|
|
|
Jewish World Review August 25, 2010/ 15 Elul, 5770 American ‘Bigots’ Versus Media Propagandists By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The American left is in fallback mode. Despite their best efforts, they have been unable to convince the overwhelming majority of Americans that we are Islamo-phobic, anti-Constitutional bigots for daring to oppose the Ground Zero mosque. The reason for this failure is stunningly simple: because we're not. Americans are quite clear on the difference between Constitutional rights and the appalling lack of respect demonstrated by the project's leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. That would be "moderate Muslim" Feisal Abdul Rauf, right? Wrong.
Once the Constitutional issue was resolved--and it was resolved when Americans demonstrated that they clearly understood the First Amendment--the issue became one of respect. How has the left framed the issue of respect? Americans must completely respect Muslim sensibilities--even as the Muslims involved with the project completely ignore Americans' feelings. As for Feisal Abdul Rauf, he is simply a man trying to "build bridges" between wary Americans and "moderate" Muslims.
Unfortunately for our progressives, Rauf's track record is beginning to catch up with him. This "bridge-builder" has refused to condemn Hamas, despite the fact that it's an organization of bloodthirsty thugs whose primary reason for existence is to annihilate Israel. On the other hand, Hamas itself has "built a bridge"--between themselves and American progressives: both groups think a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is a splendid idea. "We have to build everywhere," said Mahmoud al-Zahar, co-founder of Hamas.
In another act of "bridge-building" Rauf has this to say to Ed Bradley on CBS' 60 Minutes: "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened (on 9/11). But the United States' policies were an accessory to the crime that happened." Perhaps Americans can be forgiven for being unaware of this odious statement. It might be because it was made two weeks after the attack, when most of us were still in shock and grieving for our dead.
In newly discovered audio from 2005, Imam Rauf offered yet another bit of "moderation" to his resume: "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims." This claim is based on his hypothesis that Iraqi deaths resulting from the U.N.-imposed sanctions against Saddam Hussein in the 1990s were our fault. Not the Butcher of Baghdad's fault. America's fault. And not as accessories. As full-blown perpetrators of one million Iraqi deaths.
So much for moderation.
Yet Feisal Abdul Rauf cannot control how is portrayed by the mainstream media. It is their definition of moderate that borders on the absurd. And not just with respect to their characterization of Rauf. Another prominent American Imam was also labeled a "moderate" by the useful idiots at the New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, NPR, and the Washington Post. His name is Anwar Al Awlaki and he headed the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia, which was also praised as a "bridge-building" institution.
Reality check? The perpetrators of 9/11 and Nidal Halik Hasan, who killed thirteen and wounded thirty-one American soldiers at Fort Hood, attended services at Dar al-Hijrah--and Al Awlaki is now the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen. Last April, President Obama issued a "shoot on sight" executive order should the American military have the good fortune to track down this former "moderate Muslim" cleric.
Virtually none of this information has received the kind of coverage that it ought to merit. And in increasing numbers, the American public is beginning to understand why:
Our so-called mainstream media has become little more than a leftist propaganda machine.
It is a machine so pernicious in nature that it is willing to characterize the nearly seventy percent of Americans opposed to the GZ mosque as "bigoted, demagogues, or the merely misinformed" (Richard Cohen, Washington Post) or people who "haven't flushed the trauma of 9/11 out of their systems---making them easy prey for fearmongers." (Maureen Dowd, NY Times).
Perhaps if Cohen were a tad less "misinformed" he might have stumbled onto the idea that Muslims like to build trophies at sites where they've won great victories. Perhaps if Dowd had a family member burned to death in the Twin Towers she might realize that their deaths can't be "flushed away" simply to accommodate her worldview.
For decades, liberals could get away with telling Americans what they "ought" to think. "Inconvenient" facts could remain unreported, and those who dared to resist liberal dogma could be marginalized--or demonized. With the rise of the alternative media, the liberal monopoly has been toppled. And make no mistake: that is what much of this controversy and many others is all about. People who never had to defend their beliefs, or could easily dismiss their critics as "fringe opinions" are having to defend themselves and their positions far more vigorously than ever before.
And the more they are forced to do so, the more evident their bankrupt philosophy becomes. It is why so many of them bemoan the "highly partisan" nature of today's political discourse--and why when it also becomes increasingly evident that more and more Americans can access factual information that completely undermines their worldview, they resort to calling us names.
Unlike the old days, Americans aren't going to roll over and accept the "fact" that Imam Fesial Abdul Rauf is a "moderate Muslim bridge-builder." Bridge-builders don't hedge about terrorist organizations or call Americans accessories to their own murders. They don't ignore the anger and hurt of millions of Americans. This man is a complete phony.
So are the media lapdogs who unquestioningly support him--just like many of them supported al Qaeda's newest leader, Anwar Al Awlaki. For our suspicions of Rauf's motives, we are called bigots by the liberal intelligensia. For their complete naivete' with respect to Al Awlaki perhaps we should return the favor.
How does "terrorist dupes" sound?
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR Contributor Arnold Ahlert's column, by clicking here.
© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||||
