THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VI, Issue # 203, September 16, 2004
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ISLAMIC PROPAGANDIST ATTACKS ME!
By Alan Caruba
FULL STORY:
I must be doing something right! A leading U.S.-based (Philadelphia) Islamic propagandist is attacking me these days and being
read as far away as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
For some time now, I have known about Dr. Habib Siddiqui, identified in the Pakistani Times as “a Pennsylvania-based noted
analyst.” His commentary about me has been circulating on a number of Middle Eastern and Asian websites and his admirers have
sent me its text. He learned about me by reading my commentary, “The Decline and Fall of Islam,” posted on my website for The
National Anxiety Center and widely posted on other news and opinion websites.
“He helps to foment anxiety among people through negative stereotypes about Islam and Muslims,” says Dr. Siddiqui. I don’t think
I have do anything to promote negative perceptions about Islam and, in particular, the fanatical Islamists responsible for 9-11, the
slaughtering of children in Beslan, Russia, and other acts of barbarism one can read about daily in newspapers or learn about from
television news. Christians and Jews do not take hostages and behead them. What I do, however, is write about the way Islam
encourages the worldwide holy war that so many nations have experienced.
Indeed, I am not the only commentator and analyst with whom Dr. Siddiqui has a problem. Another is Dr. Daniel Pipes, arguably one
of the best analysts of Islam and the problems of the Middle East. In a September 5, 2003 letter, Dr. Siddiqui described him with terms
such as racist, spiteful, disingenuous, biased, and bigoted. Both Dr. Pipes and I support a strong American defense and a vigorous
campaign, in cooperation with our allies, against Islamist terrorism.
In his commentary criticizing me, Dr. Siddiqui devoted most of it to a comparison between the Koran and the New
Testament, citing the latter extensively to prove that Christianity too supports and urges violence against unbelievers, ending
by saying “So much claptrap about Christian ethics!” Trying to justify the attacks on churches and synagogues by saying Christian
and Jewish religious texts advocate violence while the Koran is devoted to peace and love is so ludicrous it defies comment.
Like all Islamic apologists, Dr. Siddiqui identifies America and Israel as the real enemies, citing the actions taken in defense of our
nations. In a March 22, 2004, opinion editorial, Dr. Siddiqui wrote the following:
“Caruba’s charge that Islam has been trying to conquer the modern world is debunked by history.
It is outright criminal and mendacious to the core. His analysis lacks scholarship and gives a bad
name to journalism.”
In Dr. Siddiqyi's editorial, no mention is made of Osama bin Laden’s fatwa calling for the deaths of all Americans or the long history
of attacks on Americans going back to when Iranian Islamists took our diplomats hostage for 444 days in 1979, culminating in 9-11.
The attacks in other nations are a mounting list of atrocities.
Dr. Siddiqui dismissed my review of these attacks as I connected the dots with other attacks. “One has to be totally out of touch with
reality to make such a silly and wacky observation,” said Dr. Siddiqui in his attack on “anti-Islamic hawks” in the Bush administration
and on "paranoid" journalists who support the Bush administration. Dr. Siggiqui asserted that “a brain-dead devotee, Alan Caruba, is
one such paranoid journalist.”
If I am paranoid, then there is clearly no need for the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security, nor was there any need to attack the
Taliban in Afghanistan or remove the threat of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, whose record of aggression is a very long.
Nor has Dr. Siddiqui been content with attacking Dr. Pipes or me. In a June, 2004, opinion editorial published in the Pakistani
Times, he wrote a long piece attacking former President Ronald Wilson Reagan, a week after he was laid to rest.
“How will future (sic) measure Reagan? It is highly unlikely that it will look as rosy
as it has been the past week.”
Suffice it to say that Reagan’s policies were turned inside out as proof that he was
anti-Islamic.
“If America fails to learn the lessons from his failed policies, it is doomed to repeat
them, something that has already become the hallmark of the current Bush
administration.”
The pathetic history of Muslims since their brief period of scholarship, abandoned hundreds of years ago, the way they were driven
out of Europe and the end of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, speaks volumes for why Muslims submitted to the
oppression and exploitation by the monarchs and despots who have ruled the Middle East and northern Africa. Islam has engaged
in conflict throughout modern India, has encouraged it in modern times throughout Africa and the Pacific Basin, inflicted it on Spain
and Russia, and continues to threaten the United States of America.
One hardly needs to be paranoid or anti-Muslim to examine history or respond to the Third Great Jihad the world is experiencing today.
Whether Dr. Siddiqui will continue to quote this commentator and direct attention to my views is of little concern to me. He merely
gives voice to the distortions of fact common to the media that ill-serves Muslims. One can only hope that the vast bulk of Muslims
regard the current conflict to be the hijacking of Islam.
There are few Muslims who have experienced constitutional democracy and freedom. When they do, as in the case of an Iraq that is
struggling to join the modern world, Muslims may elect to practice their faith without the bloodshed that has been the hallmark of its
history since it was founded in the seventh century. That said, I will continue to maintain that a religion that is unable and unwilling to
respond to change, as both Judaism and Christianity have done, is doomed to fade away over the centuries to come.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
The Middle East & the Arabs
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past columns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Nations vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 28 West Third Street, Apartment 1321, South Orange, New Jersey, 07079.
Copyright 2004 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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