Posted on 10/03/2001 3:05:32 PM PDT by white trash redneck
Here's the now-notorious Grover Norquist column from last June claiming that Bush won the presidency because of the Muslim vote. Nothing wrong with that. But Norquist claims Bush won the Muslim vote because he took a stand against the use of "secret evidence" in immigration cases, a practice that now looks less indefensible. ... Hmmmm. Are the irresponsible Muslim leaders Bush is now bringing into the popular front (see below) the same ones he wooed during the campaign? Answer: Yep. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American Muslim Council (AMC), the two main groups slammed by Jake Tapper, were among the four Muslim organizations in a PAC that endorsed Bush on October 23, 2000. Bush had been "responsive to their concerns over sensitive issues like deportation," the NYT reported at the time. ... (10/3)
Helped by a good lead anecdote, WaPo's Hanna Rosin and John Mintz bust the irresponsible American Muslim leaders courted by the White House -- the same basic piece Salon's Jake Tapper wrote last week. ... Isn't it also the White House's fault for picking these clerics to ally with? And the press's for relying on ready-with-a-quote grievance-mongers as representatives of the larger American Muslim community? ... The issue nobody in the mainstream press want to touch, of course, isn't the extent to which these particular clerics have winked at terrorism, but the extent to which Islam itself does. Is it really true that the Islamic extremist movement "perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam," as President Bush (and William Safire, in full PR-man mode) have asserted? Or does the Islamic tradition gives more support to extremism than we'd like to admit? I don't know the answer to that question. (Note to P. Beinart: this is why there's a New Republic!) ... But where does it say that all religions have to be nice, peaceful bourgeois organizations that encourage a private relationship with God, keep to themselves, organize picnics and aren't offended by what others believe? ... Update: The issue is discussed usefully by Warren Ross here. And William F. Buckley takes a hard line here. ("It is all very well for individual Muslim spokesmen to assert the misjudgment of the terrorists, but the Islamic world is substantially made up of countries that ignore, or countenance or support terrorist activity.") ... (10/2)
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