Shahid Alam is the Northeastern University professor who compared the 9/11 hijackers to the Founding Fathers, and then falsely accused Jihad Watch, LGF and others of orchestrating “attacks — many of them death threats” against him.
In a piece at FrontPage a while ago I explained why his remarks were objectionable. But the good professor took no notice, and now, in a new piece at CounterPunch explaining why he is refusing to go on Bill O’Reilly’s show, “FoxNews Puts Me In Its Crosshairs,” he still seems to believe, or to want his readers to believe, that no reasonable questions were raised about his remarks. And he repeats his smears of Jihad Watch and Little Green Footballs.
Like other Islamic apologists I have encountered, including some professed “moderates,” Alam seems to prefer to characterize — falsely — any opposition to his views as personal attacks on him, rather than to address their substance in any way. His supporters are thus enflamed to respond to attacks on his “free speech,” as he encourages them to do today at CounterPunch, but no notice is taken of the genuine questions raised by his writings. And certainly no attempt is made to engage in the “dialogue” so ballyhooed by his ilk.
All this is just a variant of the tactic used by American Muslim advocacy groups: smear as “Islamophobic” anyone who dares raise uncomfortable questions, thus attempting to rule the questions themselves out of the realm of acceptable discourse. If Shahid Alam succeeds in characterizing those who question his views as rabid hatemongers who are raving and threatening him, he will effectively silence them — and certainly make the mainstream media afraid to question him.
It has worked many times before.