It is exactly the same here: the school of religious studies at our local university has a dhimmi head and guess which school just received a large grant from Saudi sources for a department of islamic studies?

Posted by: MisIslamist at January 19, 2008 6:54 AM

This is very bad news indeed. We need people to be able to learn Arabic. How is this going to be achieved without indoctrination?

Arabic should be an entirely secular subject. Though 'Islamic Studies' is beyond the pale.

Posted by: devorgilla at January 19, 2008 8:49 AM

"We need people to be able to learn Arabic. How is this going to be achieved without indoctrination?"
-- from a posting above

The need for "people...to learn Arabic" is greatly exaggerated. There is no need to "learn Arabic" in order to learn the contents of the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. 80% of the world's Muslims are not Arabs and do not know Arabic. Arabs today have a great deal of difficulty -- though not as much as English speakers would have reading, unaided, Beowulf or The Seafarer or The Wanderer or the riddles in The Exeter Book -- understanding Qur'anic Arabic. But it is less important to pick up your Thackston (for an elementary guide to Qur'anic Arabic) than to pick up your book on Islamic law, by Joseph Schacht, or on war and peace in Islam (by Majid Khadduri), or other books by Snouck Hurgronje, or Henri Lammens, or others by those Western scholars, those Orientalists, who wrote before the age of fear, the age of flattery, the age of mental confusion, the Age of the Great Inhibition, set in.

And besides, there are native speakers of Arabic -- Maronites, Copts, Jews in Israel who came from Arab lands -- who can give us all the help we need, and who, what's more, can vet others, including possible "islamochristians," who might otherwise be hired, or even put in charge of -- when you have no idea what you are doing, as this Administration has not, you hire, you rely, on all kinds of doubtful characters to give you "insight" and "knowledge."

Hire Youssef Ibrahim. Hire Frank Salameh, whose devastating article on his own experience teaching Arabic one summer at Middlebury deserves to be read, read not only by the President of Middlebury and others who may work to clean up the thought-police and implied threat-thuggery at the Arabic School, but also by those in the government in charge of giving students grants to attend such a school, in the dreamy belief that they will "merely be learning the language and so politics can't come into it." Of course it can.

Hire the equivalent of Kanan Makiya, or if he finally comes around on Islam, hire Makiya himself. and realizes that the missing explanation for what happened in Iraq, is the effect of Islam, its habit of mental submission, its aggression, its Victor/Vanquished view of the universe, its everything that he has had a hard time defending, but still can't quite bring himself to jettison).

Just as the outspoken Magdi Allam, in Italy, from time to time mentions his humble, decent, and officially "Muslim" Egyptian parents (who nonetheless, despite having very little money, made sure to send him to a Christian school in Egypt), so Kanan Makiya has been quick, in the past, when he senses that others (say, on a television panel discussion) are impugning Islam, mentions his pious Shi'a grandmother. But while it is clear that Magdi Allam has reached the stage of "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslim, Kanan Makiya has not yet shown that he has connected the dots of behavior, attitudes, atmospherics, in societies and individuals suffused with Islam, with the texts and tenets of that same Islam. But eventually, because he is an honest man, he will be forced -- he will force himself -- to do so.

And the absurd reliance on Muslims, rather than on non-Muslim native spekaers of Arabic, maddens. It shows that there are too many people in positions of authority who have not studied Islam, not even a bit, and are deep believers in "using moderate Muslims" as their guide to... the other kind.

Gordon England, being led by the nose, is hardly the only one to have been deeply impressed with the quiet voices, sincere looks from liquid-brown eyes, and expressions of deep loyalty to the American Way, and great personal charm -- an entire shtick that may be transparent to you and to me, but then, we're the kind of people who are wary, who don't accept things but do our own homework, and are therefore the kind of company men unlikely to rise high in an atmosphere that rewards groupthink, and company men.

Look at how Hasham Islam has England wrapped around his little finger, or should we vary the metaphor, and have him, rather, leading England around by the nose? Look at how cleverly Hasham Isham's time in the military, and even that of his son, is exploited so as to reassure England and others. Would, could, someone who was not totally, one-hundred-percent loyal to the United States, to the flag and to the Republic for which it stands, and of course to the Constitution, and especially the First Amendment, possibly, conceivably, have served, have encouraged his son to serve, in the United States military?

But of course he would, he could. What better way to fit in? What better way, from his vantage, to push this "moderate Muslim" business and to keep down, or keep out, those who, like Coughlin, dared to suggest there was a bit more about Islam that people in the Pentagon, people making policy, really had to learn about?

Oh, we have all the Arabic speakers we need, but fearful, ignorant, and also dangerous people, are keeping them out, and hiring the wrong ones, on the principle that "only a Muslim can understand Islam" or "only a Muslim can be hired" to deal with "fellow Muslims" or "only a Muslim can possibly broadcast to Muslim countries."

Only a Communist can be hired to broadcast about democratic freedoms, for Radio Liberty? For Radio Free Europe? Or could an emigre, a refugee, a defector from Communism, or someone who never was a Commmunist at all, be the best person to describe the attraction of Western-style democracy and individiual rights, and link the failures and hideousness of Communist-ruled societies to Communism itself?

And the same is true, mutatis mutandis, with dealing with the meaning, and menace, of Islam.

Posted by: Hugh at January 19, 2008 9:38 AM

"Would, could, someone who was not totally, one-hundred-percent loyal to the United States, to the flag and to the Republic for which it stands, and of course to the Constitution, and especially the First Amendment, possibly, conceivably, have served, have encouraged his son to serve, in the United States military?"

You damn betcha. Anyone remember John Walker and his son, Michael? John, a former Navy commo specialist, was arrested in 1985 after loading a KGB dead drop with classified documents Michael had obtained on the USS Nimitz, where he was serving as a seaman. (Walker's brother and his best friend were also subsources.)

Assessing the Walker ring take, KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko later said, “Walker was the greatest case in KGB history. We deciphered millions of your messages. If there had been a war, we would have won it.”

Posted by: Papa Whiskey at January 19, 2008 12:48 PM

Orville Norquist, under the ruse of being a tax-cutting hawk, has full credentials at the White House; using this cover he has infused a large network of Islamists within the federal government. They have gotten responsible positions wherein they can grease the wheels of Islamist supremacy.

The FBI and CIA will not hire translators from the many readily available non-Muslim sects that speak Arabic (Jews, Marionites, Copts, etc.)and the likely reason is that some of Norquist's Islamic plants are disqualifying them. (The are afraid the truth will come out and it will not be Islam-friendly). I understand that we are currently years behind in translating the secret documents found in Iraq. Apparently the translations that the CIA and FBI are now getting have all been filtered by Norquist's crew of Lsiamist translators.

Which brings up a question. Who was doing the translating before 9/11? Might filtered translations have been the reason these agencies so miserably performed re 9/11?

Posted by: Jimmy Bones at January 20, 2008 1:30 AM

Erratum sheet for posting just above:

For "Orville Norquist" read "Grover Norquist"

An understandable mistake.

Just keep Sesame Street in mind, and forget Kitty Hawk.

Posted by: Hugh at January 20, 2008 3:31 PM