Monday, January 3, 2005
Kinda lamely, actually.
Northeastern Professor M. Shahid Alam, subject of the post Northeastern Professor compares 9/11 Hijackers to Founding Fathers has responded to his critics with this riposte in CounterPunch.
Robert Spencer, named in the piece, has an excellent response here.
But out in the real world we know how to distinguish Jesus from Hitler, and the Sharia from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Alam's assumption that an Al-Qaeda will bring freedom and unity to the Islamic world assumes a society that consigns women and non-Muslims to all manner of misery, and puts a straitjacket on free inquiry, freedom of conscience, and the human soul.
Al-Qaeda and the rest see the implementation of Sharia as the goal of their striving, which in itself places them on the other side of the moral divide from the men who fought and died to secure "liberty and justice for all," however imperfectly these principles were applied after their victory. Yes, Professor, they are fighting for their freedom as they see it. So were the Nazis, striving to free Germany from the so-called "Jewish threat" and the encirclement of hostile powers. But someone who wrote in 1938 about the Nazis' returning dignity to the German people would have deserved the condemnation of free men, just as Shahid Alam deserves that condemnation now...
One of the things about screeds such as his is that Alam believes he has uncovered some profound insight because he thinks we need to be reminded that America's founding and development were bloody, and that the Founders were less than perfect - slaveholders and all don't you know - but so what? It's laughable, really. What even mediocre civilization has a sufficiently immaculate conception to please Leftist professors like Alam? None, and most of us understand that. Yes, we do understand that, Professor. A great nation like America stands at the tip of an enormous pyramid of mixed history - fortunately more noble than ig. It's a banal observation. But again, so what? What would we trade it for and what are we to do about it? Nothing and nothing. Combine a completely banal point with an offensive comparison - Minutemen to Terrorists - and you would have to be a long-term campus-dweller to be surprised at the emotional reaciton you create.
So many academicians believe they deserve a pat on the back for situating their viewpoint in the center of a morally-bleached wasteland - where all sides are examined from an equall footing. (Of course, many ARE often willing to judge - so long as it is the US and the West who come out on the bottom.) They spend their time stepping out of their own context to examine issues and that's fine as an academic exercise, but the trouble comes when people like Alam forget to step back in when they come to their conclusions. They've been gone so long that somewhere along the line they lost what Spencer above refers to as their "moral compass." Their values neither reflect society nor particularly inform it.
So why would we value their lessons?
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The Northeastern Chapter of the NAtional Lawyers Guild is presenting a Free Speech award to M. Shahid Alam. "award recognizes professor alam's continued contribution to vigorous academic debate protected by thet first amendment and bravery in the face of intimidation"
Contacts for more information are Bina Ahmad (608) 658 4228 and Jonathon Foglia 857 719 9422. Feel free to voice your opinion to these people giving an award to this anti-semetic idiot.