Richard L. Rubenstein writes in Frontpage:
In the aftermath of the ritualistic near-decapitation of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, as well as the death threats and frivolous “hate-crime” lawsuits directed against honest scholars writing about Islamic extremism, some Muslims and their western sympathizers appear determined to control, by fair means or foul, what is said and written about Islam in the West.
A first-hand example of this trend can be seen in the response to the keynote address I delivered on June 9, 2005 in Krakow, Poland at the Annual Meeting of the Public Administration Theory Network (PAT-Net), an international academic organization, in which I discussed the problems raised by the rapidly increasing number of Muslims in Europe. Some of the immigrants and their European-born descendants have made no secret of the fact that they regard their religion and culture as destined by divine ordinance to transform Europe into a Muslim-dominated imperial realm. Although many have chosen the path of integration, an unknown number have repeatedly stated that they seek to replace the western secular order with a new sacred, absolutist Islamic order…
Such a monumental transformation required the active involvement of senior European officials as documented by Bat Ye”or, an internationally-recognized authority on Euro-Arab relations. She has shown that the Muslim immigration was the result of political decisions taken, more often than not, without public debate, by those same officials and their Arab counterparts in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74.
The purpose of my paper was to analyze the consequences of these decisions not to offer a solution. Of the three respondents to my paper, two academics offered reasonable critiques in a civil manner. The third respondent, Professor Mohamad Al-Khadry of West Virginia University, began by revealing that he had demanded that the program committee withdraw my invitation and apologize to the Muslim community because my speech was “bigoted, racist, hate speech.” He went on to portray me as a racist whose views resembled those of Nazi scholars dealing with Jews.
Disregarding official statistics, Al-Khadry claimed that Muslims constitute only 2% of Europe’s population. He complained that I had used “the works of authors and sources who have often been accused of Islamophobia,” as if any apprehension concerning Islam was out of bounds. He spoke contemptuously of Bernard Lewis and dismissed the views of Bassam Tibi of Germany”s Göttingen University and Mahmoud Ayoub of Temple University, both respected Muslim scholars, whom I cited on population issues.
His worst spleen was reserved for Bat Ye”or and MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute). He labeled Bat Ye”or a bigot, a racist, and an “Islamophobe” and attacked MEMRI as a “pro-Israel propagandist website.” Actually, MEMRI makes available in reliable text translation and subtitled streaming video what is really said and written in the mosques and media of the Middle East. MEMRI has often been attacked for its provenance but never successfully for the accuracy of its translations…
Read it all.