The Wall Street Journal has shown some disturbing dhimmi tendencies in the past, but it really takes the cake today with a puff piece by George Melloan on the Muslim Public Affairs Council. (WSJ is a paid subscription site, so no link.) In it, Melloan says:
Muhammad was a different kind of prophet also in the sense that he was temporal ruler as well, building his political base in Medina and then conquering the Arab city that had once rejected him, Mecca. After his death, in June 632 by traditional account, Arabs rapidly built an empire stretching from the gates of the Mediterranean to the far side of India, spreading Islam as they went. On the whole, they were tolerant of Christians and Jews in the lands they conquered, acknowledging that all three religions claimed the same origins....
Here's an antidote to that old chestnut. But the WSJ has not come precisely to praise Islamic tolerance, but to sing the glories of the Muslim Public Affairs Council:
A group called the Muslim Public Affairs Council is trying to promote better relations between Muslims and law-enforcement agencies. To that end it has launched its own counterterrorism and civil-rights campaign, working with imams at mosques, Muslim community leaders, law-enforcement agencies and the media. Their credo: "It is our duty as American Muslims to protect our country and to contribute to its betterment."The executive director of MPAC is Salam al-Marayati, a Baghdad-born former chemical engineer long engaged in Democratic politics in Los Angeles. He and two colleagues, Ahmed Younis and Edina Lekovic, dropped by the Journal's New York office last week to talk about their project. Ms. Lekovic, a Montenegrin by ancestry, is the group's spokeswoman. Mr. Younis, national director, has studied in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Cuba. He wrote a book titled "Voir Dire (Speak the Truth)," discussing the blending of American culture and Islamic values, while studying law at Washington and Lee University.
Mr. al-Marayati is relatively upbeat about the status of Muslims in the U.S., particularly in comparison to Europe. "In Europe, they tend to become 'ghettoized' because they are never really accepted," he said. In the U.S., Muslims are more easily assimilated and find it easier to work within the system....
Mr. al-Marayati apparently has had his moments of alienation as well, judging from a 1999 article by Daniel Pipes, a frequent critic of Islamists, that called him an extremist. But in a speech at the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism last fall, the MPAC director asserted: "We reject using Islam as an instrument of political change."
Six years of the kind of history the world has logged since 1999 can change a man. The MPAC group clearly sees it as the wisest choice for American Muslims not only to come to terms with the society of which they are a part, but to actively participate in the struggle against religious extremism. They are well aware of their vulnerability to anti-Muslim sentiments and of the opportunities the liberal U.S. political system offers them for combating that danger....
I once had a memorable exchange with Salam Al-Maryati on the Michael Medved Show, and I wrote this about MPAC in an article refuting their all-out attack on Steve Emerson:
For months now, MPAC has been touting its new “National Anti-Terrorism Campaign” (NATC), garnering uncritical publicity in the media and even praise from government officials. The Campaign’s glossy brochure proclaims that “It is our duty as American Muslims to protect our country and to contribute to its betterment.” But like the old Whip Inflation Now campaign of the Ford Administration, the NATC is long on style and short on substance. It recommends, for example, that “All activities within the mosque and Islamic centers should be authorized by legitimate, acknowledged leadership…” That sounds great until one realizes that if a mosque is involved in terrorist activity, it is most likely with the complicity of mosque leadership — as per the Naqshbandi Sufi leader Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani’s 1999 testimony before a State Department Open Forum that eighty percent of American mosques were controlled by extremists.[1] The rest of MPAC’s recommendations are in the same vein, appearing to be more concerned about misbehavior by non-Muslim law enforcement officials in mosques than about the possibility of terrorist activity in those mosques. WIN buttons are one thing, but the consequences of false advertising by MPAC are much more deadly. Now with the publication of this new report, MPAC’s counterterrorism agenda seems to boil down to one substantive point: Steve Emerson, not Islamic terrorism, is the enemy....Of course, when the MPAC report charges that “Emerson’s lack of precision leads him to conflate legitimate organizations that can help America and secure the homeland with others that are neither genuinely American nor transparent,” it becomes clear why MPAC is in such a froth about Emerson: because of what he knows about MPAC itself. In American Jihad, Emerson notes that when Abdurrahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council, who is now serving a 23-year prison sentence for a terrorism financing conviction, encouraged the Muslim crowd at an October 2000 rally cosponsored by MPAC to declare their support of the jihad terror groups Hamas and Hizballah, “MPAC’s Political Advisor, Mahdi Bray, stood directly behind Alamoudi and was seen jubilantly exclaiming his support for these two deadly terrorist organizations.” This was just three weeks after Bray “coordinated and led a rally where approximately 2,000 people congregated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.” Emerson reports that “at one point during the rally, Mahdi Bray played the tambourine as one of the speakers sang, while the crowd repeated: ‘Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is calling us, let’s all go into jihad, and throw stones at the face of the Jews [sic].’”[18]
There is much more. Emerson’s Investigative Project has documented MPAC’s indefatigable and consistent opposition to the war on terror; its magazine The Minaret has dismissed key anti-terror operations as part of “[t]he American crusade against Islam and Muslims.”[19] Emerson has called attention to the fact that in a book called In Fraternity: A Message to Muslims in America, coauthor Hassan Hathout, who has served as MPAC’s President, is identified as “a close disciple of the late Hassan al-Banna of Egypt.”[20] MPAC’s magazine The Minaret spoke of Hassan Hathout’s closeness to al-Banna in a 1997 article: “My father would tell me that Hassan Hathout was a companion of Hassan al-Banna…Hassan Hathout would speak of al-Banna with such love and adoration; he would speak of a relationship not guided by politics or law but by a basic sense of human decency.”[21]
This is noteworthy because Hassan al-Banna founded the prototypical Muslim radical group of the modern age, the Muslim Brotherhood, in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood is the direct ancestor of both Hamas and Al-Qaeda. Al-Banna wrote in 1934 that “it is a duty incumbent on every Muslim to struggle towards the aim of making every people Muslim and the whole world Islamic, so that the banner of Islam can flutter over the earth and the call of the Muezzin can resound in all the corners of the world: God is greatest [Allahu akbar]! This is not parochialism, nor is it racial arrogance or usurpation of land.”[22] He told his followers: “Islam is faith and worship, a country and a citizenship, a religion and a state. It is spirituality and hard work. It is a Qur’an and a sword.”[23]
Do Hassan Hathout and MPAC also believe in “a Qur’an and a sword”? What Emerson and the Investigative Project have uncovered about them suggests at very least that the group should receive serious scrutiny. The fact that MPAC has singled out Emerson for such a focused and singular attack only lends credence to these suspicions. For how better to obscure the message than to discredit the messenger?
It is disheartening to see the Wall Street Journal putting on the blinkers and falling for MPAC.
"But in a speech at the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism last fall, the MPAC director asserted: "We reject using Islam as an instrument of political change."
And at the last MPAC meeting part of the program for children included a 'motivational speaker' and letter writing to the President.
But this stuff had nothing to do with politics and Islam. Politics and Islam just don't mix. Do they?
But, but, but the WSJ is "notoriously" conservative.
Then again the Saudis own 7% of our national debt, 15% of our economy and 100 % of the RNC and Bush Administration.
Money talks and the puppets walk
George Melloan has a duty to study Islam, before making pronouncements on what Islam, or Muslims, or any particular subset of the latter, teach or work toward. When a Muslim says he is "working within the system" one should then ask -- for what? The fact that some Muslim groups have concluded that there are other, at the moment more prudent and more effective ways, to work for Jihad, but whose final goal is no different from that of those pursuing the Jihad to spread Islam until it covers the globe, until dar al-harb is swallowed up by dar al-Islam (a goal which Molloan may find risible, may deem the product of perfervid Infidel imaginations -- but has been stated, again and again, by every important figure in the history of Qur'anic commentary, Islamic theology, and even among those who, like Ibn Khaldun, were primarily historians or historiographers. It would be easy to quote sura and verse in the Qur'an, or hundreds of relevant "authentic" Hadith from Bukhari's recension, or to provide Melloan with the incidents in the life of Muhamamd, taken either from Muslim or non-Muslim (Sir William Muir, Professor Arthur Jeffery, Tor Andrae, Maxine Rodinson) sources.
Melloan and the Wall Street Journal, generally, appear to be examples of that "I Gave At the Office" Phenomenon. This is to be found among those who regard themselves as having seen through all the propaganda about Communism, and having understood its threat and stood stoutly be -- oh, Reagan, I suppose -- as Communism in its Soviet version crumbled into seeming dust.
Yet a number of such people, confronted by Islam, seem curiously incurious about its nature, the theory and practice of Islam. Some seem to have a residual belief -- the belief that caused the American government to have a touching faith in the worthless military organization known as CENTO, a touching faith in Turkey as permanently -- rather than transiently -- secular and Kemalist, a touching faith in the Sandhurst-trained, ramrod-straight generals of Pakistan that caused them to be, for decades, coddled by America while nasty Krishna Menon, and those impossibly leftist Bandung-conference Hindus, especially in Kerala (Marxist, but also heavily Christian, Kerala State) were treated with suspicion, that led the Americans, above all, to treat a profound enemy of all Infidels and hence of the United States, the people and government of Saudi Arabia, as friends.
Where does Melloan, who is not unintelligent, and whose instincts are -- except when it comes to understanding the ideology of -- not "Wahhabi" and not "Khomenist" and not "a-handful-of-extremists" -- Islam, but simply mainstream, orthodox Islam.
A few books by way of livres de chevet for the editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal:
1) "Islam and Dhimmitude" by Bat Ye'or.
2) "The Dhimmi" by Bat Ye'or
3) "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam" by Bat Ye'or
4) "Why I Am Not a Muslim" by Ibn Warraq
5) "Onward Muslim Soldiers" by Robert Spencer
6) "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance," ed. by Robert Spencer
7) The forthcoming "The Legacy of Jihad" by Andrew Bostom.
8) The articles collected at websites run by the most knowledgeable of all informants, and those least susceptible to being fooled -- to wit, the "defectors from Islam" who are as important today as were the "defectors from Communism" in the 1940s and 1950s, before we came to realize what it was all about.
These websites include www.secularislam.org (see, in particular, by googling "Ibn Warraq" and "Islam" and "Fascism" the remarkable similarities between these two totaliarian Total Explanations of the Universe), and www.faithfreedom.org -- the articles by Ali Sina and other contributors.
Then, once this homework has been done, one can permit oneself to comment on Islam, Islamic attitudes, Islamic political and economic conditions, Islamic intellectual activity, Islamic presentation of Islam (including "taqiyya" and "kitman" and that old Western standby, "tu-quoque"), and on Muslim groups that hope, of course, to work for the "betterment of America" in the best way they know how as Believers -- by working to make America safe for the conduct of Da'wa and toward the the firm entrenchment of Muslims in this society, until they cannot be dislodged, and can work tirelessly, using whatever instruments -- military, or if not military, political, or if not political, economic, or if neither political or economic, then through propaganda -- can help to wage the Jihad that is so central in the teachings, the understanding, of Islam -- but of which poor Infidels, including some at the Wall Street Journal, seem almost wilfully ready to deny the existence.
"Whereof we do not know, thereof we should not speak." The Muslim Public Affairs Council has the same goal as Bin Laden -to see the triumph of Islam everywhere in the world. The means chosen are different. Recently, it has had to emphasize sweet reason, and to repackage those goals. But any close look at the phrase "It is our duty as American Muslims to protect our country and to contribute to its betterment" would easily reveal the real meaning: we "protect our country" by making sure that it does nothing to offend Muslims, and we "contribute to its betterment" by working actively to increase the role of Islam so that one day it may be dominant in this society, as around the world. No Believer in Islam, no reader of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, can possibly believe otherwise.
Those who do not so believe are like peole who call themselves Christians but then add "I don't believe that Christ was the Son of God" and "in fact, I don't believe in God." They are something, all right, and may be wonderful -- but they are not Christians. No Muslim who does not wish to spread Islam, who does not wish to see it dominate (as Muhammad commanded), who does not believe that non-Muslims owe their rights to whatever Muslims choose to give them as ahl al-dhimma, or People of the Pact (i.e., dhimmis) and not because they have certain "inalienable rights" that have nothing to do with Islam -- are simply not Muslims.
Melloan has a solemn duty. If he has the power to write, to instruct, to lead or mislead, he must first study carefully before making pronouncements or assumptions, or misunderstanding the full import of certain phrases, or being too readily taken in by taqiyya or kitman, or personal charm, and liquid brown eyes, and a soft voice. Really, he must.
For months now, MPAC has been touting its new “National Anti-Terrorism Campaign”
And OJ is hot on the trail of his wife's killer...
Hugh, Interesting post. I'm not yet qualified to comment on Islam by your standards; I'm only on my 3rd book about the subject. But my eyes are starting to open and your posts here and elsewhere list some new sources for me to seek out.
I agree that a publication such as the WSJ should be very careful—and very responsible—about pontificating on the 'benevolence' of Islamic societies and their "work within the system" in the U.S.
My research continues...
But, but, but the WSJ is "notoriously" conservative
NO, it is only the Editorial page of the WSJ that is consistently Conservative.
Money talks and the puppets walk
Yes and while Soros and others paid, the liberals bent so far backwards they could sniff their own heels..
Stop it with the blatant propaganda lies Giaour. Exaggeration is lying, and the(your) end does not justify the means.
++++
The party differences are only semantic, or in individuals.
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Open-minded people should read this book, it helps to explain some of the inexplicable things that have happened and why. We can't understand today or tomorrow if we don't understand how we got here. It's free on-line.
For instance:
"In 1954, a second congressional investigation of foundation tampering (with schools and American social life) was attempted, headed by Carroll Reece of Tennessee. The Reece Commission quickly ran into a buzzsaw of opposition from influential centers of American corporate life. Major national newspapers hurled scathing criticisms, which, together with pressure from other potent political adversaries, forced the committee to disband prematurely, but not before there were some tentative findings:
"The power of the individual large foundation is enormous. Its various forms of patronage carry with them elements of thought control. It exerts immense influence on educator, educational processes, and educational institutions. It is capable of invisible coercion. It can materially predetermine the development of social and political concepts, academic opinion, thought leadership, public opinion."
"The power to influence national policy is amplified tremendously when foundations act in concert. There is such a concentration of foundation power in the United States, operating in education and the social sciences, with a gigantic aggregate of capital and income. This Interlock has some of the characteristics of an intellectual cartel. It operates in part through certain intermediary organizations supported by the foundations. It has ramifications in almost every phase of education."
"It has come to exercise very extensive practical control over social science and education. A system has arisen which gives enormous power to a relatively small group of individuals, having at their virtual command huge sums in public trust funds."
"The power of the large foundations and the Interlock has so influenced press, radio, television, and even government that it has become extremely difficult for objective criticism of anything the Interlock approves to get into news channels—without having first been ridiculed, slanted and discredited."
"Research in the social sciences plays a key part in the evolution of our society. Such research is now almost wholly in the control of professional employees of the large foundations. Even the great sums allotted by federal government to social science research have come into the virtual control of this professional group."
"Foundations have promoted a great excess of empirical research as contrasted with theoretical research, promoting an irresponsible "fact-finding mania" leading all too frequently to "scientism" or fake science."
"Associated with the excessive support of empirical method, the concentration of foundation power has tended to promote "moral relativity" to the detriment of our basic moral, religious, and governmental principles. It has tended to promote the concept of "social engineering," that foundation-approved "social scientists" alone are capable of guiding us into better ways of living, substituting synthetic principles for fundamental principles of action."
"These foundations and their intermediaries engage extensively in political activity, not in the form of direct support of candidates or parties, but in the conscious promotion of carefully calculated political concepts."
"The impact of foundation money upon education has been very heavy, tending to promote uniformity in approach and method, tending to induce the educator to become an agent for social change and a propagandist for the development of our society in the direction of some form of collectivism. In the international field, foundations and the Interlock, together with certain intermediary organizations, have exercised a strong effect upon foreign policy and upon public education in things international. This has been accomplished by vast propaganda, by supplying executives and advisors to government, and by controlling research through the power of the purse. The net result has been to promote "internationalism" in a particular sense—a form directed toward "world government" and a derogation of American nationalism."
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm
WSJ = just another dhimmi bitch.
The late Scoop Jackson once called the top management of corporate America the "soft underbelly of freedom". How true, how true.
A BRILLIANT tactical move on the part of this Muslim group- concocting their own 'internal watchdog' group, by which they can pretend to police themselves. Throwing the governmental agencies, who are supposed to keep an eye on them, off the scent.
"Nobody in here but us chickens!" is how the proverbial fox put it, when the farmer yelled into the coop: "Who's in the henhouse?!"
The Muslims must think we're all as daft as the Wall Street Journal's flunkee, Mr. Melloan.
"...tolerant of Christians and Jews IN THE LANDS IT CONQUERED..." my ass.
Don't the final five words mean anything to Mr. Melloan-head?
Too bad for all of the other religions in "the lands it conquered", I guess. Hindus and Buddhists and the rest must not subscribe in sufficient numbers to the WSJ to warrent any pity at being massacred by the millions from Morocco to Malaysia for centuries.
The Journal needs a fitting motto on its masthead:
"All the news we're happy to forget".
WSJ is pro illegal immigration, and now pro islamofascism. It's become an anti-American organization just like ACLU, CAIR, etc. Scumbags.
20 years ago I was a drug rep and called on Dr Hassan Hathout, a Pasadena cardiologist. I recall him as a really cold fish, difficult to get a response from, an odd egg. I little did I know.
[[After his death, in June 632 by traditional account, Arabs rapidly built an empire stretching from the gates of the Mediterranean to the far side of India, spreading Islam as they went. On the whole, they were tolerant of Christians and Jews in the lands they conquered, acknowledging that all three religions claimed the same origins....]]
Doesnt say much about how the Buddhists and Hindus and Zoroastrians were treated when the Muslims started setting up their milk and honey Empire. Oh, I forgot, they are not fully human, according to tolerant and peaceful etc etc Islam.
Information to correct, once again, giaour's mis-information about Saudi investment:
http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/5931.html
Most recent numbers on Saudi investment in the US come to $420 billion dollars- or about 2.8% of the US economy.
As a consistent reader of the Wall Street Journal for nearly two decades, I can say that it is quite well known that Melloan is a bit of an intellectual renegade who takes unpredictable positions on a variety of topics.
It is also true that the Journal's letters to the editor are consistently erudite and not without stinging criticism of the Journal editors and op-ed writers. Also, the letters to the editor do cover topics outside of economics, the markets, and business. I've seen, for instance, the topic of Intelligent Design vs. Evolution covered in a serial debate in the letters to the editor.
Therefore, I would encourage Hugh or some other person of profound knowledge regarding Islam to respond to the Melloan piece. It wouldn't surprise me if a concise letter appeared in print. As the Journal is read by a wide audience of much education and experience, such a letter would find a very important audience.