Journalistic ignorance

Traveling across New Mexico yesterday, I saw a column in the Albuquerque Journal about a Navajo woman who was raised as a Muslim after her divorced mother married a Palestinian immigrant. The writer casts it as a "human interest" story and treats her subject with complete sympathy, admiringly quoting her to the effect that her hijab is "a sign of dedication to my religion. Completely practicing the religion. Doing what the Quran says we have to do and just being a good Muslim" and never once asking what "doing what the Quran says we have to do" entails -- such as being "hard against the unbelievers" (48:29) or refusing to have them for "friends and protectors" (3:28, 5:51, 60:1, et al.). To make any such critical inquiry she would have had to look into the Qur'an, and this she clearly had never done -- or, evidently, had any interest in doing.

As one who toiled for fifteen years at a mainstream newspaper, I can testify that such willful ignorance is ubiquitous in the American media. Its consequences must inevitably be dire.

Ihsanoglu's heinous harping

On Oct. 22, Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu of the Organization of the Islamic Conference addressed a UNESCO meeting in Copenhagen; a follow-up to the "Rabat Conference on Fostering Dialogue among Cultures and Civilizations through Concrete and Sustained Initiatives" held in Morocco on June 14-16, 2005. In his speech, Ihsanoglu revisited a theme on which he has been harping for some time -- to wit, the intolerability to the Muslim world of the quintessential Western value of freedom of expression when that freedom is employed in the exposure, analysis, criticism, or mockery of the odious creed of Islam, and the goal of that world to suppress the same through laws prohibiting it. Excerpts:

"... in exercising the fundamental right of freedom of expression, one should act within the responsibility inherent in this freedom, through showing respect to the rights of others, and refraining from incitement for hatred, causing hurt to others or eroding their basic human right [sic]."

"... the OIC has never had any problem with the freedom of expression, on the contrary we regard it as a fundamental value and advocate it in the Muslim World within our new vision. The point we have been making is that the abuse of this right, in a way to contradict and violate the international human rights documents, should not be allowed.

"... we should not allow the extremists and opponents of diversity in both the Muslim world and the western societies to derail our joint endeavors and manipulate and exploit the interaction between the ones who are yearning for respect to their ethnic, racial and religious identities and values and the others who are misled to misperceive that their fundamental human rights of freedom of expression are challenged or under attack by the Islamic world." (Emphases mine.)

Ihsanoglu's speech and his organization's ongoing campaign are part and parcel of what Robert Spencer noted in June is "a worldwide and ongoing movement by Islamic jihadists and their allies and dupes to classify all critical examination of Islamic supremacism as "hate speech." This would render us, he added, "mute and hence defenseless in the face of the jihadist onslaught," for "true statements about Islam and jihad will be suppressed, and precisely as Islamic supremacists are pressing forward as never before with their program of stealth jihad against the West." (Emphasis original.)

Spencer concluded his June post with a warning that "we are far closer to restrictions on free speech than most people realize." Now, with only a week to stop the Obamachine's grasp for power and forestall its dire consequences, the truth of his statement is more stark than ever.

Obama's goon tactics

Andrew McCarthy has written an article for National Review Online entitled "Obama's assault on the First Amendment." It is spot-on, and deserves to go viral.

Moreover, McCarthy sums up in one paragraph not only what Obama is trying to keep from scrutiny but what must compel our active opposition to his candidacy:

"... his radical record, the fringe Leftism that lies beneath his thin, centrist veneer, his enabling of infanticide, his history of race-conscious politics, his proposals for unprecedented confiscation and distribution of private property (including a massive transfer of American wealth to third-world dictators through international bureaucrats), his ruinous economic policies that have helped leave Illinois a financial wreck, his place at the vortex of the credit market implosion that has put the U.S. economy on the brink of meltdown, his aggressive push for American withdrawal and defeat in Iraq, his easy gravitation to America-hating activists, be they preachers like Jeremiah Wright, terrorists like Bill Ayers, or Communists like Frank Marshall Davis."

We have a month to stop this creature -- and if we fail, we face the menacing prospect of another Lyndon Johnson-style transmogrification of America.