Category: osculation of Islam

HuffPo ignores Islam in report on three British terror attacks

June 4, 2017 • 12:34 pm

Here’s today’s Puffho piece on the terror attacks in London last night (click screenshot to go to article).

We do not yet know for certain whether the latest attacks these were committed by Islamists, but it seems likely, and the New York Times reported this:

Britain’s home secretary, Amber Rudd, said on Sunday that the government was confident the attackers were “radical Islamist terrorists.” Speaking on ITV television, Ms. Rudd said, “As the prime minister said, we are confident about the fact that they were radical Islamist terrorists, the way they were inspired, and we need to find out more about where this radicalization came from.”

https://twitter.com/Imamofpeace/status/871154639885844481

PuffHo also mention the Westminster Bridge attack and the Ariana Grande concert bombing, clearly instances of Islamist terrorism. There is not a single mention of “ISIS”, “Islam”, or “Muslim” in the whole article. That, of course, is deliberate, as the HuffPo wants to avoid at all costs—and may be under instructions about that— connecting terrorism with Islam. But as Ali Rizvi said in his excellent talk last night, “We need to speak up about these things.”

Oh wait. . there is one mention of Muslime in this report; here it is; it’s a denigration of Trump:

The president appeared to use the unfolding chaos in London as a hook to reissue his internationally condemned call for a travel ban affecting several Muslim-majority nations.

And there’s one recent addition of “Islam”:

As police raided several locations in the U.K. capital and arrested 12 people, May promised to step up the fight against Islamic terrorism and review the country’s counterterrorism strategy.

We need to speak up. We can’t count on Regressive Leftist rags like HuffPo to call it like it is.

The hijab as a Confederate flag

June 4, 2017 • 11:22 am

Ali Rizvi gave an excellent talk yesterday at the Imagine No Religion meeting, a talk about how radical Islam has cowed Leftists by using the ambiguous but nasty term “Islamophobe”, which terrifies Leftists almost as much as the word “racist”.  That’s why criticism of Islam by the Left is much more muted than criticism of other faiths. And that is exactly what those Muslims (and organizations like CAIR) want: they want not only bigotry against Muslims stopped—and I fully agree—but they also want criticism of their faith stopped.

But I don’t agree that religious dictates should be immune from criticism: as Ali said, “Ideas do not deserve respect, it is people who deserve respect.” He added that those Leftists who either refuse to criticize Islam or—like the Islam-osculators at HuffPo—even hold it up as a force for good and a “religion of peace,” are thus victims of terrorism just as much as those who are afraid of being physically attacked. Such apologists are exactly what Islamist terrorists hope to produce—as they make their religion the only one immune from criticism.

I asked Ali what he thought of the hijab fetish we see in the West: the adulation of women wearing hijabs (even “voluntarily”), and the claim, made by women like Linda Sarsour, that veiling is somehow a sign of feminism and women’s empowerment. Ali’s reply was a good one, and went something like this:

“My wife has a good take on this. She sees the hijab in the same way she sees the Confederate flag. You’re free to wear it, just as you’re free to wave the Confederate flag, but be aware of what it stands for historically.”

Ali called for all of us to speak up against the pernicious and oppressive dictates of Islam (he’s an apostate, raised as a Muslim in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia). It is through our speaking up, he said, that we will eventually dispel the opprobrium attached to the term “Islamophobe.” In truth, “Islamophobia” means “fear of Islam,” not “fear of or bigotry against individual Muslims.” In the former sense, and as a critic of Islam and one fearful of its ideological consequences, I’m an Islamophobe.

“Muslims are the true feminists”: HuffPo lies to itself and its readers

May 16, 2017 • 11:00 am

UPDATE: This article appeared on the new HuffPo, and after writing this piece I realized I’d criticized the identical article a year ago, here. Well, so I’ve done it twice. My takes aren’t the same, so if you haven’t read the other one, read this one instead. Better yet, read both, as the earlier piece, which is shorter, has other information about the “feminism” of sharia law.  The piece shows that PuffHo is brain-dead, killed by Toxic Regressive Leftism.

________

Well, I’m sorry folks, but, like a dog returning to its own vomit, I keep returning to the HuffPo, breaking my vow that I was done with them. The laws of physics dictated otherwise: I could not have done other than write this post. And my also-determined justification for returning to that odious site is that HuffPo may be the premier “clicky” source of news for Lefties, since it is puffier and takes less work to read than, say, the New York Times. Also, the Times is more objective, and even has conservative columnists, so if you’re a Trump-hater or Regressive Leftist who wants confirmation of your biases rather than exercise for your brain, you can reliably find that confirmation at HuffPo.

And here’s their latest, one of the most egregious pieces of doublespeak that I’ve seen, even on that site (click on screenshot to go to the article):

Doesn’t that remind you of headlines like “Assad is the true peacemaker” or “Trump is the true progressive”?

Author Gabby Aossey’s claim is that Muslims are the True Feminists because they choose to respect their bodies by covering them, while Western Feminists disrespect their own bodies by showing their skin. Why, there’s even a Free the Nipple campaign in the West, which according to Aoussey exemplifies the goals of Western Feminists: to show skin. As she says:

As American women, many of us have an idea of what feminists are; freelancing women with all the sexual freedom in the world. But this is exactly the problem with American feminism; it is all about sex and the liberation of our bodies. Certainly, things like abortion and contraception is a part of that freedom, but in today’s society the fight has taken on a much different tone.

Hip Feminist campaigns like Free the Nipple only encourage a gullible behavior of disrespect for our own bodies, leading to everyone else around us disrespecting our bodies as well. If we want to be respected as women and taken seriously in all our endeavors we should look to a new source; Muslim women. Muslim women, as well as Muslim men, see every body as a sacred temple, especially the female body. Opposed to exposing themselves, it is through modesty. When we think of modern feminists we should stray away from the new American trends and start looking to what we have always thought as a contradiction; Muslim feminists.

That’s a gross distortion of feminism in the West, whose goal is, for most, simple equality. While that equality includes the freedom to dress as one will in public, it also includes legal and moral equality: the right to be treated with as much respect as men, and to enjoy the same legal rights.

Now Aossey is willfully ignorant of several things. One, of course, is the fact that Muslim-majority countries, many of them governed by versions of sharia law—which DICTATES that women cover themselves—oppress women. But don’t take my word for it. Observe that in Saudi Arabia, a woman can’t go out with a man who is not her relative, or go out unaccompanied, must wear full covering (not just a hijab) when she does to out, and can’t even drive. In Iran and Afghanistan, women MUST cover themselves, and under sharia law have much more restricted legal rights than men (for one thing, their testimony in court is worth only half of a man’s).

And it’s not limited to those countries. Check out the 2013 Pew Survey of Muslim-majority countries (which didn’t even survey more repressive ones like Iran, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia). Here are some statistics showing the “achievements” of Muslim feminism in the Muslim world:

Even the notion that wearing a veil should be a woman’s choice (in principle, of course!) is universally accepted only in a few Muslim-majority countries, and is widely rejected in Africa and the Middle East (note the absence of Iran and Saudi Arabia):


 Here’s true equality!:

Women’s oppression is codified in most instantiations of sharia law. Here are the data on those who favor such a law for everyone in Muslim-majority lands. Feminism my tuchas!

To buttress her flawed argument, Aossey calls up the image of Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife, by all accounts a powerful and independent woman. But that was fourteen hundred years ago! Are women in Saudi Arabia and Iran allowed to have such power now? Are they allowed to say whatever they want? You know the answer. Pointing to historical figures whose personalities may be largely fictional is no way to justify Muslim women as feminists today. That much is obvious.

And what happens to Muslim women who become liberals, leave the faith, or speak out against Islam’s oppression of women: liberals like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Asra Nomani, or Sarah Haider? Are they heroes, like Khadija? You know the answer. They’re vilified—vilified for opposing the legal and cultural inferiority of women under Islam. People like Aossey ignore this in their mush-brained desire to claim that Muslim women are feminists.

And then there’s the small matter of the hijab. Here’s Aossey’s take:

. . . it’s no surprise to see Muslim woman today modeling themselves after these prominent female figures. Muslim girls look towards these instances of strength for guidance in this scary, patriarchal society. These modern women are not afraid to go against the grain in the name of their belief like wearing the hijab to covey their religious devotion. Hijab is the headscarf that is worn by Muslim woman and no; it is not supposed to be forced on them by their fathers and husbands. Wearing or not wearing the Hijab reflects a Muslim woman’s own a personal choice.

What nonsense! In several countries wearing the hijab (or more covering) is the law, not personal choice, and if you refuse, the morality police will beat some sense into you. In other places, including the U.S. and Europe, social pressure by family and peers ensures that veiling is far from a personal “choice”. I’ve written before about what women’s dress was like in places like Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran before veiling was either common or mandatory. Answer: women didn’t veil as much, and showed a lot more skin. See my posts here, here, here, and here. These days, women must go on websites like My Stealthy Freedom to covertly doff their veils, for they don’t want to wear them!

And remember why veiling exists: it’s based on the presumption that women have to cover themselves to avoid exciting the uncontrollable lust of men, men who would rape them if they saw a knee or even a stray wisp of hair. It puts the onus on women, not men, to prevent sexual assault, and that’s not feminism. In fact, feminists always make the point, correctly, that it’s not women’s responsibility to quash male lust, and they’re right. “Feminist” Aossey, however, has bought into the oppression side:

With all of the pressures in our American society to have a certain physical allure; to have long, luscious hair, a skinny yet curvy body, flawless facial beauty, woman go through hell. With this, we succumb to the pressures that we generally think we are free of; we oppress our natural womanhood with constant worry about how we look to others around us. We do not have the courage to stand up to this societal critique and say ‘my body is not to be ogled at’.

For many Muslim women however, they strive to achieve just that. In this way, they liberate themselves from these everyday pressures. They actually have the courage to say hey, I am not an object of pleasure, I am a woman that commands only respect for who I am and not how I look. They have the power to self-liberate as well as the courage to diverge from the American norms. And they do not get attention from showing off their figure, but they get attention by how they present themselves. Muslim woman get respect and are looked at beyond aesthetics; they are actually taken seriously in their communities.

Isn’t this what feminism should be? Don’t women deserve consistent respect and to actually be listened to without drools or criticisms over our bodies and looks?

That is what the results of feminism should be, but veiling doesn’t achieve that result. Read two articles (this and this) to see how covering a woman does not prevent sexual assault. As Grania said when she saw Aossey’s piece (which, by the way, doesn’t allow readers’ comments):

It’s the woman’s responsibility to protect her temple from the assault of the eyes of evil men who are such dogs that they cannot be trusted. What I want to know is why these candidates for a brain donation aren’t arguing for the full-on niqab? Surely that is the logical next step.

Indeed! Aossey finishes her piece with more nonsense, as if repeating lies makes them more credible:

I realized we have been conditioned to think that American women are the free and that Muslim women are the suppressed, but this is twisted to me. I finally understood who is really oppressed by a patriarchal society and it is us. Woman who wear hijab have freed themselves from a man’s and a society’s judgmental gaze; the Free the Nipplers have not. They have fallen deep into the man’s world, believing that this trend will garner respect.

So I urge my Free the Nipple gal pals to take a look at your Muslim sisters and collaborate with them to create a feminism that treats the female body as a temple and not as a toy. Let us see feminism in a different light—through modesty and the courage to savor our sugar. Let us call on the Muslim feminists of the world.

The female body is not a temple, nor is the male’s. It’s the product of natural selection—the same selection that made us desire members of the other sex.

And can Aossey go out alone, or have an unchaperoned date, or drive? I think so, for she lives in America, not Saudi Arabia. Can she wear anything she wants in public? I think so, for she lives in America, not Iran or Afghanistan. Is her testimony equal in value to a man’s in a court of law? Yes, because she lives in America, not the Middle East. By equating feminism with “modesty”—a modesty forced on women by MEN, often against women’s will—Aossey manages to at once misconstrue and devalue the kind of feminism that calls for simple freedom and equality for women.

I wonder why Aossey doesn’t move to Saudi Arabia, where she must wear a sack so she isn’t oppressed by the “patriarchy.” She’s made the HuffPo look even more stupid and regressive than it already is, and that’s a feat!

h/t: Patrick, Grania

Portland student reporter fired for reporting public statement about Islam’s demonization of nonbelievers

May 14, 2017 • 9:15 am

This story, of course, is covered by only right-wing sites (e.g., here, here, and here), but do you expect the liberal press to report on the left-wing vindictiveness of the student press? At any rate, we have video documentation and the testimony of the reporter himself.

The skinny: Andy C. Ngo, a student reporter who works for the student paper Vanguard, was covering (apparently unoffically) a student interfaith panel held April 26 at Portland State University, a notorious home of Regressive Leftist Students—and also of my friend Peter Boghossian, mentioned below.  The College Fix then reports what happened:

Ngo has covered the persecution of atheists and “apostates” in Muslim countries for The Vanguard, and he’s a member of Freethinkers of PSU, which was represented on the panel by student Benjamin Ramey.

After the Muslim student, who organized the panel, took a question about whether the Koran actually permits the killing of non-Muslims, Ngo started recording video. He ended up posting a 40-second clip, and a few hours later, a longer contextual clip with audience response.

Two clips—a longer one and an excerpt, were published by Ngo on Twitter, and here they are:

Here’s what the Muslim student (charitably not named by Ngo, maybe because the student would be threatened by fellow Muslims for speaking the truth) said about Qur’anic dictates on killing non-Muslims:

And some, this, that you’re referring to, killing non-Muslims, that [to be a non-believer] is only considered a crime when the country’s law, the country is based on Koranic law — that means there is no other law than the Koran. In that case, you’re given the liberty to leave the country, you can go in a different country, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. So you can go in a different country, but in a Muslim country, in a country based on the Koranic laws, disbelieving, or being an infidel, is not allowed so you will be given the choice [to leave].

Here’s a longer clip:

Ngo reports about the longer clip:

This longer video includes a response by someone in the audience who disagreed with the speaker, saying it was “perfectly okay for non-Muslims to live in Muslim lands.” The audience member cited the existence of religious-minority communities in the Middle East as an example of Islamic tolerance.

Although Ngo says he shared the tweet with two colleagues at the Vanguard beforehand, with neither expressing concern, he was fired from the student paper four days later. For recording unofficially? Nope. Read on; this from Ngo’s own account at The National Review (my emphasis):

Four days later, the editor-in-chief of my school newspaper called me into a meeting. The paper’s managing editor was also present. They asked me about a Breitbart piece describing the event. It was the first time I’d seen the piece, which included my tweets and a tweet from one of the panelists. My editor, whom I deeply respected at the time, called me “predatory” and “reckless,” telling me I had put the life and well-being of the Muslim student and his family at risk. She said that my tweets implied the student advocated the killing of atheists. Another person in the meeting said I should have taken into account the plight of victimized groups in the “current political climate.” The editor claimed I had “violated the paper’s ethical standards” by not “minimizing harm” toward the speaker.

. . . In my defense, I told the two editors that I had simply been relating the speaker’s words. While dozens of Muslim states do not consider apostasy or blasphemy a crime, 13 Muslim-majority countries punish these actions with death. The speaker was admitting as much, and as someone who has covered the persecution of atheists and apostates in Muslim countries, I considered that newsworthy. Nevertheless, my editor turned to me and said, “We have to ask you to step aside.” She said I had “a history” of affiliation with conservative media, and argued that that history was toxic to the “reputation of the Vanguard.”

The Vanguard’s own account of the event, “Interfaith event sparks misunderstanding, goes viral”, does its level best to minimize or distort what happened:

Widely shared video clip leaves out event context

A video clip featuring only a portion of the organizer’s quote that addressed the Quranic law about non-believers or infidels being “given a choice” has been shared on Twitter and Facebook without the preceding and following context. This comment from the organizer, widely shared out of context was met with significant criticism by audience members who accessed it through social media and right-leaning media outlets. [JAC note: the paper shows screenshots of Ngo’s tweets, but gives no links, so there’s no way to check what the student really said.]

Another panelist, Benjamin Ramey, the representative secular humanist, also of Freethinkers, replied to the original tweet.

“As one of the panelists present at this event I would like to say that this speech is not taken out of context,” Ramey tweeted.

PSU Assistant Professor of Philosophy Peter Boghossian contributed to the Twitter conversation as well.

“The same people who want to punch ‘Nazis’ are completely silent when it comes to certain people advocating mass murder,” Boghossian wrote.

Well, the Muslim panelist clearly wasn’t advocating mass murder, but simply reporting the sentiments of those Muslims who do, which in fact is the law in some Muslim countries. And for reporting that truth, Ngo was fired. The craven Vanguard added an editor’s note at the end of its piece:

Editor’s Note: The video clip mentioned in this article was originally shared on the personal social media accounts of a former editor and contributor to the Vanguard who is no longer working for the organization. While these clips were not produced or distributed by the Vanguard, the organization and its members have a responsibility to uphold ethical standards on all fronts. 

It is our assessment that this video clip was published and shared without context in a way that placed a PSU student in significant danger. As members of the PSU community, we are compelled to protect and support this student and urge readers to consider the explanatory nature of these comments and recognize the event’s intent to foster inclusion and understanding. What could have been a dialogue of mutual understanding became a source of pain and fear for some of those involved.

The Vanguard is committed to minimizing harm and providing context that takes special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story, as per the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.  

Markedly biased media outlets have featured the event organizer’s comments without necessary context. The Vanguard does not endorse, condone or support the way this student was represented by said media outlets. We vehemently reject any association with this type of dangerous misrepresentation.

Note again what happened: a Muslim student, not named, simply agreed that the policy of some Muslim countries, based on the Qur’an, is to either allow the killing or banishment of apostates and infidels (and, of course, gays). To simply state that in public is deemed harmful, reckless, and “predatory.” And why did the clip place the student in danger? What kind of danger? Would his fellow Muslims try to harm him for simply reporting what some Muslim countries do? If so, then extremist Muslims have achieved a remarkable goal: not just prohibiting criticizing of the faith, but preventing reporting of what happens when the faith becomes part of law. It’s like saying someone’s in danger when he says that Saudi Arabia won’t let women drive.

Now the Bible mandates death for those who curse their parents or work on the Sabbath, and advocates genocide and slavery. If a Christian panelist said that, would it be deemed harmful? Perhaps not, because no country has made “Biblical morality” its official law, though some Islamic countries have sharia law as official law.

And simply for reporting that truth, a student was fired. This is, of course, part of the Left’s decision to throw atheists, women, and gays under the bus in favor of extolling Islam.  The reason, as we all know, is that the Authoritarian Left considers Muslims people of color, and oppressed to boot. Well, in many places Muslims themselves oppress other Muslims (Sunni vs. Shia), gays, women, and atheists—to the extent of officially calling for their murder. These sentiments are not only ignored by reprehensible papers like the Vanguard, but are protected by them, to the extent that honest reporting of Islamic perfidy is censored. Such papers wouldn’t, however, quash reporting of those Baptist sects which demonize homosexuality.

What we have here is a double standard based on pigmentation alone—and perceived pigmentation, for many Israelis could be deemed “people of color.” But you’ll never hear them called that.

Shame on the Vanguard and its cowardly reporting. A paper that not only ignores the inconvenient truth but covers it up is a disgusting paper.

NPR acts as if the myths of Christianity are real

April 15, 2017 • 2:00 pm

Reader Thomas called my attention to a 5-minute piece on today’s National Public Radio (NPR): “When Easter and Passover overlap,” which I guess is the situation this year. It’s a discussion between host Linda Wertheimer and Andrew McGowan, Dean and President of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, using the temporal overlap of the holidays to discuss their theological connection. (You can hear the program or read the transcript at the link above.)

The discussion sounds like a complete waste of time, designed to fill the “Easter/Passover news cycle” but Thomas had another objection, one based on the fact that—in the absence of evidence for the Resurrection and the evidence of absence of any Jewish Exodus from Egypt—NPR is treating these holidays as if they’re based on real events. (Linda Werthheimer is by her own admission a Jew, and says in this piece that she went to a seder, while Andrew McGowan is an Anglican priest.)

Here’s some of Thomas’s email, with Wertheimer’s words italicized:

I know you are as annoyed about NPR’s osculation, as you say, of religion as I am, so I thought you might have a comment on this aspect: NPR (and of course other outlets) frequently uses the language of fact around religious myths. This is from this morning’s Weekend Edition Saturday:

At midnight tonight, many Christian congregations around the country will hold an Easter vigil to commemorate the resurrection of Christ – this as Jewish congregations celebrate Passover, an eight-day commemoration of the Jewish people’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. I’m joined now by Andrew McGowan. He is dean and president of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. Thank you for being here.

The story of the resurrection is clearly a myth, and the story of the Jews’ enslavement in Egypt is also highly questionable historically. Yet above they are both treated as fact in a format notorious for over-use of words like “alleged” or “rumored” to remove responsibility for stating controversial truths.

The worst aspect of this is that NPR is the same network that, by official policy, won’t use the word “lie” to describe anything Trump says.

Now Thomas is right about these issues, but at first I thought “this isn’t a big deal,” as Wertheimer isn’t really claiming that the events were real. A charitable take is that she’s merely describing what is being celebrated. But then the interview went on:

WERTHEIMER: You know, one of the things that is said every year at the Seder that I go to is that the last supper was a seder.

MCGOWAN: That’s absolutely right. We can’t be sure that it was a seder quite like those that are more familiar from recent times because, in fact, strange as it may seem, the stories of the Last Supper are among the oldest evidence we have for anybody celebrating a seder. And yet they don’t include some of those lovely details that are familiar to so many – the series of cups of wine or all the special foods or the questions that are asked. But it’s absolutely true that the bulk of the earliest Christian material identifies the Last Supper as a meal celebrated at Passover by Jesus with His disciples, even though they’re a bit short on the ritual detail.

Note how “the stories of the Last Supper” are described as “evidence.” The piece goes on:

WERTHEIMER: What about the journey from slavery to freedom which is part of the Passover celebration? The way that Christians celebrate the journey from death to life which is part of the resurrection of Christ – I mean, are those all parallels that we should pay attention to?

MCGOWAN: Well, the Easter Vigil itself is really a kind of mini Passover for Christians, I think. Much of its symbolism is specifically about mapping Jesus’ narrative – the story of Jesus’ connection and his movement from death to life – as a kind of image that parallels that of the Exodus experience so that Jesus becomes Israel itself and his passage from death to life is like the passage through the Red Sea.

And so Christians themselves, especially in the first thousand years of Christian history, saw the whole of the Jesus experience very much as a new kind of Passover, a new kind of deliverance from slavery to freedom and the creation of a people who had a special relationship with God. But, of course, they allegorized the Exodus story and made it part of their own story. And the Easter Vigil still retains that basic language and symbolism of a journey from slavery to freedom, a journey from oppression to liberation.

Again, one could be charitable and just say they’re discussing religious tradition, not the truth of religion (after all, as a Jew Wertheimer surely doesn’t believer in the Resurrection), but neither do they mention that in all likelihood—and in near certainty in the case of the Exodus—what they’re talking about is equivalent to celebrating Santa’s delivery of presents on Christmas or the flight of witches on brooms at Halloween. There is no mention that these are myths without an evidential support.

But of course Werthheimer and McGowan don’t think they’re myths, and NPR is certainly not going to say, “By the way, these holidays are probably not based on historical events.”

I’d normally let this pass, but Thomas’s email got me thinking that in America we are so saturated by this assume-it’s-true religious palaver that we never think to challenge it, or to tell a radio station wedded to “giving the facts” that they cut awfully close to the bone when those “facts” involve religious claims.

Claire Lehmann on feminism’s new love for Islamic “modesty culture”

April 5, 2017 • 12:00 pm

Claire Lehmann, editor of the true liberal website Quillette, made a 4-minute video on feminists’ growing celebration of Islamic “modesty culture”—a video that deserves wider airing. Yes, it’s put out by the right-wing site Rebel Media, but who else would sponsor and air a video like this?

Claire is in fact not at all a conservative, but a liberal in the classical mold. And it takes a classical liberal to make these simple points:

“Wearing a headscarf is not an achievement. It is certainly not a feminist statement.”

And her point about hijabophiles wanting attention is right on the money. Something has gone awry with feminism when it fetishizes and worships a symbol of male oppression. If a true patriarchy exists, it is Islam.

See Claire’s other Rebel Media videos here.

The NY times soft-pedals Islam

January 26, 2017 • 10:45 am

Today’s New York Times is unusual in having five of its six op-ed pieces (including the two main editorials) about the missteps of Donald Trump.  Besides a good piece on “The cost of Mr. Trump’s wall” (probably $20 billion and $500 million per year upkeep; a real loser in terms of cost-benefit analysis–and good luck in getting Mexico to pay for it), it also has a long piece on Trump’s new immigration policies, “I think Islam hates us.”

As I said recently, Trump’s proposed crackdown on immigration is hamhanded, and unlikely to improve the U.S., though arguably we should look at least a bit closer at visas issued to people from the Middle East. The “Islam” editorial is basically okay, but I wanted to point out three statements about that instantiate the liberal Left’s soft-pedaling of Islamic terrorism.  Here’s one (my emphases in all excerpts):

. . . While Mr. Obama made significant progress in degrading this threat — the Islamic State has lost considerable territory in both Iraq and Syria — he did not put an end to violent extremism. Mr. Trump is now pledging to do more and better.

The problem is that his approach, as we know it, is more likely to further inflame anti-American sentiment around the world than to make the United States safer. Mr. Trump has not explained how he would destroy the terrorist danger. But his use of slogans like “radical Islam,” which echo the views of his closest advisers, implies a naïve reading of the threat from about 40,000 extremists, while demonizing and alienating many of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.

Naïve reading? What, exactly, is okay with “violent extremism” and not okay about “radical Islam”? Do the 40,000 “extremists” happen to share a certain religion?

It is in fact radical Islam that is behind most of the terrorist acts in question (or does the NY Times think that religion isn’t involved?), and why would peaceful, nonviolent Muslims be demonized and alienated by referring to terrorism coming from “radical Islam”? Should peaceful Christians be demonized and alienated if “radical Christians” kill abortion doctors, which sometimes happens. What about “radical Baptists” picketing the funerals of soldiers? Does that demonize all Baptists? Or “ultra-Orthodox Jews” biting off the foreskins of children, giving them herpes? Does that demonize all Jews? No, it’s only the world’s Muslims we must fear alienating, for they have learned to play the offense card well, and are prone to retribution. It is that religion alone we mustn’t alienate, and that itself tells you something about how it’s insulated itself from criticism. And, in the end “radical Islam” simply means “extremist Islam.”

In fact, later on in the piece, the Times tells us how to defeat the Terrorism Driven by The Religion Whose Name We Cannot Speak:

The United States undoubtedly must find more effective ways to defeat terrorists, including by undermining their message. If Mr. Trump can do that, it will be to his credit. But to a great extent success will depend on long-term cooperation from Muslim leaders and allies.

But what has been the message of these terrorists? It’s an Islam-based criticism in the West. Did the Times read the article in ISIS’s magazine Dabiq, ““Why we hate you & Why we fight you”? (Article here, my post on it here.) They might start by reading that, and then see how to undermine their message without mentioning Islam—even in the mealymouthed trope that ISIS doesn’t represent “true Islam.” There’s simply no way to undermine a terrorist message by completely ignoring the religion behind it, or emphasizing that there can be a less violent version of that religion. (The latter is, of course, the message of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz.)

Finally, Trump wants to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. That is at least arguable given that it’s been designated as such by some Middle Eastern countries and that Hamas, which is a genuine terrorist organization, is simply the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. (On the other hand, the Brotherhood explicitly renounces the use of violence–though it seems to spawn it.) But the reason that the NYT gives for not going the Trump route is weird:

Some experts see the move as a chance for the Trump administration to limit Muslim political activity in the United States. But since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a NATO ally, sympathizes with the Muslim Brotherhood, such a step would further complicate that fraught alliance.

I’m sorry, but what we need to be doing now is criticizing the hell out of the Erdogan government, which is itself repressive, anti-free-speech, and poised to foist an onerous theocracy on Turkey. If you’re thinking of labeling the Muslim Brotherhood one way or the other, look at the facts, but don’t be conditioned by trying to osculate the rump of a government that itself is dismantling what democratic institutions it had in the name of Islamist autocracy.