After September 11, former Washington Post religion reporter Gustav Niebuhr set out in search of the great backlash against Muslims, finding instead anecdotal evidence in support of the Pew figures: "In the very week when the nation suffered a grievous injury from a stateless criminal gang that identified itself by its members' religion--as Muslims--some Americans chose to express concern and friendship toward their Muslim neighbors."
So despite having the mother of all opportunities for a national convulsion of violence and discrimination against a religious minority, America, for the most part, chose investigation over emotion:, lay conversations about the tenets of Islam were ubiquitous, books detailing doctrinal differences between Muslim sects flew off the shelves, and the president beseeched his fellow Americans to understand that, despite acts of violence in its name, Islam was a religion of peace.
One can always find, in a nation of 300 million people, examples of boorish behavior towards religious minorities. But if Muslims that embrace violence against non-Muslims are a tiny minority, it is time to acknowledge that attacks on Muslims by non-Muslims in the United States are perpetrated by an even tinier minority. That the United States doesn't do backlashes needs to be restated frequently and forcefully, rather than ignored in favor of exploiting a "teachable moment" of religious tolerance.
Immediately after 9/11, some Lebanese Maronite Christians I interviewed feared that they would be dragged into any Muslim-bashing that might come about because they're Arabs, and many people don't understand that not all Arabs are Muslims. I thought about them just now when I read this story from Florida:
A Marine reservist is facing charges after police said he attacked a priest visiting from Greece who he believed was a terrorist.
Police said that Lance Cpl. Jasen D. Bruce, 28, hit 29-year-old Alexios Marakis in the head with a tire iron, then chased him for three blocks.
According to reports, the incident happened when Marakis, who was visiting from Crete and speaks only limited English, got lost near a Channelside apartment complex after performing the blessing of another priest.
Police said Marakis drove into a garage and tried to ask Bruce for help, but that he was instead attacked. Bruce then called 911 during the ordeal and told the operator an Arabic man was trying to rob him, the report said.
Bruce said he was going to take the priest into custody, police said. When officers arrived, they said Bruce told them the priest was a terrorist.
Had Father Alexios really been a Muslim, his (alleged) attacker would have been merely wicked. But it turns out the dude's not only wicked, he's an idiot too.
UPDATE: Ruh-roh! Jasen, who is now implausibly and despicably claiming that the priest tried to sexually assault him, might have been a little on edge about that sort of thing because some beefcake photos of him have turned up on Mad About the Boys, a gay-oriented site (he's not naked, but this isn't really safe for work). To be fair, he might not have known these shots were going to be licensed to a gay site ... but the story does get curioser and curioser.
David Frum reminds us to keep this image below and these others in mind as we struggle to figure out the meaning of Maj. Nidal Hasan's disgusting mass murder. Frum's right:
Did you know that creationism (versus natural selection) is mainstream in the Islamic world -- and that a secretive Turk named Harun Yahya has a lot to do with it? Steve Paulson reports for Slate:
Creationist stories are now popping up in Turkish high-school science textbooks, and some government officials in the AKP, the ruling Islamic party, freely criticize evolution. In Ankara, the government's point man on religious issues, Mehmet Gormez, told me, "All the holy texts say human beings are created by God. I think evolutionary theory is not scientific, but ideological."
The Quran doesn't have a detailed origins story like the six days of creation found in Genesis, but it does say Adam was created out of clay in a heavenly paradise and later banished to earth, along with Eve. Various polls show that many Muslim countries are predominantly creationist, but Turkey has recently emerged as a hub of global opposition to evolution. In 2006 Science magazine found that only 25 percent of Turks accepted the theory of natural selection--the lowest rate among any of the 34 countries surveyed. (The second-lowest was in the United States.)
Why Islamic creationism has exploded in Turkey is a complicated story that may have as much to do with politics as religion. Unlike most Muslim countries, which simply ignore the science of life's origins, Turkey's high schools have taught evolution for decades--the legacy of Ataturk's campaign to secularize Turkey's public culture. Creationism has become a way for political Islamists to attack the secular elite that governed Turkey until the recent rise of the AKP. Oktar's own agenda isn't confined to evolution. He's calling for a "Turkish-Islamic Union," a Turkish super-state that would stretch from Kazakhstan to Indonesia and western Africa--a revamped Ottoman Empire for today's Muslims.
I did not know that. I remember being in Istanbul and seeing an English-language pamphlet or a book, can't remember which, using a photograph of a piece of chewing gum to make some sort of creationist point. It was surreal. I had no idea that creationism was such a big deal in the Islamic world. Though when you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
(Countdown to the deployment of a variation of Manning's Corollary in the combox thread...)
You really need to watch the six-minute video at the end of this post. It's a short interview with Fathima Rifqa Bary, the 17 year old Ohio girl who converted from Islam to Christianity, and who recently ran away from home, claiming that her father will murder her to save the family's "honor" lost when she left Islam.
Fox News reports that a Florida court today is likely to send her back to her Ohio family -- which she fears will kill her for apostasizing. It is impossible to say from afar how much this girl has been manipulated, and how realistic her fears are. Perhaps she's making it up (her family says so). Perhaps she's manipulating others, or being manipulated. What seems clear to me from watching the video is that this teenage girl is scared out of her wits. We know that honor killings happen. Last year in suburban Dallas, an Egyptian Muslim father killed his two teenage daughters, Amina and Sarah (Rifqa refers to them briefly on the video below); he is still at large. He had been threatening them with violence, friends and family say, because he thought they were becoming too Westernized.
Back then, I spoke to a reporter who covered the girls' funeral at a local mosque. The reporter told me it was shocking to hear the imam's funeral sermon focus on how parents need to control their children more. And, I spoke two years ago to a young adult Christian convert from a Southeast Asian Muslim nation, a journalist who lived every single day in fear of his life because of having left Islam. It was not an idle or theoretical threat for him. Rifqa ("Rebecca") Bary may not literally be in danger, but it is by no means out of the question. Honor killings are not a figment of anybody's imagination. You cannot watch this video of her without being deeply impressed by how frightened she is. It would be cruel to send her back to her family, at least at this point. I don't know that the law has any choice, given that she's not a citizen. But I tell you, I would give her the benefit of the doubt, based on what we know now -- and I would give her sanctuary too, in defiance of the law. (See update below -- Bary is safe for now, per court order)
Bary (emotionally): I want to be with [the church people in Florida]. I want to be free from my parents. I want ... I want to be free. I want to worship Jesus! I want to go to church on Sundays, and read my Bible, and say Jesus is alive whenever I want to! You guys talk about religious freedom? No! I don't have that. I want to be here, I want to worship Jesus freely. I don't want to die.
My former Dallas Morning News colleague Joanna Cattanach describes herself as "not the most educated of Christians." She's married to a Muslim, and for the record, doesn't intend to convert to Islam. But starting Saturday, she's going to begin to...
Alex Massie takes on anxiety over the Euro-Muslim name game. Excerpt: Sure as eggs is eggs, you can count on some folk being terribly exercised each time it is "revealed" that lots of boys named Mohammed, or some variation of...
Mark Steyn observes that "Mohammed" is the most popular name for boys in the Netherlands, and that Islamic names dominate the Top 10 lists in that part of Europe. This is not without broader meaning, though one is considered horribly...
ABC News reports on a teenage American girl who secretly converted to Christianity, and has fled her Muslim family's home to escape the prospect that she'll be murdered. Excerpt: Lorenz said Rifqa, a native of Sri Lanka, had secretly converted...
Quoting from an e-mail from an English reader: Even I, an ardent believer in secularism in its original form, and a sceptical, watery Christian, find the hatred, bigotry and all-round ignorance of people my age towards Christianity trying and depressing....
Er, wow: though still a small number, more and more non-Muslims in Britain are going to sharia court seeking judgment for legal matters. It's perfectly legitimate under British law as long as both parties agree to abide by the sharia...
French President Nicolas Sarkozy says that there's no place in France for the burka. Excerpt: "In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said...
So says President Obama in an interview with French media on the eve of his Middle East visit, according to this, by the UK Telegraph's US Editor Toby Harnden: As ABC's Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller astutely outline here, the...
The Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has guts, and more than that, he's a man of faith. That he felt he could serve more effectively by resigning his bishopric (he's going to work for the sake of the persecuted church) says...
I get so very tired of global Muslim whining about how they are disrespected. In some cases, I suppose, it's true, but I'd take these complaints a lot more seriously if Islamic countries busied themselves treating Christians and members of...
Christopher Hitchens, making sense: [I]t is the so-called mainstream Muslims, grouped in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, who are now demanding through the agency of the United Nations that Islam not only be allowed to make absolutist claims but...
A reader writes to say that people on this blog often sneer at claims that Christians are being oppressed or discriminated against, but he brings to my attention a story from the UK that is undeniably an attempt to marginalize...
Looks like somebody is off-message: BUFFALO, N.Y. - A suburban Buffalo man who founded a cable TV station to promote better understanding of Muslims in the U.S. has been arrested on charges he beheaded his wife....
Can't say I blame this woman a Jewish columnist for the Spectator cites: At my dinner table on Friday night, a holocaust survivor admits that she is trying to persuade her son to take his family out of Europe to...
This is an outrage: a top Dutch court has ordered Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders to stand trial for "inciting hate and discrimination" over his harsh public criticism of Islam and Muslims. From the court's statement: The Court of Appeal has...
What do you make of this footage of London police handling an Islamic demonstration a week or two ago? Some say it shows them running from the demonstrators. It could, however, simply be a manifestation of police procedure for keeping...
Remember the Muslim punks from yesterday -- the young American adherents of Islam who have adopted a punk sensibility to rebel against both standard Islam and the American mainstream? Well, their counterparts in Jordan are also in rebellion -- but...
Signs of the Protestantization and Americanization of Islam: the creation of a Muslim punk movement around an underground novel that's been made into an indie film. Excerpt: Noureen DeWulf, 24, an actress who plays a rocker in the movie, defended...
Muslim lawyer Anjem Choudary has posted a recent sermon on the Internet, discussing an evil may people may not even recognize as a danger to them: Christmas. From the UK Telegraph: The lawyer, who recently praised the Mumbai terror attacks,...
A Catholic priest friend sends me a story from the Daily Mail with the subject line "The bishops strike again." What's he talking about? This rather astonishing piece of news. Excerpt: Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman...
The other day I spoke to Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, the anti-Islamist Muslim activist, about the Holy Land Foundation trial convictions. As you may know, the major US Muslim organizations were named by the government as unindicted co-conspirators in the terror...
The predictable arc of the discussion in the thread below about Islamic terrorism in Mumbai calls for a restatement of a principle defined on this blog almost one year ago: Manning's Corollary to Godwin's Law, which holds that the longer...
I wish to associate myself with Ericka Anderson's post. I saw the video today of those that one McCain voting jerk, and the Muslim guy for McCain standing up to them. Good for him. And God bless the sacrifice of...
Writing in the Times of London, Ross Clark argues that the British couple in the Dubai dock for having sex on the emirate's beach are the sort of jackasses who unwittingly help al Qaeda. Excerpt: While they deny actually having...
We talk a lot here about how modern consumer culture, and philosophical modernity, undermines tradition and traditional religion. Here's a lengthy, absorbing account from the NYT about how young men from Egypt are leaving the strictures of their static, poor...
I regret that I've forgotten till now to welcome one of our newest Beliefnet bloggers, Aziz Poonawalla, who writes the Islamic blog City of Brass -- at which he discusses most recently the establishment of sharia courts in the UK....
Several of you have forwarded to me news from the UK that sharia courts have quietly been established there. Excerpt (emphases in bold are mine): Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule...
This isn't good news: Nearly one third of Muslim students believe it can be acceptable to kill in the name of religion, according to a survey published yesterday. It also found that 40 per cent want to see the introduction...
Slightly hysterical Muslim woman gets up in Christian street preacher's face, grabs at his Bible. Christian street preacher calls Muhammad a pedophile. Muslim woman slugs him hard. It's all here on video (the punch is at the 1:30 point). What...
This is not surprising: The Muslim-outreach coordinator to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama has resigned amid questions about his involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups. Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, who was appointed volunteer national coordinator...
Yes, says Shahed Amanullah, over at Progressive Revival. Excerpt: First of all, Muslims now more than ever need to cast their lot with the group of people most likely to respect their uniqueness and resist the prevailing urge to restrict...
Jimmy Akin makes the case for sacking Myers. Here's the gist of it: He has made himself unsuitable for employment as an educator. In particular, he has made himself unsuitable for employment as an educator at a state-run school, such...
Honestly, what is it with the British Muslim community? Now some Muslims are cheesed off because of a British police poster that has a photo of a cute puppy on it. Dogs being ritually unclean, and all. Excerpt: Dundee councillor...
One and a half cheers for American Muslim homeschooling families. Excerpt from today's Times story: About 40 percent of the Pakistani and other Southeast Asian girls of high school age who are enrolled in the district here [Lodi, CA] are...
Remember when Ronald Reagan came on the national scene, he was thought to be a dangerous man because he didn't believe in detente with the Soviets, but actually thought his vision was true, the Soviet vision false, and ought to...
Good news, perhaps, from Turkey: the government has engaged in a big push to modernize Islam. Excerpt: The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of...
Well, I got to meet the great lady today. The first thing you notice is how timid and demure she seems. Could it really be that such a courageous and outspoken woman is so ... slight? True. And she is...
In one of his most powerful and, to my mind convincing, columns ever, Spengler weighs in on the Geert Wilders controversy, coming down emphatically on the side of Wilders' efforts to force the Dutch to deal with the destabilizing contradiction...
The provocative Dutch politician Geert Wilders says he hates Islam, not Muslims. Excerpt: But he does want to create a stir. 'Islam is something we can't afford any more in the Netherlands. I want the fascist Koran banned. We need...
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamist prime minister of Turkey, has just ended his three-day visit to Germany, which is home to a sizable Turkish population. He spoke at a stadium rally of some 20,000 Turks, in which he instructed them...
I just knew the inimitable Spengler would go at the Archbishop of Canterbury hammer and tongs in his column today, and he did not disappoint. He starts from an interesting perspective: that Western Europe has lived in internal peace since...
Things keep getting rougher and rougher for Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, over his call for Britons to make room for sharia in the UK. But an American professor believes ">+Rowan is being treated unfairly, as Pope Benedict was...
Seeing that Church of England Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali is now under police protection after having received death threats for asserting that -- wait for it -- some Islamic parts of England had become no-go areas for Christians, and that some...
Here's a pretty great interview from ReligionWriter.com, an impressive blog run by Andrea Useem, a religion writer and American convert to Islam. The interview subject is my pal Terry Mattingly. Andrea and Terry talk about the difficulties of reporters writing...
Nobody ever accuses the Brussels Journal of being soft on Islamic extremism in Europe. Which is one reason why this thoughtful Thomas Landen essay the BJ published that's strongly critical of Geert Wilders' proposed movie trashing the Koran is worth...
Here's Christopher Caldwell writing about the current situation in Holland: The Netherlands has spent the past several weeks in a political crisis out of a novel by Borges. People are worried that a politician might say something he has already...
Daniel addresses his youthful flirtation with Islam here, in a post tearing into people who smear Obama as Muslim. According to Larison, he never really converted to Islam, but professed it idiosyncratically ...mostly out of an attraction at the time...
Gotta say I agree with Charlotte Allen's dismissal of the new book about Orthodoxy by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, which she reviews in today's Wall Street Journal. I read much of the book in galleys a couple of months ago, but...
As my regular readers know, one of my favorite bloggers is the Russian Orthodox traditional conservative Daniel Larison. I didn't realize until today that he spent a "short, very unfortunate and lamented" time in his early adulthood as a convert...
Though they have been allowed to live in a civilized nation, this young British woman's family wants to murder her because she left Islam for Christianity -- and now she's living like a fugitive in her own country. A prisoner...
Spengler takes up the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the courageous Muslim apostate who is now something of a fundamentalist atheist. She tells Reason magazine that, regarding the challenge to the West from Islam, "there comes a moment when you...
Derb is incensed that John Gibbons, the adult son of the British subject now imprisoned in Sudan for calling a teddy bear Muhammad, is all knotted up over the possibility that the incident will make people think bad things about...
A thousand foaming lslamic loonies took to the streets of Khartoum today, demanding the execution of that poor British schoolteacher who allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Boy, I can't imagine why the immigration from Islamic countries...
The tiresome Muslim Brotherhood fellow travelers at CAIR are at it again. This just flopped over the e-mail transom: U.S. Muslims to Launch Major News Media Education Campaign Journalists’ guides to be distributed to 40,000 American media professionals (WASHINGTON, D.C.,...
Spengler's latest piece exemplifies why he's such a fascinating columnist to read. In it, he advances the thesis that the only Western leader who truly understands that the West faces not a war on "Islamofascism," but an honest-to-Allah religious war...
Spengler at Asia Times Online has been talking for some time now about Iran's coming demographic crisis (see this, for example, from 2005!). And now Philip Jenkins weighs in Iran's birth dearth on The New Republic Online (subscribers only): Anyone...
Steve Waldman, in a perceptive locution, posits that for the Religious Right, "Islamofascism is the new abortion." That is, fighting Islamic extremism has become the most important issue to many conservative Christian voters, and that it's even more important than...
A Washington-based Egyptian journalist writes today that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the mothership, has finally released its political platform. Guess what? They want an Islamist state with sharia law, and the denial of the right to run for the...
John Derbyshire has a longish, rambling, irascible, compulsively readable essay about Islam in the modern world, with something in in to irritate just about everybody (which is one reason I find him such a pleasure to read). Derb's an atheist/agnostic...
Below is an image of a very personal relic of 9/11. It is the page from my reporter's notebook, recording the very instant when the first of the Twin Towers fell. I was a New York Post columnist that morning,...
This will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, but http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/columnists/rdreher/stories/DN-dreher_09edi.ART.State.Edition1.4235f88.html">in today's Dallas Morning News, I write about that 1993 strategy memo outlining the Muslim Brotherhood's plans for expanding its influence over American Islam, with the long-term goal of...
Today's NYTimes has a story about the Islamic Society of North America convention this past weekend, and the flap over the US government's sending representatives to engage the ISNA membership -- this, even though in Dallas, the Justice Department has...
Here, courtesy of Salon, is the Berkeley Breathed comic strip that's been banned by newspapers (including the Washington Post) on grounds that it's insensitive to Muslims. It's pretty mild stuff, and it makes fun not of Muslims, but a certain...
In Dallas, the Department of Justice is presenting evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial tying the Islamic Society of North America closely to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, which, according to a MB planning document introduced into evidence, has a...
Ross Douthat once wrote of John Derbyshire: Favor your family and friends; kill your enemies or avoid them; regard everyone else with a certain suspicion - these are the tenets of Derbism, and it should go without saying that they...
We had a great session this afternoon here at the paper with James Oberwetter, who returned to Texas not long ago after serving as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. We learned a very great deal in this session. Unfortunately, we're...
Great news for readers in north Texas: KERA Channel 13, our local PBS affiliate, is going to air the film "Islam vs. Islamists" tonight at 10 pm. This is the controversial documentary that highlights efforts by moderate Muslims to fight...
Karen Hughes, I mean. According to my colleagues at the DMN's Religion blog, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy is going to be the speaker this weekend at a Texas Muslim Scholarship Fund banquet in the Dallas area. The...
Via Andrew, I saw this Reuel Marc Gerecht critique of Barack Obama's vision for fighting Islamic terrorism. This part struck me as very wise -- and worrying: To the senator's credit, he sees that Iraq and al Qaeda do not...
From Scotland comes word that officials in a regional branch of the National Health Service have ordered employees not to have working lunches during Ramadan, so as to avoid offending Muslims. You know what I say: Dang Mormons. But seriously,...
Please go to this link, and scroll down to page 7 of 18 in the English language translation. It is a document introduced into the Holy Land Foundation trial by the government. It is from the Muslim Brotherhood, dated to...
Documents entered into evidence at the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing trial here in Dallas are being posted by the US court to the Web. The Counterterrorism Blog highlights one document entered into evidence yesterday -- the transcript of a...
Notice who showed up to hear the stemwinders at the big radical Muslim confab in London the other day. Says the NYT: The conference was dedicated to the return of the Khilafah, or caliphate, the organization of Muslim power that...
Say you're a Muslim who doesn't like what someone has said about you or other Muslims in public. What do you do? How about filing a libel lawsuit? It's the done thing nowadays, regardless of the merits of each case....
Michelle Malkin wants to know why the Korean martyrs-in-waiting (two have already been murdered) held by the Taliban aren't receiving more media attention here: Across Asia, media coverage is 24/7. Strangers have held nightly prayer vigils. But the human rights...
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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