing leaps of faith masquerading as logic I have to say that this man is little better than a High School drop-out) with no grasp of logic what-so-ever.

Even the dimmest and most stupid poster on this site could destroy the adolescent logic of Gaffney's world view without breaking sweat.

Dominic.

Posted by: necessitasnonhabetlegem at February 18, 2007 2:29 AM

How did he get tenure at Notre Dame? Why shouldn't he? Wasn't Cornel West eagerly picked up by Princeton and given a University Professorship? Isn't Hamid Dabashi the Hagop Kevorkian Professor at Columbia University, where once walked Joseph Schacht, and Arthur Jeffery, and the spirit of Jacques Barzun may still, though ever more faintly, be detected, here and there, among somoe of the older, less Sammy-glickish faculty, those who are old enough not to have been touched by post-colonial discourse and the theoretical fashions from France of those who were raised up in a word-besotted society and in assuaging their boredom, came up with grotesque "theories of literature" to combat their mental ennui, which theories were then exported, in a simplified and distorted way, and exported to the United States, which is not a word-besotted country, and whose young can hardly read or write, and need not "theory" but rather need all the training in the craft of writing and in the art of reading, in putting words together themselves, but at the same time acquiring the habit of reading and in being able to figure out what it is that makes certain kind of reading more interesting and memorable and pleasurable than others, through practice of textual analysis, the kind that comes before the task even of the amateur critic, that task, as Johnson's lapidary formula puts it, of "improving opinion into knowledge."

Posted by: Hugh at February 18, 2007 9:39 AM

So fight them until there is no more disbelief in Islam and all submit to the religion of Allah alone in the whole world.
--- God decaring war on all other religions in Koran 8:39

Here's a distinct feature for you, Fr. Gaffney. An ideology dedicated to stamping out all other idologies. An ideology that demands prejudice and discrimination from its enemies, and everybody else is an enemy, for to not prejudge Islam and discriminate against Moslems is to commit slow motion suicide.

Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at February 18, 2007 2:02 PM

Isn't Hamid Dabashi the Hagop Kevorkian Professor at Columbia University, where once walked Joseph Schacht, and Arthur Jeffery, and the spirit of Jacques Barzun may still, though ever more faintly, be detected, here and there, among somoe of the older, less Sammy-glickish faculty, those who are old enough not to have been touched by post-colonial discourse and the theoretical fashions from France of those who were raised up in a word-besotted society and in assuaging their boredom, came up with grotesque "theories of literature" to combat their mental ennui, which theories were then exported, in a simplified and distorted way, and exported to the United States, which is not a word-besotted country, and whose young can hardly read or write, and need not "theory" but rather need all the training in the craft of writing and in the art of reading, in putting words together themselves, but at the same time acquiring the habit of reading and in being able to figure out what it is that makes certain kind of reading more interesting and memorable and pleasurable than others, through practice of textual analysis, the kind that comes before the task even of the amateur critic, that task, as Johnson's lapidary formula puts it, of "improving opinion into knowledge."

Posted by: Hugh at February 18, 2007 09:39 AM

Wow, what a sentence!

Posted by: Susanp at February 18, 2007 10:37 PM

"what a sentence!"
-- from a posting above

I've just been visiting Molly Bloom in her Gibraltar girlhood days, and something must have stuck. Were my fingers to stop for a second, I'd never complete the thought. So, if the grammar or sense falters here and there, I make the same appeal to you as is made to the groundlings watching Henry V:

"Still be kind, and eke out our performance with your mind."

Posted by: Hugh at February 18, 2007 11:43 PM

Hugh, only you could pull off something like that. It made perfect sense, but you must have been out of breath when the period finally fell.

Posted by: Susanp at February 20, 2007 12:08 AM

Between visiting Molly and advising Kirkman on the proper arrangement of his 15 schoolgirls, I don't see where Hugh finds the time to do any reading, much less put pen to paper.

Posted by: Marc at February 22, 2007 2:25 AM