At first I thought it was an encouraging sign that Deborah Solomon interviewed Brigitte Gabriel in the New York Times Magazine: “The Crusader,” August 15. After all, the Times has deigned to notice few anti-jihadists, and has never reviewed our books even when they appeared on their own bestseller lists. So for them to take notice of Brigitte Gabriel, even if the interview is as snide and uncomprehending as one might have expected, is all to the good.
But then I saw the introduction to the piece on this page (scroll down):
The best-selling author and radical Islamophobe talks about why moderate Muslims are irrelevant, the lessons we should have learned from Lebanon and dressing like a French woman.
“Radical Islamophobe”? I know it is very old news that the Times has abandoned all pretense of journalistic objectivity and has long since entered into full-bore (in all senses of the word) advocacy mode, but this is particularly egregious. “Islamophobia,” as we have pointed out many, many times here, is a trumped-up, manipulative coinage designed to deflect attention away from the violence committed by Muslims and justified by those Muslims with reference to Islamic texts and teachings, and onto those who are trying to raise awareness of and encourage resistance to that violence (and the non-violent means by which Islamic supremacism advances as well).
The implication is that “Islamophobes” have some irrational prejudice against Muslims, a prejudice which is probably racially motivated — so in other words, their resistance to Islamic jihad activity cannot be characterized as a legitimate stand in defense of human rights, but is rather simply an expression of “hate.” Of course, if Muslims would stop committing violence and justifying it according to Islamic teachings, and stop pursuing a supremacist agenda to replace Western pluralistic systems with Sharia, “Islamophobia,” both as an intellectual critique of and expression of resistance to that agenda, and also as any actual victimization of innocent Muslims, would melt away — but the Times, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and CAIR, and the rest of them are not going to tell you that.