Tag: muslims

I have 3 articles for your morning perusal that are kind of on the darker side of things. It’s Monday, so I’m more morose anyway, lol.

First, a decent Oped on Terrorists:

Are All Terrorists Muslims? It’s Not Even Close

Obviously, there are people who sincerely view themselves as Muslims who have committed horrible acts in the name of Islam. We Muslims can make the case that their actions are not based on any part of the faith but on their own political agenda. But they are Muslims, no denying that.

However, and this will probably shock many, so you might want to take a breath: Overwhelmingly, those who have committed terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe aren’t Muslims. Let’s give that a moment to sink in.

Jump!

While the Nutroots Nation polled support for Obama at some ridiculous margin of around 85%, more realistic minds in the Arab world have reassessed His Potential Hopey Changey-ness.

The 2010 Arab Public Opinion poll will be released Thursday at the Brookings Institution by Shibley Telhami, of the University of Maryland and Brookings’ Saban Center for Middle East Policy. The annual survey, conducted in conjunction with Zogby International, polled 3,976 people in six countries – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates – in June and July.

The most striking finding is that while early in the Obama administration, in April and May 2009, some 51 percent of those polled expressed optimism about American policy in the Middle East; in the 2010 poll, only 16 percent were hopeful, while a majority, 64 percent, were discouraged.

snip

“Basically, Arabs have concluded that he can’t deliver on his promises at best, or that he’s just like Bush at worst,”  George Washington University Middle East specialist and ForeignPolicy.com writer Marc Lynch said. “But there’s still considerable residual hope at this point that they’re wrong and that he’ll come through in the end.”

Pretty standard “looks-like-a-duck-walks-like-a-duck” assessment, which is generally and amazingly unavailable to progressive/liberals, except for those of us specializing in infantile tantrums, moral purity, and “poutrage,” those of us for whom Obama can do no good and deep down want the true psychopaths, not the pseudo-psychopaths, back in charge.  Whatevs.  The dude is a colossal disappointment.  A chronic fuck-up, really, completely lost, and wandering his own special Limbo as if in  a moral twilight zone.

This is also interesting:

Other key findings are that views on the Arab-Israeli conflict and its prospects for resolution have remained stable, and that a slight majority of the Arab public now sees a nuclear-armed Iran as being better for the Middle East.

Arabs prefer that Americans and Israelis walk on eggshells in the Muslim world, and seriously, who can blame them?  

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Building consensus within America’s body politic and national security establishment for a new way forward with Muslims worldwide is a formidable challenge. Many Americans still don’t appreciate the complex nuances of Muslim society and remain stubbornly Islamophobic almost seven and half years after 9/11. Equally formidable is earning the goodwill of Muslims worldwide following the Iraq War as well as American atrocities perpetrated upon Islamic detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Hopefully, President Obama’s historic election has finally opened a path for constructive conversation about how America can most effectively engage the Muslim world.

The CIA’s former point man on Islam, Emile Nakahleh, has vigorously entered this conversation with his new book, A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations With the Muslim World (Princeton University Press). From 1991 to 2006, Nakahleh served as the director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA. He holds a PhD in international relations and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

From Monday, July 21 through Thursday, July 24, Pastor John Hagee will be in Washington, D.C. to lead the national gathering of his infamous Christians United For Israel.  The CUFI conference is studded with rightwing zealots and features workshops like “Radical Islam: In Their Own Words,” led by neo-conservative Daniel Pipes and former right-wing Senator Rick Santorum; and “The Basics of The Arab Israeli Conflict,” led by representatives of the pro-occupation David Project and StandWithUS and Gary Bauer, president of anti-choice, homophobic American Values.

Unbelievably, the Anti Defamation League (ADL), the supposed bigotry watchdog, has not condemned Hagee for his anti semitic, anti gay, anti Muslim rhetoric.  To the contrary, ADL has given him a free pass. In fact, in a recent letter to Hagee, John Fox, president of ADL wrote, “We wholeheartedly support your efforts to eradicate anti-Semitism, including its historic antecedents in the Christian community. We especially appreciate your extraordinary efforts to rally so many in the Christian community to stand with Israel.”  This is utter, embarrassing nonsense.

As a result of ADL’s unprincipled behavior, Jewish Voice For Peace and others have condemned the conference and are calling on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to stand up against Hagee’s pervasive bigotry and to condemn his statements.

Join me in DC.