Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Truly Orwellian? Or is it more Duranty-an? Whichever: Media Takes Whitewashing of Islam to a Whole New Level
In the days since President Obama's highly touted "speech to the Muslim world," a number of commentators have pointed out that Obama, a self-described "student of history," managed to serve up a pastiche of half-truths, exaggerations, and utter nonsense about Islamic history, and that even in his supposedly gutsier moments -- as when he criticized the treatment of women in Muslim societies -- he was hardly as forceful as the circumstances warrant.
It's no coincidence that the commentators who have made these points have done so, almost without exception, not in major media organs but in places like Pajamas Media. For the flattering account of Islam that Obama served up in Cairo -- the celebration of imaginary Islamic achievements in science and culture, the evocation of a golden-age Andalusia where Christians and Jews were treated with respect and equality, and the references to the Koran that made it sound like the Sermon on the Mount -- are of a piece with the fictions about Islam found regularly in the mainstream press. This is certainly true of the New York Times, and it's equally the case with the Washington Post -- a fact that will be obvious to any reader of my new book, Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom, in which the index includes the following entry:
Washington Post, 66, 102, 103, 149-51, 156, 163-64, 238, 262, 263-64, 276
Now, with the single exception of the very last Post reference (the one on page 276, which is a thumbs-up for columnist Anne Applebaum), my mentions of the Post in Surrender all point to the reliability with which the newspaper clings to what one might call a wishful-thinking view of Islam -- as if Islam were, say, nothing more than Episcopalianism with prayer rugs and burkas...
I'm sure that to many members of the press, Episcopalians are of far greater concern.
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With respect, this article at Huffington Post emphatically makes the same case, in particular with regard to women's rights:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-daou/let-women-wear-the-hijab_b_211226.html
Whoops. typed my name twice:)
To be honest I'm stressed about all this.
I think it's great to try and build bridges. But people shouldn't be trampled in the process. This goes for women, it goes for human rights in general - for the ideals of democracy, of the West - and in this case the most vulnerable group of all are the Jews.
Will the Jewish people be sacrificed in the attempt to build a Palestinian state?
Will that be "justice"?
Will a retreat to the 1949 lines be mandated?
What will happen to the people who live beyond the 1949 lines?
We went to war in Bosnia to prevent ethnic cleansing. We are ignoring ethnic cleansing and even genocide in Africa.
Will we create it in Israel?