Islamaphobia Or Genuine Fear

I've been reading Robert Spencer's JihadWatch.org off and on since it started. Recently, Spencer's been part of a movement that, rightly, opposes the Islamic center/mosque being built near Ground Zero in New York. For his efforts, Spencer has been branded an "Islamaphobe" and a bigot by his opponents, even though his targets are Islamists, jihadists, and other extremists who incite violence, not law-abiding Muslims.

The charge of "Islamophobia" is a canard used by critics to claim that the United States intrinsically hates Islam and Muslims. This is patently untrue. Americans have been very accommodating of Muslims well before and well after 9/11. Anti-Muslim sentiment is a recent phenomenon and its root lie not in Americans themselves, but the actions of certain Muslims. As Robert Spencer writes:

It is not at all established that "Islamophobia" really is growing. In fact, the FBI has recently released data establishing that hate crimes against Muslims are comparatively rare. But if there is any actual suspicion of or negative feelings toward Muslims in the United States, it is solely and wholly the responsibility of Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihadist; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas underwear jihadist; Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who killed one soldier and murdered another in a jihad shooting outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark.; Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square jihadist; Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden on 9/11; the London jihad bombers of July 7, 2005; and so many others.

These attacks were not committed on foreign soil but right here in the United States, some by United States citizens. So it's only natural many American feel ill at ease about Muslims in their midst, but, please, don't call it "Islamaphobia."

The Lost Symbol Is Finally Here!

Guess what's in my hot little hands?



Digging into it as I write this.

Eid Greetings

To all Muslim around the world, a happy and safe Eid-ul-Fitr...

Hinduism Will Survive The Love Guru

Hindu groups in the United States are demanding cuts from Mike Myer's The Love Guru, a film that purportedly insults Hinduism and its followers. The Hindu Janjagruti Samiti has written to anyone who will listen. This quote, however, made me scratch my head.

"Poking fun is one thing, but if it creates a sense of belittling one's faith, then it is wrong," it said in a statement.

Where does one draw the line? Where does poking fun end and belittling begin? It's like beauty: it's in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, I doubt Hinduism will fall because of one sophomoric comedy. I think the movie is, in reality, mocking the multi-billion dollar self-help industry which combines Hinduism with a New Age ethos: it's mumbo-jumbo monetized. Personally, the industry deserves a good ribbing.

Another interesting statement:

It said if the trailer was an indicator of its content, millions of Hindus worldwide who hold the guru-disciple relationship as sacred will be offended.

Again another gross overreaction. The guru-disciple relationship was undermined long ago when the word guru entered the English lexicon. Today it is a euphemism for genius, used liberally by anyone to describe anyone with the slightest hint of above average intelligence. No, I am afraid, the word guru went to the dogs long ago.

Obama's Albatross

Even with Obama's very vocal avowal of Rev. Wright, it's a link that will forever be cast in stone. After all, Rev. Wright has been Obama's pastor for some twenty odd years, right? Presumably, this is not the first time (or the second time) Rev. Wright has uttered such statements; and it definitely won't be his last.

Suffice it to say, this is very damaging to Obama, who was doing a good job of transcending race in this election, only to be taken down by a race-baiting preacher. Rev. Wright is the best thing to happen to Hillary Clinton and it showed in Pennsylvania

What Rev. Wright has said is no different than what white racists have said about blacks since Reconstruction.

Jagdeesh Kumar's only crime, it seems, was to be a Hindu in a Muslim country. He was killed by an enraged mob because he supposedly blasphemed Islam, which is a crime in Pakistan (thanks General Zia, hope your stay in hell is a pleasant one), during a heated argument with a co-worker at the factory where Jagdeesh worked.

The blasphemy laws are odious, unfair and applied capriciously (and most Pakistanis would agree with me), but the rule of law still prevails. Alleged offenders like Jagdeesh deserve their day in court, a fundamental human right. But even this was denied to Jagdeesh, who wasn't handed over to the relevant authorities as the law dictates. Instead, the mob took matters into their own hands: they pronounced judgment and meted out punishment, right then and there. Mob justice at its finest.

All this happened while the police stood idly by, twiddling their thumbs, as they are ought to do. I don't know if they were lazy, or they actively aided and abetted the mob, or are outright incompetent-- probably the combination of the three-- but they did nothing to save Jagdeesh's life.

For me, it is just one more confirmation that minorities are forsaken in Islamic Pakistan. They are discriminated against, live in dhimmitude, and their testimony does not hold up compared to Muslims in Islamic courts. In essence, they are second-class citizens.

Jinnah, when he established Pakistan, promised a secular republic, but his dream, like the Hindus who decided to stay in Pakistan after Partition, has turned sour.

Why Is Pakistan Unpopular In the United States?

Interesting letter in Dawn that deserves further analysis:

AN article, ‘Unpopular countries’ (March 10), portrays a misleading picture of what ordinary Americans think about certain countries. The Gallup’s 2008 world affairs survey, as it is called, puts Pakistan among 10 most unpopular countries in the US.

A total of 1,007 Americans were interviewed for this survey. This means about 20 people from each state of the US. Is this figure representative of the whole state? Did the survey organisers take into account the ethnicity, age, education, occupation, gender, etc., of the respondents before presenting the results as facts to the unsuspecting recipients of the report?

In addition, how were the questions framed? The report also states that the popular perception endorsed the official US policy as all these countries are also denigrated by the US administration. Is it not the other way round, the administration’s policy being the reason for the development of these ill-feelings against certain countries?

Emphasis is mine.

The writer is right, for the most part, when he says the U.S. government is the driving factor why Americans have ill-feelings against countries branded as unpopular by the survey-- Iran, North Korea, Cuba, etc.

But in the case of Pakistan this does not apply because the Bush Administration has consistently backed Pakistan to the hilt. So the negative perception is not being driven by the Bush Administration, as the writer hints, but by the media, who have often questioned Pakistan's commitment on the war against terrorism, its flirtation with radical Islam, and its anti-democratic nature.

Europe: In Defense Of Free Speech

In defense of free speech, Danish newspapers will republish controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, which sparked a maelstrom of protest, some violent, from the Islamic world.

Three of Denmark's largest newspapers said they would reprint the cartoon on Wednesday to show they would not be intimidated by fanatics. It was one of 12 Muhammad cartoons published in 2005 and then again in 2006 that led to protests in Muslim countries.

Good for them. At least someone in Europe realizes that these protests by Islamic fanatics, and threats of boycotts by Islamic countries, are nothing more than intimidation tactics to silence any negative criticism of Islam, a religion that deserves to be put under a microscope like any other religion.

Islamic nations adopt a double standard regarding the criticism of religion, many of which have a long history of not only condoning but also spreading disparaging comments against Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and every other religion, large or small. Protests by Western nations often fall on deaf years.

Europe is not Islamic (or Christian, for that matter) so it has no obligation to protect it. Truth be told, the secular foundations of European society mock Christianity with more frequency and more viciousness than it does Islam. In many left-wing circles, Islam has an exalted status, where it’s treated as culture, not religion.

Super Tuesday Results: McCains Surges And Clinton Splits

Yahoo has a great interactive dashboard displaying the results of Super Tuesday that is worth checking out.

I say I was surprised by Mitt Romney’s very poor showing given how conservative media types like Rush Limbaugh were hammering McCain (and Huckabee) for not being a true conservative. Nevertheless, it seems many conservatives decided to stay home rather than vote. And the conservatives who did vote, mostly the evangelicals, voted for Huckabee instead. Don’t know if Romney’s Mormon faith had anything to do with, but Huckabee picked up some key Southern states (also known as the Bible belt) so it may have been a factor.

On the Democratic front, not surprisingly, no clear winner has emerged, both Barack and Clinton managed an even split. This one is going to be bloody one; and chances are good it won’t be decided until the convention.

"Hindu Extremist" Kill Rajiv Gandhi?

William Dalrymple writes good books on India, but even he makes mistakes. In a column in The New York Times, Dalrymple, in comparing the assassinations of Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto, makes the following falsehood:

WHEN, in May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India was killed by a suicide bomber, there was an international outpouring of grief. Recent days have seen the same with the death of Benazir Bhutto: another glamorous, Western-educated scion of a great South Asian political dynasty tragically assassinated at an election rally.

There is, however, an important difference between the two deaths: while Mr. Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan Hindu extremists because of his policy of confronting them, Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the 1980s and 1990s

Rajiv Gandhi was not killed by a “Hindu extremist,” but a female homicide bomber from the LTTE, a cultish, Marxist—and very secular—insurgent group violently fighting for a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka. The LTTE is no more Hindu than the various factions of the PLO (Fatah, PFLP, PFLP-GC, etc) are Islamic, even though they are portrayed as such.

No doubt about it. There are plenty of Hindu extremists around (including one who shot Mahatma Gandhi), but a relatively few of them have become homicide bombers. In fact, I’m at wits end to come up with even one.