Rod Dreher reports in the Dallas Morning News about a most revealing interview with Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, general secretary of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
Dreher asked Syeed a question about ISNA’s ties to extremists. He writes: “Dr. Syeed’s revealing reaction – he said that my query reminded him of ‘Nazism’ and that I would have to ‘repent’ – tells us a great deal about American Islam’s extremist problem … and ours.”
Precisely. It’s revealing of the tactic that all too many American Muslim spokesmen use to silence uncomfortable questions: they accuse the questioner of racism, bigotry, etc. etc. They’ve used it with me plenty of times, and they will again.
Dreher points out some of ISNA’s ties to extremists and concludes: “Given ISNA’s leadership, it is no wonder Dr. Syeed wouldn’t give a straight answer when a Morning News colleague of mine asked him three times what his organization was doing to fight Islamic extremism. When I asked the man how he squared his profession of tolerance and moderation with having radicals on the ISNA board, Dr. Syeed became hostile, sputtering that my question reminded him of Hitlerian persecution. That is blustering nonsense, of course, and an attempt to silence legitimate questions about ISNA’s agenda through intimidation and misdirection.”
Intimidation and misdirection — that’s the playbook for many American Muslim advocacy groups today. There are several Muslim organizations in the US today about which serious questions can be raised about their ties to radicals and terrorists — and every one of them uses intimidation and misdirection as their chief responses to uncomfortable questions.
Most of the dhimmi press goes right along with it, accepting their smears as fact and allowing them to assail the reputations of decent men. The recent borking of Daniel Pipes, when he was nominated by Bush for a place in the US Institute of Peace, is a case in point.