Akram's Razor - Reflections on Islam, Muslims & America

The MSM's new "Jihadism vs. McSufism" narrative

Br. Yahya Birtfrom across the pond was so kind as to inform me of a much better and more thought-provoking link regarding the place of Sufism in the GWOT than the article in Time magazine that I shared earlier, so I'm passing it on.

I explained  in the post's comments (reproduced below) why, despite my agreement with some of the Times article's underlying premises, I didn't like the piece much. As usual in MSM discussions of Sufism, the article reduces this extremely complex, multi-faceted and incredibly intellectually rich tradition to New Age clichés about  religious syncretism and personal freedom that obscure what Sufism is about and what gives it its formidable power over Muslims' hearts and minds  around the globe.

For a better discussion of the geopolitical role of Sufism in the War on Terror, take a look at these 3 pieces from World War 4 Report, an intriguingly eclectic blog on international affairs I am just discovering now. [HT: Yahya Birt]

• SUFIS AND NEOCONS
  The Global War on Terrorism's Strangest of Bedfellows
  by Sarkis Pogossian, World War 4 Report
  http://ww4report.com/node/7502

• SUFISM: THE MIDWAY BETWEEN EXTREMISMS
  Indigenous North Africa Between Jihad and Imperialism
  by Toufik Amayas Mostefaou
  http://ww4report.com/node/3263

• SUFISM AND THE STRUGGLE WITHIN ISLAM
  Paradoxical Legacies of the Militant Mystics
  by Khaleb Khazari-El
  http://ww4report.com/node/2151

I have not yet had the time to read these articles closely, so I'm not necessarily endorsing everything they say. In any case,  I like their mix of sharp progressive geopolitical analysis with religious insight.

 I might as well include my comments, since they develop the point I'm making.

Comment #1:

Well, I don't mind people talking about Sufism, so long as they stop doing it in the singular.

I also wish they wouldn't play up these antinomian aspects of certain, atypical strands of Sufi tradition quite so much.
Take, for example, the example of the naked faqir cited the closing paragraph. It certainly does illustrate an unruly side of Sufism that appears from time to tim, but such socially transgressive behavior is highly exceptional. 99.9% of Sufis, past and present, would be equally scandalized by that behavior, and quite understandably.

Comment #2

@Maghi:
AA. Yeah, when I posted I didn't have time to comment on the piece's superficiality (like most MSM discussions of Sufism). Hence the noncommittal report.

My other pet peeve is this use of syncretism as shorthand for progress. Admittedly, I happen to be closer to that perspective than many Muslims, but the idea that Sufis are just "laid back" about theology is hopelessly wrongheaded, of course. And when Sufis arrive at a universalistic position, it is the result of a deep engagement with Quran, Hadith and tradition, not some apriori commitment to secular principles. The commitment to the Sacred remains, even if one concedes that the Sacred can be found in more than one place. And, critically, without renouncing traditional norms of piety and practice (to the contrary, some of the most iconic Sufis are proverbial for herculean self-denial, and almost all Sufis of any renown are known for the strictest observance of Islamic law in their daily lives).

You make an interesting and very important criticism about the uncritical view of dunya. Part of the problem, I think, is that individualism and materialism are so ingrained into modern life--especially in Western societies--that the priorities and principles at the core of Sufism are incomprehensible to many otherwise thoughtful and well intentioned observers. Sometimes you can get through to people by framing Tazkiyya an-Nafs in terms of personal freedom (i.e., escaping the tyranny of various "foreign" influences and base impulses), but even this is paradoxical since it remains rooted in individualism.

At the same time, this is the MSM and popular discussions of Sufism are always beset by misunderstandings, even among Muslims. (Or perhaps even more so. ;-) )

@Yahya
AA. Thanks for that far superior link, and your succinct analysis. Perhaps we should dub this fallacy "Jihadism vs. McSufism"!

Speaking of Sufism and the War on Terror or current affairs in general, please share your suggestions for additional and/or better overviews. I think I've bookmarked some other good ones, but I don't have time or energy to dig through my sprawling, inconsistently-categorized del.icio.us database at the moment. (Will I ever, I wonder?)

Outsourcing human rights violations

Interesting commentary in the Washington Post about our government's continuing (and in some respects worsening) involvement in human rights abuses even as it ostensibly suspends its own operations in this tawdry arena.

Jack Goldsmith - The Shell Game on Detainees and Interrogation - washingtonpost.com

The revelation last weekend that the United States is increasingly using foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain terrorist suspects points up an uncomfortable truth about the war against Islamist terrorists. Demands to raise legal standards for terrorist suspects in one arena often lead to compensating tactics in another arena that leave suspects (and, sometimes, innocent civilians) worse off.

There's more.

Imam Zaid Shakir's critique of "Obsession" in Tikkun

Imam Zaid Shakir has an insightful piece in the current issue of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun refuting the Islamophobic hysteria and tendentious historical revisionism of "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West", the 2005 pseudo-documentary that was widely distributed in America last year by shadowy neocon and hardline Jewish groups in an obvious attempt to stir up anti-Muslim prejudices and scare voters away from Barack Obama, whose father was a (nominal) Muslim and who spent part of his youth living in the Muslim world.

Here's the beginning. Tikkun Magazine - Obsessed with Defamation and Slander By Zaid Shakir

This past September, 28 million copies of the anti-Islamic propaganda documentary Obsession were distributed free of charge in what were considered the "swing" states in the past presidential election campaign. This effort was clearly designed to leverage the idea in the minds of some Americans that Senator Barack Obama is a Muslim (he is not), seeking to identify him with the images and statements of Muslims portrayed in the video. These portrayals give the impression that Islam is a fanatical, bloodthirsty religion, whose adherents are hell-bent on destroying America. By implying a connection between Senator Obama and "radical" Islam, the film sought to prove that Obama was too anti-American to be seriously considered for the highest office in this land.

The film is propaganda that relies in some instances on distorting the truth and in others on blatant lies or vile innuendos. The film points to some extreme doctrines that the overwhelming majority of Muslims readily condemn, implying that "radical" Islam is the new fascism and that it poses an existential threat to the United States. This allegation is false and dangerous. To support this allegation, the film's producers juxtapose scenes of Nazi marches and other forms of political imagery with corresponding Muslim images

It's a great piece that needs to be widely discussed. I particularly like his comparison of the military resources brought to bear in the respective conflicts (i.e., WWII and the so-called War on Terror). It's an elegant way of showing how utterly dissimilar the respective threats are/were.

This observation doesn't detract at all from Imam Zaid's arguments, but for whatever it's worth I'm inclined to approach this Islamofascism claptrap from a different angle. I think it's ultimately more effective to concede that, sure, some Muslims have at some points in 20th century history and for specific reasons allied themselves to some extent with fascist campaigns, but make that concession part of a holistic valuable overview of how widespread such sympathies were around the world, including in America at the time. The claim that Muslims have been any more receptive to the siren song of Fascism is simply not supported by the historical record, and once that fact is highlighted the bias and myopia of this overheated rhetoric becomes impossible to overlook. And then the narrative collapses like the flimsy house of cards that it is.

The other reason I prefer this approach is that it forces mainstream observers (many of whom inevitably harbor a variety of anxieities and/or misconceptions about Islam) to confront the underlying assumptions that unconciously treat Muslims by a special, ultimately ahistorical standard. Even if one wins the media debate about which image is more typical of Muslim sympathies, the bias that makes these myopic canards seem credible remains in place.

Also, I worry that the most important corrective point--the diversity of Muslims--easily gets drowned out in a discussion of this that is based on these dueling lists of evidence, especially given the inherent sensationalism of MSM discussions. There are all sorts of facts about Islam and Muslims that refute Islamophobic hysteria and which are very evident from the historical record, but which nonetheless get short shrift thanks to sensationalism and already-entrenched MSM narratives. When the media is naturally inclined to dump evidence against one side's narrative down the memory hole, the other side's most effective response is to shortcircuit the whole pseudo-debate by highlighting its faulty premises.

As is so often the case in the GWOT debates, I think the best defense here is simply context. Then you don't even need to refute. That, of course, requires Muslims to set aside sometimes overly idealized images of Islamic history, past and present, but there's no legitimate doctrinal reason for Muslims to find that humility threatening--we just have some bad habits. But that's another discussion.

In any case, there's more than one way to skin this diseased cat. Imam Zaid brings some critical and woefully neglected historical facts into this often dreadfully biased discussion.

More on that third rate propaganda piece. Obsessionwithhate.com - The Real Story behind the Obsession Hate DVD

Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West is a 2005 anti-Muslim propaganda film put together by controversial anti-Muslim figures to further the perceived divide between Western and Muslim audiences. 28 million copies of the DVD were recently distributed by a mysteriously-funded entity by the name of the Clarion Fund with the help of 70 US newspapers in a curious and unprecedented campaign. This large distribution, particularly given it was targeted to swing states in the current elections cycle, piqued the interest of many, especially civil rights watchdogs.

There's a lot more.

Cheney as the Smirking Man

Political life after 9/11 often seems to imitate fiction. Increasingly, pulp fiction, alas.

According to Seymour Hersh--who's probably the most respected investigative reporter of our time and who has sources in government that would make a James Bond criminal syndicate green with envy--the US government entered into the assassination business big time after 9/11, and without any oversight or legal guidelines.  It really sounds likes something out of "The X-Files", only with an infinitely less entertaining villain.

The symbolism is overwhelming and seems to prove every anti-W joke right: These momentous and politically explosive covert operations were approved not by the Commander in Chief but the Vice President.

Seymour Hersh: "Executive Assassination Ring" Answered to Cheney, Had No Congressional Oversight | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet

“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.

"It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.

"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.

"I’ve had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee.?’

"But they’re not gonna get before a committee.”

In response to this explosive revelation, Cheney's ex-national security advisor assured the public in a CNN interview that

There is clearly a group of people that go through a very extremely well-vetted process, inter-agency process, as I think was explained in your piece, that have committed acts of war against the United States, who are at war with the United States, or are suspected of planning operations of war against the United States, who authority is given to the troops in the field and in certain war theaters to capture or kill those individuals. That is certainly true.

I'm relieved to hear that these killings around the world were "extremely well-vetted." Hopefully, the vetting wasn't being done by the crack observers of Muslimdom who packed Gitmo with innocent people. Or the Beltway security officials who don't know the difference between Shia and Sunni. Much less the experts who brought us the Iraqi WMD fiasco.

Why should we worry? You only need checks & balances, due process and transparency for serious stuff. This only concerns life and death, rule of law, and the sovereignty of foreign nations.

How is it that we've reached a point of such lawlessness and deeply immoral and muddled thinking that our government can treat assassinations on foreign soil as trivial matters not requiring even the barest legal oversight? 

The realities of fighting terror in Pakistan

The article below illustrates why I think Washington demands of Pakistan are often not only unfair, but seriously unrealistic given the challenges the country faces on multiple fronts today.

And world powers looking the other way as conflicts continue to rage in Kashmir and elsewhere doesn't aid the cause, either.

AP IMPACT: Pakistan police losing terrorism fight - Yahoo! News

BADABER, Pakistan – Brothers Mushtaq and Ishaq Ali left the police force a month ago, terrified of dying as their colleagues had — beheaded by militants on a rutted village road before a shocked crowd.

They went straight to the local Urdu-language newspaper to announce their resignation. They were too poor to pay for a personal ad, so the editor of The Daily Moon, Rasheed Iqbal, published a news story instead. He has run dozens like it.

"They just want to get the word out to the Taliban that they are not with the police anymore so they won't kill them," said Iqbal. "They know that no one can protect them, and especially not their fellow policemen."

Outgunned and out-financed, police in volatile northwestern Pakistan are fighting a losing battle against insurgents, dozens of interviews by The Associated Press show. They are dying in large numbers, and many survivors are leaving the force.

The number of terrorist attacks against police has gone up from 113 in 2005 to 1,820 last year, according to National Police Bureau. The death toll for policemen in that time has increased from nine to 575. In the northwestern area alone, 127 policemen have died so far this year in suicide bombings and assassinations, and another 260 have been wounded.

The crisis means the police cannot do the nuts-and-bolts work needed to stave off an insurgency fueled by the Taliban and al-Qaida. While the military can pound mountain hideouts, analysts and local officials say it is the police who should hunt down insurgents, win over the people, and restore order.

"The only way to save Pakistan is to think of extremism and insurgency in North West Frontier Province as a law enforcement issue," said Hassan Abbas, a South Asia expert at Harvard University's Belfer Center Project for Science. "Rather than buying more F-16s, Pakistan should invest in modernizing its police."

[There's more.]

Speaking of which, we're off to the Land of the Pure in a mere 6 1/2 hours. A lot of people in Lahore are eagerly awaiting our daughter's arrival, now aged 2 3/4.

This will be my 5th time. I must hold the world's record for the least sight-seeing. Sigh...

I think I'll try to see another Punjabi film in Lahore. That was truly an anthropological adventure.

Zbigniew Brzezinski on the GWOT idiocy

A snippet from a great op-ed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose name I need to learn to pronounce one of these days.

Terrorized by 'War on Terror' - washingtonpost.com

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The damage these three words have done -- a classic self-inflicted wound -- is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare -- political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

Juan Cole on 'Combatting Muslim Extremism'

While I'm at it, a month earlier Juan Cole had wrote an astute assessment of "Combating Muslim Extremism" and  how abysmally Washington is failing in this area for all the tough talk, also The Nation.
 
Some notable excerpts:

The Republicans are playing Russian roulette with America's future with their bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric. Muslims may constitute as much as a third of humankind by 2050, forming a vast market and a crucial labor pool. They will be sitting on the lion's share of the world's energy resources. The United States will increasingly have to compete with emerging rivals such as China and India for access to those Muslim resources and markets, and if its elites go on denigrating Muslims, America will be at a profound disadvantage during the next century.

...

Since resources are scarce, it is important that the magnitude of the threat not be exaggerated. Al Qaeda has at most a few thousand members. It holds no territory and its constituent organizations have been roundly defeated in Egypt, Algeria and other Muslim nations. Its command and control networks have been effectively disrupted. Most threats now come from amateur copycats. Al Qaeda has no prospect whatsoever of taking over any state in the Muslim world. It probably would be dead altogether if Bush had not poured gasoline on the flames with his large-scale invasions and occupations. For John McCain to proclaim that Al Qaeda is a bigger threat to US security than was the Soviet Union, which had thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at this country, is to enter Alice's Wonderland.

...

American politicians should cease implying that Muslim nations and individuals are different from, or somehow more dangerous than, any other group of human beings, a racist idea promoted by the Christian and Zionist right. They should acknowledge that most Muslim nations are US friends and allies. A wise American policy toward the small networks of Muslim extremists would reduce their recruitment pool by the quick establishment of a Palestinian state and by a large-scale military drawdown from Iraq, thus removing widespread and major grievances. An increase in visible humanitarian and development aid to Muslim countries has a demonstrable effect on improving the US image.

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The menace of 'Islamofascism" in Europe, small potatoes beside the resurgence of real Fascism

There's an insightful article in the January 7, 2008 issue of The Nation by Gary Younge entitled "In Europe, Where's the Hate?" on the abject hypocrisy of some of the shrillest voices in Western societies baying for Muslim blood...err, I mean... speaking out against 'Islamofascism' 

The article begins as follows:

Over the past year or so the rural Italian idyll of Colle di Val d'Elsa has played host to a bitter battle for Enlightenment values. On one side, the hamlet's small Muslim community has raised a considerable amount of money to build a large mosque. Having gained the mayor's approval, the Muslims signed a declaration of cooperation with the town hall and even planted a Christmas tree at the site as a good-will gesture.

In response, other locals pelted them with sausages and dumped a severed pig's head at the site. On a wall near the site vandals daubed: "No Mosque," "Christian Hill" and "Thanks to the communists the Arabs are in our house!!!" Such is the central dynamic in European race relations at present.

It is probably not the dynamic you have heard most about. The most popular one making the rounds this side of the Atlantic involves hordes of Muslims, rabid with anti-Semitic and misogynistic views, running amok as they bomb, bully and outbreed their clueless liberal hosts in a bid to build a caliphate.

Listen to most discussions in Internet fora of the evils of Muslim "hate" and you're likely to hear  bigotry and hatred every bit as repugnant and ignorant as that of White Supremacist fora towards Jews, African-Americans and other "inferior" races. 

A curious thing about modern Western political life is that since it no longer socially acceptable to be openly racist , it is bigots that often preach the loudest about such ills. They understand full well that the best way to protect themselves is to clothe their demoninzation campaigns in sanctimonious lectures about Muslim hate.  (Talk about "taqiyyah".)

Hence the truly surreal spectacle of the extreme wing of the Christian Right--long the fetid redoubt of anti-Semitism in American society--preaching about Muslims hating Jews.

Other notable insights:

But the primary threat to democracy in Europe is not "Islamofascism"--that clunking, thuggish phrase that keeps lashing out in the hope that it will one day strike a meaning--but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities in the name of racial, cultural or religious superiority.

For fascism--and the xenophobic, racist and nationalistic elements that are its most vile manifestations--has returned as a mainstream ideology in Europe.

Another important insight that is so glaringly absent from most MSM discussions of the periodic friction between Muslims and non-Muslims in Western life today. It often takes two to tango.

This is just as an important a factor as Islamic fundamentalism in understanding events like the Danish cartoon conflict, which certainly inspired a lot of "jihadi" rhetoric among non-Muslim observers.

Here's the supreme irony of the political situation in Europe:

The most potent anti-Semites and bigots in Europe do not live in run-down housing projects but grace the corridors of power. They are not Muslim; they are Christian. The continent is not suffering from some new strain of bigotry imported from the Arab world or the Maghreb--it is simply suffering from one of its oldest viruses harbored among its most established ethnic populations.

As the author notes, there are problems in Muslim communities, but the idea that these mostly marginalized enclaves pose the pressing threat to peace, democracy and rule of law in Europe is utterly out of touch with reality as brown shirts are making a comeback in political life across the Continent.

The eerie familiarity of Ehud Olmert's problems

Doesn't this report about embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have an eerily familiar ring to post-9/11 American ears?

IPS : Peter Hirshberg - Noose Tightens Around Olmert

It [a government report] accused him of going to war "hastily", of lacking a "detailed military plan", and of "a serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility and prudence." Political leaders, public figures and most of the country's leading columnists have repeatedly called on the prime minister to resign. But Olmert, who has also been dogged by a series of corruption allegations since he won election a year ago, has stubbornly refused to budge, saying he has no intention of quitting. He has said he will stay in office to fix the failings of the war.

For all its faults, Israel's political system appears to understand the necessity in a democracy of holding leaders responsible for gross misconduct or incompetence. I'm not sure we retain that commitment in the States anymore

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What about the threat from Christians in our midst?

Thought I'd share this inspired quip from Freedom Rider (emphasis added):

The right wing are going nuts because of a poll that showed 8% of American Muslims approving of suicide bombing in some cases. So, a majority of Muslims are opposed to terrorism. They certainly aren't like Christians. A majority of them are in favor of torture and a majority of them are in favor of deliberately targeting civilians in warfare. 

Thank God for Muslims. Hopefully they will keep those crazy Christians in check.

She's commenting on the irony of recent polls that seem to show Americans to be more comfortable with the use of violence against civilians (including torture) than the typical Muslim. Take a wild guess which polls will be cited for all eternity by Islamophobes and which will go down the Orwellian Memory Hole.  (Do read both his links above, as they are extremely eye-opening.)

Her observation appears in a discussion of the bizarre case of a recently apprehended would-be bomber and Christian fundemantalist. The gentleman--who's so ideologically extreme that he appears to have planned to bomb another group of Christian fundamentalists--is, fittingly, a student at the very dearly departed Jerry Falwell's own madrassa, Liberty University. (How about a look at their curriculum? I'd be interested in seeing how tolerantly they discuss Jews, Catholics, and gays.)

Rick Perlstein, via FAIR, on "The Question of Right-Wing Terrorism":

Stop pretending Islamicists [...] are the only imminent terrorist threats to our nation. [...] How many times has the nation potentially come within a hair's breadth of suffering a right-wing terrorist attack this spring? As of today, three, or possibly six times—at least that we know about.

FAIR observes:

Among such incidents named by Perlstein is the April 26 confiscation of "truckloads of explosives and weapons" from militia members in Alabama—after which he "set up a Google News alert to learn more about the "Alabama Free Militia."... But there was no followup coverage that I could discover. None."

Where are the screaming headlines?   Timothy McVeigh kindly demonstrated in 1995 with the Oklahoma City bombing that Christian nutcases can be just as deranged and dangerous as their Muslim brethren, and several concrete, proven threats from Christian extremists have been uncovered just this year, yet the MSM continues to focus on Muslims to the exclusion of all sorts of demonstrably greater threats to Americans.

Meanwhile, the LittleGreenFootballs-type yahoos improbably charge that Muslims are getting special treatment in the media.  Yes, it's a politically-correct paradise for Muslims in the MSM.  That's why a Muslim's sneeze makes the front page while documented terror threats by non-Muslims barely even get reported.

Seems to me that the people who benefit most from some kind of "special treatment" are those who share the LGFers' neuroses, bigotries and doublestandards about Islam. Compare the grilling awaiting any Muslim leader who dares to appear on a TV talkshow these days to how easy Islam-bashing pundits have it. Their lazy, tenditious assumptions are rarely subjected to anything near the same withering scrutiny facing Muslim perspectives.

Foreign Affairs - Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?: The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy - John Mueller

On the first page of its founding manifesto, the massively funded Department of Homeland Security intones, "Today's terrorists can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon."

But if it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it? Why have they not been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines, derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic jams, or exploiting the countless other vulnerabilities that, according to security experts, could so easily be exploited?

One reasonable explanation is that almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad. But this explanation is rarely offered.

Imagine if pundits peddling sensationalism were actually required to justify why they talk day and night about the Muslim Bogeyman (who has been responsible for exactly zero attacks on American shores since 9/11) while ignoring far more immediate and pressing threats, such as radon poisoning (which kills over 20,000 Americans every year) or drunk driving (16,000+ dead in 2005). Imagine if they were required to explain why they think it is so beyond the pale that poor Muslim youths in France might riot and burn cars after a deadly police incident given that poor Americans periodically riot for similar reasons (e.g.,  in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict in 1992,  or the Cincinnati Race Riots in 2001). Or how it is that if France's Muslim youth are so self-evidently savage for behaving thus that American college students could be known for torching parked cars over things as trivial as basketball championships (and sometimes to celebrate a victory) that police departments in college towns prepare for riots as a matter of course?

The list goes on and on. While Islamophobes may occasionally get a rap on the knuckles for being too openly bigoted, they are rarely forced to defend their ideas about Islam. While Muslims and their few defenders must contend with a profoundly hostile media climate of prejudices and "Are you still beating your wife?"-type questions about terrorism, Islamophobes generally have a free hand to argue for their geopolitically motivated double standards, cartoonish perceptions of Muslims and utter indifference to basic questions of sociology or historical context where Muslims are concerned.

Any rubbish or bile is made intellectually respectable through the addition of the magic words "Islamofascist" and "jihad".

Update.

Comparable news from across the Atlantic.

Spinwatch - The statistical invisibility of Islamist 'terrorism' in Europe

New figures from Europol, the European police agency, reveal that Islamist terror attacks in Europe constituted 0.2% or all 'terrorism' throughout the continent in 2006.* Unsurprisingly, there has been little in the media about this interesting figure in the month since it was published.

Don't forget to read Mueller's powerful essay debunking War on Terror hysteria.