The dhimmi Saudi shill John Esposito, whose word still reigns supreme in the White House, and who has praised the suicide-terror-endorsing Sheikh Qaradawi as a “reformist,” has now fallen so low as to echo paranoid conspiracy theories about Daniel Pipes being behind the printing of the Danish cartoons.
He also recommends that Muslims promote themselves more aggressively in the West. And I’m sure that he will be ready to help with that promotion.
“Lack of Arab, Muslim lobby in West blamed on authoritarian regimes,” from the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Olivia:
“How many Muslim countries have vibrant, aggressive exchange programmes?” he asked. Esposito noted that in contrast to this, the Jews have fared better by bringing together scholars, intellectuals, journalists etc for dialogue, not only in the US, but also in Israel.
“Arab and Muslim governments have not promoted that as aggressively as they should. If anything, they wind up looking as if they used their money to promote their brand of Islam, which is often exclusivist vis-a-vis other brands of Islam in America and Europe, and also vis-a-vis Christians and Jews,” he pointed out. There are exceptions to this though, he added. He noted that Waleed Bin Talal has started two American study programmes at AUC Cairo and AUB in Lebanon, where Arabs can learn about America.
“He is giving $20 million each to Harvard and Georgetown University in order to promote relations between the Muslim world and the West. How many Arabs and Muslims have done it? Some have done it, but not in a concerted way. They never have, even though the wealth is there,” he said.
Why don’t you just shout, “Show me the money!!!,” John?
Responding to a KT question on the onus of solutions to all problems being shifted to the Muslims, Esposito said that there are those who can interpret it that way. “And clearly, I say elements in the European media, and European and American society do feel that way,” he said. He noted that when there are Western intellectuals like Salman Rushdie and others like him who tend to talk in a way that they shift the onus, “not to say that both sides are a part of the problem and that both should be part of the solution. I would say that the western media and western secular fundamentalists are part of the problem… the cartoon issue was an unwarranted level of provocation and it doesn’t take much to know what is happening there,” he said.
An “unwarranted level of provocation.” Just get rid of that freedom of speech thing and nobody will get hurt.
“First of all, it’s a very small and not that consequential newspaper, but it is generally a right wing anti-immigrant newspaper, and clearly what the European Press was saying reflected a growing anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attitude in sectors of Europe,” he said. He surmised that this attitude is behind the reasoning that if someone wanted to live in the West or be a part of that society, they better put up with the values. “Well, a part of our society means being this: “˜You can be a Muslim, but you have to be a Norwegian first or a Dane first, and being a Dane means that you have to accept this kind of “˜cartooning”, and I think that’s provocative. In fact, the editor of the newspaper said that is what he wanted to do,” he said.
He added that he had heard from many reputable sources in Washington that when the editor of the Danish newspaper (that published the cartoons) came to Washington last time, he met with Daniel Pipes and spent a fair amount of time. “˜Esposito” [sic] described Pipes as an agent provocateur. According to him, a lot of what was involved in the cartoon situation was basically secular fundamentalist Europeans who are anti-immigrant and as an extension of that, clearly anti-Islam.
“And yet, they are hypocrites because the German newspaper that published those cartoons would never publish cartoons that dealt with the Jews of the Holocaust; that would be unacceptable,” he explained.
He added that Europe has what it calls hate speech legislation, “and what this means is that in parts of Europe, you cannot do this ridiculing of Christianity and Judaism, but you can do it with Islam,” he said.
Oh come now, Professor. In this article you will find a Christian in Britain lamenting the daily ridicule to which his religion is subjected. Only one group is seeking protected status, to be placed beyond criticism. And it isn’t Jews or Christians.