Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald reflects on the editorial choices of the world’s foremost newspaper:
“This quote does not appear in today’s New Duranty Times. In fact, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz has not been mentioned in its august pages since November 2004.”
— from Robert’s comments hereNo. Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz has not been in The New Duranty Times, though a “Palestinian” Arab who feels people are “staring at her” and that this is completely uncalled-for, and doesn’t make her feel good, is given the space to discuss how she feels, and how a sweaty Al Gore, handing back to her something she had dropped while on an exercise machine at the Kennedy School (which like most American institutions of so-called “higher” learning is not just about reading and writing anymore, what with the snack bar, and the Rape Crisis Center, and the psychiatric services, and the on-site travel agency, and the Vice-President for Affirmative Action, and the Tenure Grievance Committee, and the Vice-President for Gender Equality, and the Ward Churchill Professorship in Ethnic Identity, and the — oh god, fill it in yourself), gave her a new or a renewed or some kind of hope, some scintilla that just possibly, there was hope after all for America in that gallant gesture by Al Gore. No, that’s what The New Duranty Times has time for.
Let’s see what People, Places, and Things have NOT been in The New Duranty Times since September 11, 2001. Has there any mention of the Hadith and its various recensions, and what, for example, an “isnad-chain” is? No? What about the Sira — the biography of Muhammad, which with the Hadith together make up the Sunna — has that, have they, been discussed or even mentioned in the tens of thousands of pages of The New Duranty Times?
What about the details of Muhammad’s life? Any chance we might be learning those details sometime soon, since the example of Muhammad, uswa hasana, the Perfect Model for everyone for all time, really is full of piquant episodes? There is Asma bint Marwan — sorry, did Tom Friedman devote a column to her, and I happened to miss it? What about the Banu Qurayza, or the Khaybar Oasis? Jihadists invoke such episodes in their communiqués — has the Times troubled to explain these invocations? In all the discussions of the treatment of women in Muslim countries, has The New Duranty Times seen fit to quote from the Qur’an or Hadith on the subject of women? About beating them “lightly,” as Abdullah Yusuf Ali emends Qur’an 4:34 (the Arabic contains no “lightly”)? What about little Aisha, espied by Muhammad at age 6, playing with her toys, and “married” to him when she reached the ripe old age of nine — is there anything about Aisha that might be worth bringing to the attention of readers of The New Duranty Times? Is there the slightest reason to think that the example of Aisha might have something to do with a certain law about the age at which girls could marry, that Khomeini had passed just as soon as he came to power in Iran?
What else has not been deemed fit to print in The New Duranty Times? Has there been any discussion, anywhere, about the Zoroastrians of Iran, and the treatment they have received, now and in the past, at the hands of Muslims? Might that not be an important topic, given the disenchantment with Islam of so many of those capable of thought in the Islamic Republic of Iran?
And who are these “Christians” in Iraq anyway? What is an Assyrian, or what a Chaldean? And those Mandeans whose libraries of ancient manuscripts were burned up by Muslims on the rampage in Iraq — who are these Mandeans? What’s that all about?
Oh, and please explain why Abdullah of Jordan has a Circassian guard, and why Saddam Hussein’s waiters and tasters were all Christians, and why the Assad clan in Syria relies, in part, on various non-Muslim groups to protect the maximum leaders?
Oh, and what are Alawites anyway, and why were 82 Alawite cadets murdered in 1980 or 1981 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood? What do real Muslims think of Alawites — gosh, if The New Duranty Times isn’t going to tell us, well where shall we go to find out?
And what if we wanted to find out more about the Qur’an, and what Western scholarship has revealed about it? Yes, a few years ago there was a single, quite good article by Alexander Stille (the one in which apologists for Islam are described as offering “sugary nonsense” by Patricia Crone, who would not allow her name to be mentioned, just as her colleague Michael Cook seems not too interested in having “Hagarism” which he and she wrote together, be reprinted — now why is that, do you suppose?), but that was about it.
Anyone recall any of these terms being explained in The New Duranty Times: tafsir? naskh? isnad? muhaddithin? No? Why not?
Now, I can understand why the overly-consonantal Pole above has not become a household word, but why has there not been a single mention in The New Duranty Times of Magdi Alam, the Egyptian-turned-Italian who appears on the RAI (television), writes for the Corriere (where he is an editor) and, next to Oriana Fallaci, is possibly the most important former of minds on the subject of Islam in Italy? Why has he not been discussed?
And in France, not a word about Alain Finkielkraut? Alexandre del Valle? Alain Bescancon? Anne-Marie Delcambre? Yvan Rioufol? These people do not exist, or have escaped the notice of whoever these days, from his perch at where? — the Hotel Crillon, perhaps, so close to the American Embassy, so far from France and les quartiers chauds? — is reporting, merely reporting, for The New Duranty Times.
Anyone see a mention of Pavel Kohut and his warnings about Islam? Anyone at The New Duranty Times remember who Pavel Kohut is, or are we done with the Czechs for a while — been there, done that?
And what about a certain fiery Barcelonan, who warns about Islam? What about that minister in Aznar’s government, with the Basque name, and the perfect English, who has also been sounding the alarm about Islam? Perhaps just a word or two about them — just a word?
Oh, there is so much more to mention.
But here is one final thing. When, where, how, has there been any mention of Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Azam Kamguian, Anwar Shaikh, or other articulate former Muslims, ex-Muslims and not “soft” Muslims who more or less reject 90% of it but are kept tied to the name “Muslim” by the thread that filial piety spins?
Why no column by Ibn Warraq, but a “Palestinian” girl can feel sorry for herself in public, simply unable to comprehend why any American might for any reason look without unalloyed pleasure on her hijab, whether she is on the exercise machine, or off?
The New Duranty Times is indeed zero for three.
Fortunately, there is now the Internet.