THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XI, Issue #199, November 15, 2009
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
FORT HOOD & THE ACADEMIC APOLOGISTS
By Cinnamon Stillwell
THE MORAL RELATIVISM, OBFUSCATION, & ERRONEOUS ANALYSIS OF MIDDLE EAST STUDIES "EXPERTS" WHO ARE
CALLED ON TO PROVIDE ENLIGHTENMENT REGARDING ISLAMISM & JIHADISM: THE CULTURE OF POLITICAL
CORRECTNESS & WILLFUL BLINDNESS THAT HAS INFECTED THE UNIVERSITIES, THE ARMED FORCES, THE INTELLIGENCE
AGENCIES, & MANY OTHER AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS -- SELF-CENSORSHIP & THE RUSH TO JUDGEMENT AGAINST THOSE
WHO EXPRESS VALID CONCERNS ABOUT MILITANT ISLAM -- WHY MAJOR NIDAL MALIK HASAN WAS ALLOWED TO
ALLOWED TO REMAIN IN THE U.S. MILITARY, COMMIT TREASON, & MURDER HIS FELLOW SOLDIERS IN COLD BLOOD
FULL STORY:
In the wake of the horrific attack at the Fort Hood military base in Texas earlier this month, and the mounting evidence that
the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was motivated by Islamist beliefs, the media has turned to Middle East Studies
"experts" for enlightenment. Instead, what the media, and, by extension, the American public, has received is the moral
relativism and obfuscation that too often meets any effort to address Islamism or jihadism in an intellectually honest
manner.
Writing for the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog, John Esposito, Professor and Founding Director of the
Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, extends his
long tradition of issuing apologias for radical Islam by conflating Hasan's actions with "extremists" of all religions. In the
process, he professes ignorance as to why there might be suspicion directed towards Islam in the wake of 9/11, the worst
Islamic terrorist attack in U.S. history:
Why this common tendency and double standard towards Islam and Muslims post-9/11? We judge the religion and
majority of mainstream Muslims by the acts of an individual or an aberrant minority of extremists. Yet, when Jewish
fundamentalists kill a prime minister or innocent Palestinians or Christian extremists blow up abortion clinics or assassinate
their physicians, somehow the media is capable of sticking to all the facts and distinguishing between the use and abuse
of a religion.
Having written this post while news of Hasan's fanatical leanings and possible terrorist connections was still developing,
Esposito warns against a "rush to judgment" that might, as he puts it, "negatively impact the American public's perception
of Islam." Heaven forbid that Americans start to suspect that Islam itself contains the seeds for Islamism. Contrary to popular
belief, this awareness need not implicate all Muslims. Rather, it asks the faithful to address Islamist violence and aggression
by implementing theological and cultural reform.
Esposito continues the moral equivalency and non sequiturs in a later "On Faith" post:
No major faith, including the five major world religions I have studied and taught, threatens the safety and security of the
U.S.A. or its citizens. Religious extremists of any faith are a threat, but they should be treated as any other extremists,
religious or non-religious.
Yes -- but the 14, 374 terrorist attacks worldwide over the past eight years weren't perpetrated at random by members of
diverse world religions. They were executed by radical Muslims, every one.
Ingrid Mattson, Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, Director of the Macdonald Center for Islamic
Studies at Hartford Seminary, and President of the Islamic Society of North America, is well-known for expressing her own
Islamist sympathies. This may be why, in a November 8, 2009, New York Times article, Mattson made this clumsy
attempt at obfuscation:
I don't understand why the Muslim-American community has to take responsibility for him. The Army has had at least as
much time and opportunity to form and shape this person as did the Muslim community.
Arguing that the U.S. military was responsible for cultivating Hasan's Islamist beliefs is laughable. So is the idea that the
Muslim-American community bears no responsibility. After all, the "community" includes radical clerics such as Anwar
Al-Awlaki, the former spiritual leader of the Virginia mosque Hasan attended (and who has since praised Hasan for the
attack), along with organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose sole purpose is to
intimidate into silence anyone who connects Islamic terrorism with Islam.
If not for the politically correct environment created by apologists such as CAIR, Mattson, and her academic cohorts, the
numerous warnings from Hasan's colleagues about his predilection for fanatical and threatening commentary might not have
gone unheeded or been met with naïveté and incompetence. When people are afraid to speak the truth for fear of being
branded racists or "Islamophobes," it can have dire consequences.
Then there's UCLA Law Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, who has his own problematic history of dismissing concerns about
Islamic terrorism, opposing counterterrorism efforts, soft-pedaling jihad, and promoting sharia law. In the same New York
Times article, El Fadl, claiming to have "counseled Muslims conflicted about enlisting" in the military, elaborates:
"In the Koran, it says that war is to end the state
of oppression and to uplift the oppressed. Is it an army
that defends the oppressed, or have you slipped into
becoming the oppressor? People from the military who
contact me, that's what I find they're torn up about."
It should be self-evident that the U.S. military, which has liberated so many peoples from tyranny, is not an oppressor.
El-Fadl here questions the legitimacy of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East and, by extension, the ability of
Muslims to serve in the Armed Forces with a clear conscience. In his view, they are all victims of an internal conflict.
Muqtedar Khan, Director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware, takes the claim of victimization a step further.
Khan echoes El Fadl and lends backhanded support for the belief that motivated Hasan and which is a canon of Islamist
ideology: that the U.S. is at war with Islam. In a guest article for the Washington Post's "On Faith," Khan claims
that Hasan:
"... was in an army that was at war with his co-religionists
and he had difficulty dealing with that. He was frequently
taunted and harassed for being a Muslim by his own
colleagues. After years in the military and after years of
caring for soldiers as a doctor, he did not feel as if he
belonged and perhaps that was the key to why he could
turn on his own."
In fact, the U.S. military invested significant resources in Hasan's lengthy career -- and trusted him with the mental health
of its soldiers -- only to be rewarded by treason and mass murder. Furthermore, the claims that Hasan was discriminated
against have not been verified and do not stand up to scrutiny. For instance, it's well-known that enlisted personnel would
never taunt or insult an officer.
In the same article, Khan laments the coming mythical wave of "Islamophobia" -- a wave that has never manifested, despite
endless claims by Islamism's apologists. As he put it:
"... this episode will once again provide fodder for talk
shows and websites, which exploit such isolated events
to ratchet up Islamophobia."
He continues:
"Americans must not allow this isolated event to fall back
on stereotypes about Islam and resuscitate the prejudices
that all of us have worked so hard to curb."
It's ironic that Khan would decry prejudice when he himself refused to share an academic panel at the University of Delaware
with IDF veteran and Campus Watch Adjunct Scholar Asaf Romirowsky in October, 2007. Khan made various excuses for his
bigotry, but none of them held up, and, as a result of his actions, Romirowsky was uninvited from the panel. (Khan, in an act
beyond parody, was later awarded a sizable State Department grant to "initiate a dialogue on religion and politics.") Yet Khan
would deign to lecture the American public about imaginary "Islamophobia" and counsel Muslims "to share the message of
peace, tolerance, and pluralism" in the wake of the Fort Hood attack. He might want to take his own advice.
Despite these efforts at dissemblance, the facts in the Hasan case speak clearly to a jihadist agenda. Americans, rightly
concerned about the culture of political correctness and willful blindness towards Islamist ideology that has infected the U.S.
military, intelligence agencies and so many other institutions, need only look to the denizens of the Ivory Tower for an
explanation. Instead of explaining events like the Fort Hood shooting to the American public, all too often Middle East
Studies academics refuse to state the obvious and choose to obfuscate rather than clarify the events at hand. The rush to
judgment against those who express valid concerns about Islamism only adds to the self-censorship that was, in large part,
responsible for allowing Hasan to remain in the military and murder his fellow soldiers in cold blood.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Islamist Fifth Column -- America's Internal Enemies:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
American Foreign Policy -- Political & Psychological Warfare
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
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
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be
reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
The foregoing article by Cinnamon Stillwell was originally published in American Thinker, November 15, 2009, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/2510/fort-hood-academic-apologists)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
November 15, 2009
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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