My post The “Stop the Madrassa” Coalition and its campaign against the Khalil Gibran International Academy has been quoted on the FrontPage magazine site in an article titled Fantasizing “The New McCarthyism” by Phil Orenstein, FrontPageMagazine.com, Friday, May 23, 2008.

Islamism (the totalitarian ideology) does pose a real threat. But it’s a threat that needs to be addressed with surgical precision, not blind hysteria.

Alas, Phil Orenstein’s article comes across to me as hysteria-mongering: a flood of accusations against various people, combined with a blatantly fallacious dismissal of the civil rights concerns of Muslims. But his article has inspired me to research several topics more deeply this past week, including hate crime statistics and the recent history of bigotry against both Jews and Muslims.

• The quote from me, and my preliminary response
• The witchhunt mentality: guilt by association
• Pipes and “the enfranchisement of the Muslim community in America” – valid fears of Islamists and Jew-haters
• Hate crimes and civil rights violations against Muslims
• More guilt by association
• The two valid gripes of the anti-KGIA folks

The quote from me, and my preliminary response

Below is a copy of a comment I posted here in response to the recent FrontPage article:

To Phil Orenstein: Quote out of context, etc.

I’m quoted above as saying that Debbie Almontaser is “a traditionalist-leaning Muslim and as such, has ties to the more fundamentalist Muslim groups.” You left out a crucial first part of that statement of mine: “It does appear that ….” I don’t know her personally, and I’m certainly no expert on her actual religious orientation, or on what groups she has ties to or how close any given tie is. The blog entry you quoted was merely my preliminary attempt to piece the story together from what people on both sides of the controversy had to say. I’m surprised that you deemed me worthy of quoting on this particular matter at all; don’t you have any better sources?

By the way, if you were wondering what the campaign against Debbie Almontaser has in common with McCarthyism, it is precisely your obsession with guilt-by-association, even to the point of quoting not-very-knowledgeable sources (such as, in this case, me) about someone’s associations.

There are other schools, elsewhere in the U.S.A., about which I think the anti-”Madressa” movement probably does have valid concerns. But it does not appear to me that the KGIA is one of them, as I explain in the blog post you quoted.

About your dismissal of the existence of hate crimes against Muslims: While the statistics you referred to do appear to show that hate crimes against Jews are a much more common occurrence, those statistics certainly do NOT show that “American citizens are showing more tolerance and respect toward Muslims than any other religious group.” Rather, according to those statistics (on the FBI site here) Muslims are the second most frequent target of religiously motivated hate crimes. Furthermore, according to the graphic in the article you cited on this topic, there were many more hate crimes against Muslims in 2001 than in the year of the FBI report in question, 2006. Fortunately such crimes have decreased, but not to the point of total insignificance.

I’m concerned about bigotry against Jews too, especially the revival of classic libels against Jews. I’ve been focussing more on Muslims lately because of the need to strike a balance between legitimate concerns about the spread of Islamism (the theocratic imperialist political ideology) and avoiding undue paranoia about individual Muslims.

Although the links in my copy above do work, they didn’t work in the original, so I posted the URL’s in a subsequent comment here.

Now for a further response to Phil Orenstein’s article.

The article is full of personal accusations against various people, plus quite a bit of wrangling over CUNY (City University of New York) faculty politics. I don’t know how much truth there is to most of these accusations, and I don’t have time to research them all. I’ll just say that Phil Orenstein’s citing of me as a source on Debbie Almontaser’s religious beliefs and organizational affiliations, while ignoring the explicitly tentative nature of my statement on that matter, does not leave me with a favorable impression of his journalistic acumen. As we shall see later, he also cites such dubious sources as an editorial by someone who can’t do math. That being the case, I would suggest that the reader take most of his accusations with a grain of salt.

In the remainder of this post, I’ll comment on just a few points that leapt out at me, some of which I considered important enough to research further. Among other things, I spent quite a bit of time exploring Daniel Pipes’s site.

The witchhunt mentality: guilt by association

In response to some statements about Daniel Pipes by Mona Eldahry, one of the panelists at the April 28 forum on “Academic Freedom and the Attack on Diversity at CUNY,” Phil Orenstein wrote:

… Daniel Pipes is an Islamic scholar well known for his respect and defense of the majority of peaceful Muslims, often asserting that while radical Islam is the problem, moderate Muslims are the solution.

Yes, Daniel Pipes does make that distinction. (See his writings on moderate Muslims, and see also Flemming Rose’s interview with Daniel Pipes on The Threat of Islamism.) However, in practice, Pipes often comes across to me as overly quick to accuse someone of being a “stealth Islamist,” often based on little more than guilt-by-association. For example, on this page, he says that Debbie Almontaser’s “defense of CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations], more than any other statement by Almontaser, proves she is an Islamist.” This supposedly incriminating statement of hers, quoted by Pipes, is as follows:

CAIR-New York is one of the most prominent civil rights organizations in New York City, as well as across the country. The president of CAIR sits on the Human Rights Commission of New York City. He was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg. So if Mayor Bloomberg has no issues with working closely with CAIR, I don’t see why anyone should have any issues. CAIR, unfortunately, has been targeted, because it is fighting for the civil rights of Arabs and Muslims. And, you know, this organization, as well as other organizations fighting for civil rights of Arabs and Muslims, is very much needed.

Below are some pages dealing with the controversy about CAIR:

• Allegations by Daniel Pi;es and Sharon Chadha against CAIR
• CAIR’s response to various allegations against CAIR
• ADL’s page about CAIR
• CAIR’s Open Letter to ADL
• ADL response to CAIR open letter
• CAIR page about Daniel Pipes
• Daniel Pipes’s reply to CAIR

Even if it’s true that CAIR is dominated by Islamists (those who aim to impose Islamic theocracy worldwide), it doesn’t follow that everyone associated with CAIR is an Islamist.

Daniel Pipes also claims that, although most American Muslims are more moderate, Saudi-style Wahhabism/Salafism is disproportionately dominant in pretty much the entire American Islamic establishment, thanks to Saudi oil money. To whatever extent the latter claim is true, it would logically follow that there are probably lots of non-Wahhabis associated with Wahhabi-dominated organizations, simply because those Wahhabi-dominated groups are the only game in town.

Thus, an endorsement of CAIR does not necessarily mean that someone is an Islamist. And, by saying that Debbie Almontaser’s “defense of CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations], more than any other statement by Almontaser, proves she is an Islamist,” Daniel Pipes has thereby admitted that all his other “evidence” is even weaker.

In Daniel Pipes’s article Debating the Khalil Gibran International Academy, he says the following:

I do think that – what I know of her record suggests that she is someone who supports radical Islam, that is to say, supports bringing in elements of the Shari`a, of Islamic law, whether it be by bringing in imams onto the advisory board or having lunch that is served according to Islamic regulations or receiving an award from, as Ms. Elliot noted earlier, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The advisory board included not just imams, but also Jewish and Christian Clergy plus the leader of an atheist/humanist group (the ethical culture society).

As for halal food in the cafeteria: I would see nothing wrong with that if there were also public school cafeterias that served kosher food in neighborhoods with a large Jewish population. According to the NPR radio show linked in Pipes’s article, the Board of Education currently allows neither. There do exist CUNY colleges with cafeterias that serve kosher food. I see no legal or constitutional reason why gradeschools couldn’t serve both kosher food and halal food too, as well as ordinary food, except that some school buildings might be too small to accommodate multiple kitchens easily. However, in a sufficiently large school building, I see no rational reason for anyone to feel threatened by either kosher food or halal food. As long as they are optional, they don’t infringe on anyone else’s rights.

Daniel Pipes writes:

Let me just note one thing, that the long-time national spokesman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said back in 1993, that “I don’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future, but I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.” So the long term plan of CAIR and other institutions has been to work with education.

Pipes seems to be insinuating that if a public school teacher or principal is involved with CAIR, then that teacher or principal will abuse one’s position to promote, via “education,” the idea of an Islamic government.

Note the word “I,” not “we,” in Pipes’s quote from the CAIR “spokesman.” Thus the “spokesman” was speaking for himself, not for CAIR. While an Islamic government might be an informal goal of some, perhaps even most, of the leaders of CAIR, it’s not an official “long term plan of CAIR” itself (see CAIR’s Vision, Mission, and Core Principles). Thus, the “spokesman’s” statement certainly does not constitute proof that Debbie Almontaser intended to use her position as a school principal to promote the idea of an Islamic government.

Daniel Pipes has not found any evidence of Debbie Almontaser herself saying anything like, “The U.S. Constitution should be replaced by the Quran and Hadiths” or “Islam is the solution to all our social problems.” Had she herself ever said any such thing, it would indeed be cause for concern - especially if she had said it in a classroom. But apparently she hasn’t.

Furthermore, there are many people who know her, including even an ADL spokesperson, who have attested to work for mutual understanding between people of different religions. This doesn’t sound to me like someone who wants to eliminate our secular government.

Debbie Almontaser does appear to be traditional in her practice, or at least traditional enough to wear hijab. But this, in itself, doesn’t tell us much about her political and social goals.

Pipes says:

Let me also note that back in 2003, Ms. Almontaser took part in something called the “Grand Display of Muslim Unity” at Madison Square Garden, organized with the Islamic Internet University, and the mission of that university is to establish and support, “the Islamic institutions, particularly Islamic educational institutions, in this land.”

Did she abuse her position as a public school teacher to promote this event at a public school? If not, I see nothing to complain about here. Teachers and school principals have the right to attend whatever religious and political events they choose.

Furthermore, to be an effective networker, a school’s founding principal needs to attend a wide variety of social events. Among other things, a school’s founding principal needs to be able to network with the Muslim community (as well as the Christian community, the Jewish community, etc.) as it exists now, rather than to be picky and associate only with small groups of modernizing reformers, as Daniel Pipes would apparently prefer.

Despite his scholarship, Daniel Pipes sometimes seems ignorant of basic logic. For example, he doesn’t seem to know what the word “imply” means:

My problem, in the abstract, was that I’ve seen over and over again that the instruction of Arabic implies either a political or a religious agenda. I’ve documented this [taking place] in various places, such as Middlebury College in Vermont or in Algeria, or a whole range of schools around the country.

Apparently by “implies” he means “has often been accompanied by.” Instruction in Arabic certainly does not logically imply “either a political or a religious agenda.”

Daniel Pipes then has the gall to say:

That’s not a witch hunt. That’s noting something and criticizing it, and I wish my critics had the decency to respond to what I’m saying, rather than abuse me and call me names.

Well, I wish Daniel Pipes had the decency to avoid making personal accusations based on flimsy evidence (e.g. that Debbie Almontaser’s support of CAIR “proves” she is an Islamist). It is precisely the flimsiness of his evidence that, indeed, does make his accusations constitute a “witchhunt.”

In my opinion, he does have valid fears about the spread of Islamism. But it would be nice if he could be more measured in how he voices those fears. If Pipes is worried that a particular person might a “stealth Islamist,” I think he should, at the very least, voice his suspicions about people in a more tentative manner, in the absence of real proof. He should be more careful to avoid making claims that are stronger than the evidence he presents.

Ironically, Pipes himself has been a target of similarly flimsy accusations based on guilt by association. Among other things, he has been accused of conspiring with Flemming Rose, publisher of the controversial Danish Mohammed cartoons, to stoke up “the Zionist Neo-Cons’ ‘clash of civilizations,’ the artificially constructed struggle to pit the so-called Christian West against the Islamic states and peoples.” See his article Those Danish Cartoons and Me, in which he recounts what happened and then writes:

In today’s vicious and vulgar political discourse, public figures must anticipate that their actions, however minor and innocent, might randomly be plucked out of obscurity and framed as part of some grand design.

He also has a page of corrections of other people’s factual errors about him.

From his own experiences with other people’s conclusion-jumping, one would think he should have learned to avoid jumping to conclusions about other people, too. Alas, he apparently has’t.

Perhaps Pipes’s accusations are correct. But, if they are, he should wait with making those accusations until he can present better evidence and not rely so heavily on guilt by association. I don’t know whether the people he accuses of being “stealth Islamists” really are “stealth Islamists.” But I do know that the evidence he presents, and his reasoning about that evidence, are glaringly flawed. I also know that a civilized society needs to uphold the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.”

Pipes and “the enfranchisement of the Muslim community in America” – valid fears of Islamists and Jew-haters

In Fantasizing “The New McCarthyism”, Phil Orenstein writes:

She claimed Pipes wrote that the enfranchisement of the Muslim community in America is a serious problem for the Jewish people. When I tried asking for the source of such statements, I was curtly interrupted, and told “we have to move on now.

Well, I’ve dug up some sources. The most directly relevant source is his WorldNetDaily article A French lesson for Tom Harkin, which begins by quoting something he said to the American Jewish Congress in October 2001:

I worry very much, from the Jewish point of view, that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims, because they are so much led by an Islamist leadership, that this will present true dangers to American Jews.

See also Daniel Pipes’s online collection of writings on Antisemitism, including the following:

• The New Anti-Semitism
• American Muslims vs. American Jews (another copy of which was published under the title of Islam’s Big Threat in America)
• The Paterson ‘Protocols’
• Deadly Denial [of Muslim Anti-Semitism]
• The Politics of Muslim Anti-Semitism

Another relevant article, not listed on his “Antisemitism” page, is The End of American Jewry’s Golden Era: An Interview with Daniel Pipes.

Pipes’s claim is not that Islam itself poses a threat to Jews, but that the hatred of Jews that is all too common among Muslims these days, in conjunction with the political ideology of Islamism, is indeed a serious threat to Jews.

As far as I can tell, based on my own admittedly much more limited research, he is essentially correct that bigotry against Jews has become very widespread among Muslims - not just opposition to the state of Israel, but a revival of old-fashioned European-style Jew-hating myths such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and even the medieval blood libel.

(Like many right wingers, Daniel Pipes has a tendency to confuse legitimate criticism of Israel with “anti-Semitism.” But he does document plenty of instances of real hate crimes and libels against Jews too.)

I agree with Pipes that this is a serious problem. But I disagree with him on what to do about it.

I agree that it’s important to acknowledge the threat. And I agree that it’s important to encourage genuine moderates and modernizing reformers to become more visible in the Muslim community.

However, Pipes takes what I consider to be an overly heavy-handed approach. On the one hand, he is overly quick to accuse individual Muslims of being “stealth Islamists.” On the other hand, he, a non-Muslim, has played a very active and visible role in trying to help moderate Muslims to organize. (See, for example, his pages on Stephen Schwartz and the Center for Islamic Pluralism and Responding to Joshua Muravchik about “Moderate Islamists”.) Helping genuine moderates is praiseworthy, but I fear that he may be overdoing it.

Ironically, Pipes himself recognizes the dangers of a too heavy-handed approach in another realm, foreign policy. In Dealing With Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories, he writes:

Avoid bestowing the kiss of death. Conspiracy theories foster a widespread suspicion among Muslims that foreign powers covertly control their rulers; overbearing foreign support thereby undermines a Middle East leader’s reputation and this redounds to hurt the foreign patron. In Syria, the government did so badly in the elections of 1954 in large part because it was seen as far too pliant to American wishes. Not accidentally, it was replaced by leftist politicians who viewed Washington with hostility, and these ruled for decades afterwards. The shah of Iran and Anwar as-Sadat lost their countrymen’s respect because both were (wrongly) seen as agents of Washington. Hafiz al-Asad and the communist rulers of Afghanistan suffered from their too close association with Moscow.

I would encourage Daniel Pipes to apply this insight not only to the U.S. government’s dealings with foreign governments, but also to his own and the American Jewish community’s dealings with the American Muslim community and the organizations therein that he likes and dislikes.

In much the same way that a government which appears to be controlled by foreigners is unlikely to win the loyalty of its citizens/subjects, so too a Muslim organization whose agenda appears to have been dictated by non-Muslims is unlikely to attract very many Muslims. Thus, a strategy of aggressively urging everyone to blackball all Muslim groups except for a select few small, certified 100% pure moderate groups (with too much funding from non-Muslim sources) could easily backfire, it seems to me.

(P.S., 6/2.2008: To counteract the effects of Saudi oil money, I would suggest laws limiting the amounts of money that religious groups, educational institutions, and other organizations can receive from overseas sources.)

At the same time, Daniel Pipes needs to rein in his own “conspiracy theorizing” tendencies regarding “stealth Islamists,” lest he unnecessarily alienate people via his propensity for conclusion-jumping accusations. The threat of “stealth Islamists” is real, but I think he needs be more careful to avoid crying wolf - and the appearance of crying wolf - about specific individual people. At least Pipes admits that he has made some mistakes in this regard. (See Identifying Moderate Muslims.) But he needs to become more careful about his evidence and how he presents it.

Hate crimes and civil rights violations against Muslims

In Fantasizing “The New McCarthyism”, Phil Orenstein wrote:

Nevertheless, the cries of widespread Islamophobia are false alarms according to FBI data which shows that hate crimes against Muslims have plummeted since 2001 and account for a fraction of overall religious hate crimes. In fact, in 2006, there were six times as many religiously motivated attacks on Jews as there were against Muslims in America, although Jewish and Muslim populations are about the same size.

Orenstein’s link, in the above quote, doesn’t take us to the FBI report itself, but rather to “Hyping Hate Crime Vs. Muslims,” an editorial on the Investor’s Business Daily website, Monday, December 03, 2007. This editorial says:

In 2006, a whopping 66% of religiously motivated attacks were on Jews, while just 11% targeted Muslims, even though the Jewish and Muslim populations are similar in size. Catholics and Protestants, who together account for 9% of victims, are subject to almost as much abuse as Muslims in this country.

Whoa! Here in the U.S.A., Catholics and Protestants greatly outnumber Muslims. So, the 11% of hate crimes directed at Muslims add up to a lot more hate crimes per Muslim than the 9% of crimes directed at Catholics and Protestants combined are per adherent of those faiths. The statistics certainly do not prove that Muslims are just slightly worse off than Christians in terms of the risk of being the target of a hate crime.

Let’s hope that the Investor’s Business Daily’s pages about business and investments are written by people who are better at math.

Since neither Phil Orenstein or the Investor’s Business Daily provided a link to the actual FBI report, I looked for it myself on the FBI website. The statistics on victims are here, on one of several pages of Hate Crime Statistics, 2006. I also found the FBI’s announcement of this report, dated November 19, 2007, and a page listing hate crimes reports for other years.

Another very interesting thing I found on the FBI’s website is the text of a speech by Jonathan Solomon, Special Agent in Charge of the Miami Division of the FBI, as part of a lecture series sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in Boca Raton, Florida, February 6, 2008. Jonathan Solomon starts off by saying, “The ADL has been an invaluable partner to the FBI over the years, and so I’m happy to be here to continue building our relationship.” Later in the speech, he had this to say about the recent hate crimes report:

Unfortunately, hate crimes are on the rise. This past November, the FBI issued its annual hate crimes report based on data which was voluntarily submitted by police departments across the country. I’m disappointed to say that the data indicated that hate crimes had risen almost eight percent.

Over 7,700 hate crimes were reported. Over 50 percent were motivated by racial bias, and about 19 percent were motivated by religious bias.

Breaking down the numbers further, we learned that attacks on Muslims increased 22 percent. Attacks on Jews increased 14 percent. Attacks on Catholics were up almost a third. And hate crimes against Hispanics were up 10 percent.

Now, these numbers are from 2006. But in recent months, we have all read disturbing accounts of this upward trend in the papers.

So, while hate crimes against Muslims have not gone back up to 2001 levels, it appears that they are indeed rising again. So, Muslims are not utterly without reason to worry.

The Investor’s Business Daily editorial alleges:

Every year the pressure group releases a report citing thousands of alleged civil-rights and physical abuses against Muslims, which largely are based on anecdotal reporting from members. Despite CAIR’s obvious bias (and proven record of dissembling), the PC-addled media report its numbers unfiltered and without question.

I looked up CAIR’s report on the Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2007 (PDF), which contains statistics for 2006.

On page 5, the CAIR report says: “CAIR received 167 reports of anti-Muslim hate crimes, a 9.2 percent increase from the 153 complaints received in 2005.” Let’s compare this with the FBI’s list of Incidents, Offenses, Victims, and Known Offenders by Bias Motivation, 2006, which lists 156 incidents (with 191 offenses, 208 victims, and 147 known offenders) on the line for “Anti-Islamic” single-bias incidents. Thus CAIR’s figure for hate crimes is somewhat greater than, but not wildly in excess of, the FBI’s figure.

In addition to actual full-fledged hate crimes, the CAIR report also speaks of “civil rights complaints,” a separate category from “hate crimes.” The CAIR report says, “In 2006, CAIR processed a total of 2,467 civil rights complaints, compared to 1,972 cases reported to CAIR in 2005. This constitutes a 25.1 percent increase in the total number of complaints from 2005.”

That figure must be the “thousands of alleged civil-rights and physical abuses against Muslims” which the Investor’s Business Daily editorial allege to have been disproven by the FBI report. But the Investor’s Business Daily editorial is comparing apples and oranges here. As we have seen, “civil rights abuses” are not the same thing as “hate crimes.”

The Investor’s Business Daily editorial then says:

But if you peel them back, you find they’re mostly victimless crimes. For instance, in its 2006 report released in June, CAIR listed as a “hate crime” the following example: “A copy of the Quran was found in a toilet at the library of Pace University in New York.”

If that copy of the Quran belonged to the library, or to anyone other than the perpetrator, then putting it in a toilet is not a “victimless crime”; it is at least theft and destruction of property. In addition, deliberately clogging a public toilet with a book or anything else is at least a mild form of vandalism. Flushing a Quran down a toilet would be “victimless” only if you purchase your own Quran (or make your own printout of an Internet copy) and flush it down your own toilet.

This incident is described on page 25 of the CAIR report, where it is said, “Initially, Pace University administration called the desecration ‘vandalism’.” The CAIR report doesn’t say where the copy of the Quran came from. (Looking around for more information about this incident, I found this blog post, which doesn’t tell us who the Quran belonged to either.) In any case, it would appear that this act was intended to be reminiscent of the controversy over allegations of Quran desecration at Guantánamo Bay.

The Investor’s Business Daily editorial then says, sarcastically:

There are other atrocities, too, such as someone trampling on a “flower bed” at a mosque in Texas.

Not an “atrocity,” but still a crime against other people’s property. Whether it’s a “hate crime” depends on the motive. Furthermore, the incident in question, described on page 25 of the CAIR report, involved other kinds of vandalism too, including spray-painted graffiti and smashing of exterior lights.

I’m sure that similar vandalism at a synagogue would be considered a hate crime too. Most likely, so would a Hebrew Torah found in a public toilet. (Daniel Pipes objects to an episode of desecration of Christian Bibles at an Australian Muslim school here on this page.) Indeed, according to the FBI report, 32.1 percent of the 2006 hate crimes in general (against the total of all targeted groups) consisted of “destruction/damage/vandalism.” I would expect this to include lots of episodes of synagogue vandalism.

Anyhow, the hate crimes reported by CAIR do include violent crimes too. Some examples are given on pages 9 and 10 of the CAIR report.

Phil Orenstein goes even further than the Investor’s Business Daily editorial in twisting the facts to claim that Muslims have absolutely nothing to complain about whatsoever. He even claims, “American citizens are showing more tolerance and respect toward Muslims than any other religious group.”

That’s quite an exaggeration. It’s true that things aren’t anywhere nearly as bad for American Muslims as they could have been, and it’s true that there are many more reported hate crimes against Jews than against Muslims. But these aren’t valid reasons to dismiss Muslims’ concerns about hate crimes entirely. And they certainly aren’t valid reasons to dismiss Muslims’ concerns about civil rights violations either. Furthermore, American Muslims do have other valid worries too. See, for example, Jerry Klein’s 2006 Radio Experiment.

More guilt by association

In Fantasizing “The New McCarthyism”, Phil Orenstein then writes:

Eldahry, Almontaser and other self-proclaimed champions of diversity are crying “Islamophobia” in response to reasonable questions and concerns about the spread and infiltration of radical Islam in our public schools and colleges. Meanwhile they hide their true agenda under the cloak of multiculturalism and diversity allowing intolerance and disrespect toward America and Israel to prevail in the classroom.

His evidence for Debbie Almontaser’s “true agenda”? Mostly, guilt by association. For example:

Almontaser and the KGIA public school are enthusiastically supported by a number of radical individuals and Islamic groups such as AWAAM, CAIR — currently under federal investigation as an unindicted co-conspirator for terrorist financing, the American Muslim Association of Lawyers (AMAL) – which defended the notorious “6 imams” who threatened to sue passengers for profiling, cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal, unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, anti-Israel Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, and others.

AWAAM is an Arab group, not a Muslim group. There are plenty of nom-Muslim Arabs and non-Arab Muslims.

CAIR is an “unindicted co-conspirator” - why are they unindicted? Perhaps because there’s not enough evidence even to indict them, let alone convict them? Does Phil Orenstein think we should all shun anyone who is even suspected of a crime? Whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?

Anyhow, Orenstein’s entire argument about whom “Almontaser and the KGIA public school are enthusiastically supported by” is pure guilt-by-association. So what if some disreputable people approve of her? Lots of other people “enthusiastically support” her too.

Further down the page, Orenstein defends guilt-by-association, as follows: “Any teacher will tell you that a student caught hanging out with troublemakers would be severely reprimanded.” But the point, in that case, is to keep impressionable kids away from bad influences. Debbie Almontaser is an adult. As such, she is responsible for her own actions, not the actions of her acquaintances and defenders.

At most, a person’s associations may be a good reason to ask questions. They are not, in themselves, proof of guilt.

Guilt by association is a logical fallacy. (See Fallacy: Guilt By Association on the website of the Nizkor Project.)

The two valid gripes of the anti-KGIA folks

It does not seem to me that the “Stop the Madrassa Coalition” has a valid church-and-state (or mosque-and-state) separation issue concerning the Khalil Gibran International Academy. And their accusations against Debbie Almontaser seem way overblown to me.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, they do have one valid complaint against the Board of Education, and they do have one valid complaint against Debbie Almontaser.

It seems to me that both Daniel Piples and the “Stop the Madressa Coalition” should have focussed more on demanding that the Department of Education be fully open about the KGIA’s actual curriculum. I can’t think of any good excuse for the DoE’s lack of transparency.

As for Debbie Almontaser herself, their one legitimate gripe, in my opinion, concerns her defense of the “Intifada NYC” T-shirts. (See the New York Post article.) Oddly, Phil Orenstein doesn’t discuss this in his article, except to refer briefly to “the inflammatory T-shirts with the slogan ‘Intifada NYC’ that ultimately led to the resignation of Almontaser.” Even this, by itself, should not have been sufficient reason to fire her or force her to resign, in my opinion. But someone should ask her the following questions, among others:

• Should students in a New York City public school be allowed to wear T-shirts with the slogan “Intifada NYC”?
• Even if the T-shirt’s intent isn’t what it seems to be, doesn’t it have a high risk of inciting violence, or at least creating a hostile and intimidating environment for Jews?
• Are you aware of the growing worldwide trend of violent hate crimes by Muslims against Jews? (Daniel Pipes documents this trend in some of his writings on Antisemitism.)
• Should students in a New York City public school be allowed to wear pro-Israel T-shirts? (To be asked if she thinks it’s okay for students to wear “Intifada NYC” T-shirts.)
• What do you think of suicide bombers killing Israeli civilians?
• What do you think of the Hamas charter’s endorsement of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
• Here in the U.S.A., how do you think the police and the FBI should go about tracking down terrorists and their accomplices, while at the same time avoiding, as much as possible, violations of civil rights?

Alas, I didn’t think to ask her these questions at the April 28 forum. Neither did Phil Orenstein, though he did ask her a bunch of other questions.

In my opinion, both Daniel Pipes and the “Stop the Madrassa Coalition” should have avoided making questionable accusations against Debbie Almontaser and, instead, should have focussed on getting their questions answered. They should have waited with making any full-fledged accusations until they had real evidence.

(P.S., 6/6/2008: About the T-shirts: Debbie Almontaser’s defense of the T-shirts should not be seized upon as meaning that she “really” endorses violence against Israeli civilians. The only valid concern here is what her policies would be if she were principal, insofar as the Board of Education allows principals any discretion at all regarding dress codes.)

On my Theistic Satanism blog on Google/Blogspot, I posted a brief response to Julian Karswell’s “Opus Diaboli” website. I’ll now post some commentary about his blog, which I’ll do here on WordPress.com, to take advantage of the “trackback” feature.

• The Pope and child-molesting priests
• The population control taboo
• Satanisms and “orthodoxy”
• Global warming
• Satanisms and politics, U.S.A. vs. U.K.

The Pope and child-molesting priests

I agree totally with Julian on Pope Calling the Kettle Black, criticizing the Pope’s attempt to blame clergy pedophilia on America’s secularisation and the ready availability of porn. As Julian remarks:

It will be interesting to see how he spins that one when he visits Ireland. Hardly a secular country, and in parts of it, you still can’t buy a pack of Trojans. So how will he explain how Catholic priests have systematically sodomised generation after generation of children in Catholic schools, orphanages and even within the precincts of their churches? Will he explain away how victims were silenced and the guilty parties moved around the church to offend again instead of having to face justice?

The population control taboo

Next item down on the page: Councillor pays price of speaking out. I basically agree. It’s not good to have a society in which the poor and jobless have an incentive to have lots of kids, while many working parents cannot afford to have kids at all. Certainly the status quo is not good for the children.

And it’s certainly not good to have a taboo on even discussing this issue. Only by discussing it can Western countries possibly arrive at a reasonable solution.

I do think that John Ward used unnecessarily inflammatory rhetoric (“professional spongers,” “breed for greed,” “immoral … lifestyle,” etc.) and that government officials should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us in terms of avoiding divisive and insulting rhetoric.

Nevertheless, he was discussing a real problem which does need to be addressed in one way or another, sooner or later. To the extent that even discussing it remains taboo, Western societies will sooner or later be in big trouble.

(P.S., 5/18/2008: I just now came across a page which claims it’s not true that families on welfare tend to have more children than nonwelfare families, at least here in the U.S.A.: Myth: Welfare gives mothers an economic incentive to have more children. Fact: Studies have not found a correlation between size of welfare benefits and families. I have yet to verify this article’s claims, which, in any case, deal only with the U.S.A. Things might be different in Europe.)

Satanisms and “orthodoxy”

While I basically agree with Julian on the above issue, I do not agree with some of his other views, such as his “anti-charity” campaign (as discussed on his main “Opus Diaboli” site). Nor do I endorse the typical LaVeyan advocacy of pure, unfettered capitalism.

More generally, I reject the typical LaVeyan definition of “Satanism” itself as the worldview of Anton LaVey. I also reject the very idea of any kind of Satanic orthodoxy on social, economic, and political issues. I see Satan as leading us to question all orthodoxies, including alleged “Satanic” orthodoxies.

Thus, for example, while I think Julian is right to oppose the taboo on discussion of population issues, I would not say that I endorse his position in terms of a “Satanic philosophy,” except insofar as Satanisms entail questioning all orthodoxies and taboos.

Speaking of questioning all orthodoxies and taboos, Julian says, in Refreshing words of dissent: “As Satanists we should hold that all orthodoxies are false and should be challenged. The danger otherwise is that facts will be shoehorned into the permittted [sic] ideologies.” I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that all orthodoxies are false, though they should indeed be questioned. Should Satanists say that the Earth if flat, merely because current orthodoxy says that the Earth is a sphere?

Furthermore, when it comes to questioning scientific orthodoxies, such as the global warming orthodoxy discussed in the above-quoted post, people outside the particular scientific field are at a disadvantage. People who have not studied a given field are not in a good position to know where the orthodoxy came from or how valid the critiques really are.

Global warming

Science is certainly not immune to political pressures, given scientists’ dependency on their funding sources. However, we should ask what the political pressures on any given science are actually likely to be.

Is there any reason to believe that atmospheric scientists are being pressured to champion a left-wing or environmentalist agenda? For example, do most atmospheric scientists get most of their funding from a private foundation which also donates a lot of money to environmentalist groups?

Here in the U.S.A., many scientists get funding from the National Science Foundation, a federal government agency. But the President is currently a Republican, and the Republican Party isn’t particularly environmentalist-friendly. So, there isn’t likely to be much pressure toward environmentalist orthodoxies from that direction.

Whatever the current sources of most atmospheric scientists’ funding, I’m sure there would be plenty of funding available from oil companies, automobile manufacturers, etc, for any global-warming critic who could make a valid scientific case.

I have not studied the issue of exactly where atmospheric scientists get most of their funding. However, offhand, it seems unlikely to me that there would be much pressure on atmospheric scientists to tow a scientifically invalid leftist or environmentalist political line. If anything, pressures from prospective funding sources would more likely be in the opposite direction, at least here in the U.S.A. Perhaps things are different in other countries.

Nor does it seem likely to me that there would be very much political ideological pressure from within the field itself. Scientists hold a wide range of political views. The sciences are not like the humanities, where there does indeed seem to have been a left-leaning orthodoxy since the 1970’s or so – although even this has been exaggerated by right wing commentators.

(Yes, there are some very right wing professors even in the humanities, even in relatively liberal parts of the U.S.A. such as New York City. A fairly extreme example is Michael Levin, who teaches philosophy at the City University of New York; see the Wikipedia article about him. I’m sure there are plenty of others in other parts of the country.)

So, here in the U.S.A. at least, the most likely source of global warming orthodoxy is an honest (though possibly premature?) consensus, among the vast majority of atmospheric scientists, that the orthodox view is scientifically justified.

The orthodoxy might still be wrong, of course. However, without a lot more study than I now have time for, I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the scientific consensus, at least for the most part.

In the post Refreshing words of dissent, Julian quotes John Christy, a professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama. It’s worth noting that Alabama is in the southern part of the U.S.A. and is a stronghold of the Christian religious right wing, among other things. Alabama is precisely one of the places where one would expect there to be the most political pressure against the global warming consensus. Furthermore, given Christy’s statement about governments being involved in the IPCC, Christy himself was, no doubt, appointed to the IPCC by the Bush administration. This doesn’t, in itself, prove that John Christy is wrong about anything he said here. But it does mean, at the very least, that his statements didn’t require nearly as much courage as Julian might have assumed.

Satanisms and politics, U.S.A. vs. U.K.

I’ll now reply to Julian’s comment beneath this post on my Google/Blogspot blog. Julian wrote:

However, the purpose of Opus Diaboli, its website and its blog are exactly as you describe – to put the Satanic perspective into societal and political terms.

You speak of “the” Satanic perspective, implying a Satanic orthodoxy. You later speak of Satanism as a “standpoint from which to frame policy.” Satanism, in my view, should not be tied to any specific “policy” standpoint.

If you think it is not possible to achieve one set of aims under the flag of another,

I’m not saying this isn’t possible. I just don’t think that “Satanism,” per se, should be equated with any specific set of aims in the first place. Different Satanists, in different circumstances, can and should have different aims.

Revoltionary communism was propogated and interpolated into the structures of the education system.

Do you really mean “revolutionary communism” here? Or just varying forms of socialism?

I think an overtly Satanic organisation could not successfully promote a political and social agenda.

Counterexample: In the 1980’s, at the height of the Satanic panic, the Temple of Set stood up and fought back, successfully. They weren’t alone and couldn’t have succeeded without the help of plenty of non-Satanists debunking the SRA scare too, but, in my opinion, they and their closest allies did play a key role.

So, I think public Satanists can succeed, but only on matters pertaining to our own religious freedom or which have some direct connection to the figure of Satan, and only in alliance with others who are willing to stand with us.

As for any other kinds of social and political agendas, I don’t think they should be tied to “Satanism” in the first place.

In the UK the Christian church is a spent force, populated by either ‘ladies in hats’ or zealous young losers who think that crashing a tambourine about for an hour and then having a glass of orange juice is a good way to spend a Sunday morning.

Don’t underestimate those “zealous young losers.”

Here in the U.S.A., there was a time when a lot of folks thought Christianity was a “spent force” here, too. As Michael Aquino says in the Temple of Set’s general information latter:

During the 60s-70s religion was generally dismissed as something quaint and obsolete: superstition embarrassing to an age of science, computers, and Project Apollo. “God was dead”, and Christianity was invoked merely as an excuse for Christmas revelry and other entertainments (such as Jesus Christ Superstar & the “Jesus Freak revolution” of 1970). Even the formation of the Church of Satan in 1966 was somewhat anticlimactic: It didn’t arise in response to a “threatening” Christianity – for Christianity already appeared to be a dead horse. The carcass was there to be kicked around a bit for the sake of theatre, but there was no expectation that it had any energy left to get up and kick back.

Well, Christianity certainly did kick back, in forms that are indeed threatening. So too did Islam, all the more so. I’ll add that Dr. Aquino underestimates the significance of the “Jesus Freak revolution” of 1970. The Jesus Freaks, whom Dr. Aquino probably saw as “zealous young losers,” were an early manifestation of the fundamentalist/evangelical resurgence.

The religious right wing isn’t nearly as powerful in the U.K. as it is here in the U.S.A., but it is growing there too. Evangelicals may be on the verge of taking over the Church of England, if the trends predicted in this 2003 Daily Telegraph article have continued. Not only that, but one of the most popular movements among evangelical Christians in the U.K. is the Restorationist form of Pentecostalism, which embraces Dominionist teachings, according to Tricia Tillin, an evangelical critic of Restoration theology, in Ten Reasons to Reject Kingdom-Dominion Teachings. Dominionism advocates theocracy, complete with “Biblical civil law” including death penalty by stoning for “idolators,” “blasphemers,” and homosexuals, among others. Obviously, this would be very bad news for Satanists.

Of course, only a small minority of people in England are active church-goers in the first place. If evanglicals ever did take over the Church of England, especially evangelicals of the Dominionist stripe, the Church would probably be dis-established ASAP.

Still, the potential longterm threat of a powerful religious right wing should not be dismissed even in the U.K. Organized religions, especially those whose members contribute lots of money, inherently have political power out of proportion to their numbers, simply because they are organized.

Anyhow, even if the Christian religious right wing never gets much power in the U.K., you do note that Muslim fundamentalists are becoming a threat there.

I have great sympathy for Satanists in the USA who must chose between voting Democrat, and seeing the country sent down the same socialism-lite road to ruin that England and Canada have gone down, or voting Republican and ushering four more years of people who believe that the world was made in seven days 5,000 years ago.

I don’t see any and all “socialism-lite” policies as necessarily constituting a “road to ruin.” It does seem to me that England and Canada are pursuing some specific ruinous policies. But I don’t think the answer is a return to pure, totally unfettered capitalism. On the whole, it’s my impression that Canada is actually better off than the U.S.A. at the present time, although I could be wrong about this.

These days, too many public atheists come across as even more hostile toward liberals and religious moderates than toward fundamentalists. This is unfortunate, because, in my opinion, atheists and religious liberals and moderates need to stand together against the worldwide trend toward theocracy.

I’ll now respond to two posts on an atheist blog, here on WordPress.com, called “Breaking Spells.” One post, Bible Bashing Crime, contains some interesting statistics that would seem to show an direct positive correlation between a region’s religiosity and its crime rate. The other post, Point of Inquiry and the Chris Hedges Interview, contains some remarks, for which I will take the author to task, about non-fundamentalist religious folks. I discovered that blog when one of its posts was listed briefly on WordPress.com’s front page.

First, the statistics about religion and crime:

There are 1332 churches listed in the “SuperPages” for Birmingham, Alabama.

There are 229,424 people in Birmingham, AL according to Wikipedia.

There are 311 churches in listed in the “SuperPages” for Madison, WI.

There are 223,389 people in Madison, WI according to Wikipedia.

Birmingham, Alabama and Madison, Wisconsin are roughly the same size cities according to Wikipedia and yet the difference in number of churches according to SuperPages is roughly 1000! Not a scientific comparison, but a rough one that serves a purpose.

“Breaking Spells” then displays a bar graph showing crime rates in the two cities. The bar graph was obtained from AreaConnect.com: Crime Rate Comparison: Birmingham Vs. Madison.

I would say that both the high crime rate and the large number of churches in Birmingham are most likely a result of poverty. As “Breaking Spells” already acknowledges, poverty is a “demonstrable catalyst for crime.” Poor people also have a greater need, than rich or middle class people, for the kind of community that churches and other religious institutions can provide and which most people cannot easily find elsewhere in today’s world.

So, while the statistics are good prima facie evidence against any notion of religion as a cure-all, they are not strong evidence of the inverse hypothesis, i.e. that religion causes crime.

Note: The “Breaking Spells” blogger did not claim the reverse hypothesis, but used the statistics only to argue against one politician’s idea of preventing crime by distributing Bibles. So I have no argument with “Breaking Spells” on this point. Here, the “Breaking Spells” blogger is arguing only for a general secularist point (government officials should prevent crime by means other than distributing Bibles), with which most religious liberals and moderates would probably agree.

But let’s look now at the “Breaking Spells” blogger’s remarks about non-fundamentalist adherents of religions:

These days, fundamentalists are generally regarded as those cranks and kooks in society that adhere to the literal “truths” of whatever cult they belong to, as told in their scriptures. Ironically, fundamentalists are the truly honest members of their respective religions since liberal or moderate adherents appear to cherry pick what portions of their scriptures are to be taken literal and which are to be considered allegorical, poetic, or the limited perspectives of Bronze Age nomads.

I think liberal and moderate adherents of religious cults know this. It pisses them off since their reason and intellect tells them most of their cult scripture is pure B.S. – otherwise they’d be proponents of stoning adulterers and beheading rape victims. And yet they can’t shake their delusions about old bearded white men in the sky and pretend to be affronted with the “new atheists” that dare to point out their fallacy.

The “Breaking Spells” blogger is like too many other public atheists these days, in that they regard their natural allies as somehow even worse than their natural enemies.

Liberal and moderate religious folks support separation of church and state, as also do public atheists. Liberal and moderate religious folks tend to support women’s rights, gay rights, etc., as also do public atheists. Liberal and moderate religious folks are also far more likely than fundamentalists to support the rights of atheists themselves, too. Thus, it seems to me, it would behoove atheists to regard liberal and moderate religious folks as natural allies even while having strong philosophical disagreements with them.

To any atheist reading this, I ask: Which of the following two hypothetical worlds would you prefer to live in?

1. A world in which 20% of the people are atheists, and everyone else is a hardcore fundamentalist.
2. A world in which only 10% of the people are atheists, but only 20% of the people are fundamentalists, and everyone else is religiously liberal or moderate.

As for the claim that fundamentalists are more “honest”: Why is the belief in an infallibly revealed scripture more “honest” than the belief that one’s God or gods work in more subtle ways? Given the impossibility of proving that a God or gods even exist in the first place, is it more or less rational to believe that one can know that a particular collection of writings is infallibly inspired than to believe that the will of one’s God or gods is a bit harder to discern? Fundamentalism is more simplistic in its epistemology, but that doesn’t make it more honest.

The new atheists dare to question time honored traditions of superstition. The new atheists have the audacity to criticize beliefs of others and to suggest that those beliefs are linked to violence, ignorance, and -let’s face it- stupidity.

There’s nothing wrong with atheists “daring to question time honored traditions.” However, by vilifying (as distinct from just voicing disagreement with) even liberal and moderate religious folks, too many public atheists are displaying, to say the least, a lack of political savvy.

According to a CNN article The rise of the ‘New Atheists’ by Simon Hooper, November 9, 2006:

In fact, the vehemence of their arguments can largely be understood as a frustrated backlash against a religious revival that is still gathering pace, especially in the U.S.

An ICM poll in 2004 found that 91 percent of Americans believed in the supernatural, 74 percent believed in an afterlife and 71 percent said they were willing to die for their beliefs. Research by the University of Minnesota this year also identified atheists as the U.S.’s “most distrusted minority.”

Note: Different polls show different numbers. For some discussion about different polls, see The New Atheists by Ronald Aronson, The Nation, June 7, 2007. But it’s clear that fundamentalism and hardcore religiosity have indeed been very much on the rise these past several decades, especially here in the U.S.A.

Back to the CNN article:

“The reason these books are proving popular is that religion is becoming center stage,” said Keith Porteous Wood, director of the National Secular Society. “In the last five years, in terms of the influence of religion, the gas has been turned up breathtakingly. People are starting to react against this.”

In recent years religious ideas have increasingly impinged on public life in ways unacceptable to New Atheist rationalism, from arguments over the teaching of “intelligent design” in schools to gay marriage and restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.

Meanwhile the hijacking of Islam as an ideological underpinning for al Qaeda terror attacks and suicide bombings has only served to further underpin atheist arguments blaming religion for the world’s ills.

But more bad news for atheists is contained in an article by demographer Eric Kaufman in this month’s Prospect magazine.

Kaufman argues that the world’s religious population is increasing after a century of gradual decline as younger generations in the developing world reject secularization. He also points out that religious people enjoy an unassailable demographic advantage over non-believers by having more children.

Even Western Europe, which contains some of the most secular societies on earth, will be affected by a growing tide of religiosity due to immigration from the Muslim world, predicts Kaufman.

“By the mid-21st century, the peak of secular European politics will be long past,” writes Kaufman. “As in America, politicians will need to stay on the right side of religious sentiment to ensure they are not outflanked by their opponents.”

Ultimately then, the all-out assault waged by Dawkins and his fellow travelers against the forces of superstition and irrationalism may be thwarted as much by birth rates as beliefs.

The rise of hardcore fundamentalism these past several decades poses a serious threat to all of us. Those of us who oppose that trend need to be able to form alliances, which means we need to be able to recognize and get along with each other.

The CNN article goes on to say:

n an interview published in this month’s Wired magazine, Dawkins estimated the number of non-religious people in the U.S. to be around 30 million and compared atheists’ struggle for recognition as equivalent to previous campaigns by other minority groups.

“I think we’re in the same position the gay movement was in a few decades ago,” said Dawkins. “There was a need for people to come out. The more people who came out, the more people who had the courage to come out. I think that’s the case with atheists. They are more numerous than anybody realizes.”

With that, I fully agree.

Some further analogies to the gay rights movement:

1) How did did the gay rights movement make progress? Not by arguing that everyone should become gay, or by vilifying all heterosexuals. It made progress by making alliances. Many gays do feel that gay culture is better than mainstream culture in various ways, and there’s nothing wrong with a person having or expressing such feelings. But, fortunately, such feelings and ideas have never been the main focus of GLBT rights activism.

2) The antipathy of too many public atheists toward religious liberals is somewhat analogous to the antipathy of some gays toward bisexuals. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was a widespread tendency for gay rights groups to be unwelcoming toward bisexuals. Eventually, bisexual activists won explicit inclusion in what is now known as the “GLBT” or “LGBT” community.

Similarly, in my opinion, atheists and liberal religious folks need to band together as part of a larger secularist movement. I’ve seen the word “secularist” used, inaccurately, by both atheists and religious right wingers, as a synonym for “atheist.” It’s not. A secularist is anyone who wants to keep religion out of law and government.

When I first ran into the “Stop the Madrassa” Coalition’s blog last week, I was inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that they may have had a valid church-state separation issue regarding the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA). I do think it’s important to uphold separation of church (mosque) and state.

However, the more I’ve looked into this matter, the more it seems to me that the “Stop the Madrassa” Coalition is crying wolf. Their one valid complaint is the Board of Education’s unwillingness to provide complete information about the curriculum to the general public. On this matter, their arch-scapegoat, the Khalil Gibran school’s founder and former principal Debbie Almontaser, agrees with them, as I learned last night. She too wishes that the Board of Education and the school’s current administration would be more transparent, to allay public fears.

• Why I think there’s no substance to the attacks on the KCIA
• Possibly valid objections to other similar schools, and a more constructive approach for people worried about KCIA
• Debbie Almontaser at a public forum last night
• Yesterday’s New York Times article
• Some anti-”Madrassa” responses to the New York Times article
• My response to some statements by Danial Pipes
• P.S., 5/26/2008: The quote from this post on the FrontPage magazine site

Why I think there’s no substance to the attacks on the KCIA

The school is not Muslim-oriented. Khalil Gibran, after whom the school is named, was not Muslim. He was of Christian Arab background.

The school is not limited to Arab students, but welcomes students of all ethnic backgrounds. So it doesn’t ghettoize Arab students, a frequent criticism of “multicultural” education. The school seems to have a dual aim: (1) to provide a place where Arab students can feel more at home than at other schools, where they’ve been subject to a lot of taunts and other harassment since 9/11/2001, and (2) to teach non-Arab students about Arabic language and culture.

It does appear that the former principal, Debbie Almontaser, is a traditionalist-leaning Muslim and, as such, has ties to the more fundamentalist Muslim groups. However, ADL spokesperson Joel J. Levy has this to say about her:

The Anti-Defamation League has a long history of working with Ms. Almontaser through our anti-bias workshops.

Through joint coalition work in Brooklyn against hate crimes, she has demonstrated her support for the civil liberties of all people. She is deeply committed to creating an inclusive learning environment that embraces the unparalleled diversity in New York City.

To help support this goal, we are in discussion with Ms. Almontaser about implementing our A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute anti-bias training in KGIA.

The school’s Arabic language requirement, combined with conflict resolution and international diplomacy training, opens the possibility of creating a well informed generation of leaders.

That’s quite a vote of confidence, especially coming from the ADL, a pro-Israel organization which specializes in keeping an eye on anti-Jewish extremists. If indeed Debbie Almontaser truly had a radical Islamist agenda, I would expect the ADL to be in the forefront of exposing it.

Most of the attacks on the school, and on Debbie Almontaser, have revolved around guilt-by-association.

Possibly valid objections to other similar schools, and a more constructive approach for people worried about KCIA

Daniel Pipes has written what seem (at least at first glance) to be valid objections to some other taxpayer-funded Arabic-language schools in other parts of the country, in Teach Arabic or Recruit Extremists? by Daniel Pipes, New York Sun, September 5, 2007. However, none of these objections are applicable to the Khalil Gibran school.

Danial Pipes also said:

This troubling pattern points to the need for special scrutiny of publicly funded Arabic-language programs. That scrutiny should take the form of robust supervisory boards whose members are immersed in the threat of radical Islam and who have the power to shut down anything they might find objectionable.

I think he’s on the right track with this recommendation, except that I don’t think such a supervisory board should be limited to people who are “immersed in” (and likely to be a bit paranoid about) “the threat of radical Islam.” I agree that it would be a good idea to have a supervisory board on which such a perspective is represented by at least one or two people, in addition to other people who are concerned more with promoting religious tolerance and protecting the rights of people in the community whom the school serves.

And, in my opinion, it would have been much better for the people in the “Stop the Madrassa” Coalition to have called for such a supervisory board, rather than calling for the school to be shut down.

(P.S., 5/1/2008: As mentioned earlier, I think the “Stop the Madrassa” Coalition has a legitimate gripe about the Department of Education’s lack of openness about details of the curriculum, and is justified in pursuing that issue, as well as in calling for more ovesight of the school. But I think that the personal attacks on Almontaser was very misguided, as was the call for the school to be closed.)

Debbie Almontaser at a public forum last night

Yesterday, the following announcement was forwarded to me in email:

—–Forwarded Message—–
From: “Ronald B. McGuire”
Sent: Apr 27, 2008 10:50 PM
To: CUNY Community
Subject: Islamophobia and CUNY – Tonight Mon. 4/28 CUNY Grad Center 6 PM

Youngbloods, Elders and Friends:

CUNY Grad’s Middle East Students’ Association (MESO) will be sponsoring an important forum at the CUNY Graduate Center tonight Monday 4/28 at 6 PM in room 5414. The announcement below is forwarded from another list.

Ronald B. McGuire

Academic Freedom & The Attack on Diversity at CUNY — An Urgent Conversation

Debbie Almontaser
Professor Susan O Malley
Mona Eldahry, AWAAM
Adem Carroll, CISKGIA
_______________

Monday 04/28/2008; 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Room: Social Lounge (5414)
CUNY Grad School 365 Fifth Avenue (34 St) [directions added at bottom --t.]

Around the country, Islamophobic and Anti-Arab attacks on professors have increased, most notably at Columbia and Barnard. This movement to attack and discredit dissent has been called “the New McCarthyism” –shutting down reasoned debate on important issues. Unfortunately this hurtful trend is also significantly represented at CUNY at its Trustee level, in the person of Jeffrey S. Weisenfeld, who is also head of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition.
(pictured) [scary pic avail on request --t.]

With no factual basis, Weisenfeld’s STM coalition has been waging a relentless attack on Brooklyn’s Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dual language public school, depicting it as an “Islamist vocational school…with an Arab supremacist mindset in the mold of KGIA’S principal Dhabah Almontaser.” Forced out of her job by right wing tabloids & with no push back from the Bloomberg Administration, Founding Principal Debbie Almontaser has been fighting for her rights. She has been defended by educators, community groups and parents in coordination with Communities in Support for the Khalil Gibran International Academy: see www.kgia.wordpress.com.

Ms. Almontaser will appear on this panel along with CUNY Professor Susan O’ Malley and others working to expose the attack on academic freedom across the nation:

PLEASE JOIN US: There is some urgency here as these attacks are one tip of a vast ideological iceberg that is also threatening to impact the current election campaign.

What does this mean for CUNY students and faculty?

Co-sponsored by MESO
Middle East Students Org:

CISKGIA:
(Communities in Support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy)

For more info contact www.kgia.wordpress.com

Zeeshan Suhail
Weblog: http://ZeeshanSuhail.blogspot.com/

I attended the forum.and got to meet and hear Debbie Almontaser, among others.

Someone in the audience suggested that Adem Carroll, the organizer of the forum, try to arrange a future event at which they could hold a public debate with members of the “Stop the Madressa” coalition. The panelists all agreed that this would be a good idea, provided the “Stop the Madressa” coalition members would be willing to keep it civil.

One man in the audience was very concerned about the presence of a few Muslim imams on an advisory board connected with the school. Debbie Almontaser explained that the imams, along with Christian and Jewish clergy too, were on the board mainly for the sake of outreach to the community.

Yesterday’s New York Times article

Before I went to the forum, I did some online research. Among other things, I ran into a New York Times article, Battle in Brooklyn: A Principal’s Rise and Fall: Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School by Andrea Elliott, April 28, 2008, which contains a detailed history of the school. (Another copy of this article can be found here, on the Common Dreams site.)

Among many other very interesting things, the New York Times article says, on page 2:

In April 2005, Debbie Almontaser got a telephone call that would change her life. The man on the line, Adam Rubin, worked for a nonprofit organization, New Visions for Public Schools. He was exploring whether to help the city create a public school that would teach Arabic. The group already had seed money — a $400,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — but needed the right person to help lead the venture.

…

For years, Ms. Almontaser had hoped to become a principal. But soon after joining hands with New Visions, she faced her first challenge. To administer the Gates grant, the school needed a community partner. Two groups wanted the job: a secular Arab-American social services agency and a Muslim-led organization that runs Al-Noor School, a private Islamic establishment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Ms. Almontaser said she tried to remain neutral as discord erupted between the two groups. Quietly, though, she worried that if an organization linked to a private Islamic school took the lead, the city would never approve the project, despite the group’s pledge to keep religion out of the curriculum.

Ultimately, a steering committee led by Ms. Almontaser voted in favor of the social services agency. Leaders of the Muslim group walked away feeling disrespected and distrustful of her, several of the group’s members said in interviews. It was a rupture that would come back to haunt Ms. Almontaser.

Some anti-”Madrassa” responses to the New York Times article

Looking around at what some opponents of the school have to say about the New York Times article, I’ve found no substantive objections so far. The opponents seem to be reduced to incoherent ranting and cheap rhetorical devices such as guilt by association.

For example, yesterday on “Atlas Shrugs,” the following comment is quoted:

KGIA is an insulated environment in which those who are dedicated to Islamist doctrine can be free to inculcate our children with anti-Western ideology. Stop the Madrassa is not opposed to teaching Arabic (as the ubiquitous Ms. Eldahry would have us believe). Stop the Madrassa is in favor of teaching Arabic, but in an open, public environment, as an elective along with Spanish, Chinese, Russian, etc. KGIA is too insulated to trust to anyone.

How is KGIA “insulated”? There are plenty of specialized schools in the NYC public school system. Are they all “insulated” too? If so, how?

Look at its avowed supporters: cop-killer, Mumiya Abu Jamal, terrorist William Ayers, etc.

Guilt by association. Argument from reverse authority: Bill Ayers says the sky is blue, therefore the sky must be orange.

The KGIA has plenty of other, more respectable supporters too, including even the ADL, a pro-Israel organization, as well as some pro-Palestinian organizations.

Today on “Atlas Shrugs”, Sara Springer of the Stop the Madrassa Coaliition is quoted as saying:

We have been extraordinarily careful in documenting every statement linking Almontaser to radical Islamist groups such as CAIR, American Muslim Lawyers Association (AMLA), Muslim Consultive Network, Muslim American Society, Adalah, and Al Awda.

More guilt-by-association. Debbie Almontaser had to reach out to a lot of different community groups to build support for the school and recruit students.

If indeed she had especially close ties to the more controversial groups, that’s not, in itself, a reason to disqualify her as principal. Many people who know her have attested to her work for mutual understanding and dialog between different religious groups. At most, a close association with controversial groups might be a reason to watch her carefully, but it’s not a valid reason to fire her (or pressure her to resign) unless she actually did something seriously inappropriate. She should be judged by what she herself has done, not by mere association. And, as far as I can tell so far, her detractors are unable to point to anything seriously inappropriate that she actually did, as principal.

Anyhow, the above-quoted statement “linking Almontaser to radical Islamist groups,” is Sara Springer’s way of replying to the New York Times reference to the Stop the Madressa Coalition as part of “a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life.” Sara Springer calls that an “outragious assertion” and says:

This statement is prejudicial to the extent that it infers we are opposed to Muslims participating in American life. We have absolutely no issue with this. Our concern is with the “soft jihad” that is infiltrating our schools with the intent of bringing Shari’s law into our society by indoctrinating our children. Ibrihim Hooper spokesman for CAIR told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a 1993 interview “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.”

Hello? Evangelical Christians seek to dominate the world though nonviolent “education” too. Does this mean that anyone who has ever had any “links” to evangelical Christian organizations should be barred from being a public school teacher or principal, even if the person does not preach one’s religion in the classroom?

If Christians should not be judged merely by their association with proselytizing, but nonviolent, religious organizations, then neither should Muslims.

In response to the New York Times statement that “Muslim leaders, academics and others see the drive against the school as the latest in a series of discriminatory attacks intended to distort the truth and play on American’s fear of terrorism. They say the campaign is also part of a wider effort to silence critics of Washington’s policy on Israel and the Middle East,” Sara Springer says:

Our concern is based on the people and organizations that Almontaser has hand-picked to work with the school and students.

including the Christians and Jews she has worked with? Again, as Debbie Almontaser, establishing a new school involves reaching out to many different people and organizations in the community.

Of course her association with Muslim and Arab groups is likely to be much closer. But so what? Even if some of these groups hold controversial views, the important question is how, if at all, these associations influenced her own actual behavior. To that question, I have not yet seen any truly incriminating answers.

So it seems that Sara Springer’s main gripe against Debbie Almontaser, and against the school, is simply guilt by association. Another of her gripes is:

According to KGIA’s Executive summary the plan and intent was to offer Halal food in the school cafeteria. The school does not offer halal food because the DOE refused the request.

I see nothing wrong with offering Halal food in the cafeteria of a school where a large portion of the students are Muslim, just as I see nothing wrong with offering kosher food in the cafeteria of a school where a large portion of the students are Jewish.

Exactly what is so horrible about halal food? That really does strike me as irrational Islamophobia.

Another complaint, further down on the page:

The Arabic-American Family Suport Center located in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn is another key partner working with KGIA. Their website links to the Council on Islamic Education’s lesson plans. Why are NYC public school students being taught the nuances of Jihad?

• Define Jihad in its literal and applied meanings, as a principal and as an institution.
• Describe legitimate conduct of war according to Islamic Law.
• Differentiate between rebellion and terrorism according to Muslim jurists.

First, a link on the AAFSC website to the CIE’s website does not constitute evidence that the Council on Islamic Education’s lesson plans were used in the KG school.

Second, why shouldn’t public NYC public school students be taught about the “nuances of Jihad” as part of a social studies course, given its significance in today’s world? Of course, students should learn what a variety of different Islamic movements have had to say on this topic, rather than just one opinion.

Of course, students should be taught about other major world religions too, in a non-preferential way. As far as I can tell, opponents of the school have not proven that the topic of religion was actually dealt with inappropriately.

On the “Atlas Shrugs” and “Stop the Madressa” blogs, there are also a lot of complaints about discipline problems in the school after Debbie Almontaser resigned. But, surely, wouldn’t that be more the responsibility of the current administration than the former principal?

Anyhow, discipline problems are an entirely separate matter from the alleged “madrassa” issue.

The rest of the page is mostly just more guilt-by-association, for the most part.

My response to some statements by Danial Pipes

More commentary can be found on Daniel Pipes’s blog, in his post On New York’s “Khalil Gibran International Academy” by Daniel Pipes, Wed, 7 Mar 2007, updated Mon, 28 Apr 2008. Daniel Pipes is at least a better writer and better educated-sounding than most of these other folks, but he, too, relies almost exclusively on guilt by association.

In addition, he makes a few particularly stupid (in my opinion) objections. For example:

Second, Almontaser denies that Arab Muslims carried out the 9/11 atrocities, telling sixth-graders she taught: “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims.”

I would consider this to be a statement of dis-association rather than denial.

If someone were to commit atrocitries in the name of Christianity, wouldn’t a lot of Christians say they don’t consider that person to be a true Christian? (And wouldn’t they say this even though, historically, many atrocities have indeed been committed in the name of Christianity, e.g. burning heretics at the stake?) Similarly, some people might say that the Bush administration’s use of torture is un-American.

The Sun article additionally indicates that the KGIA will serve as a place to make Arab students feel at home. “While Khalil Gibran’s organizers say the school’s main focus is academic, they also said the school could help to integrate Arab families into New York society by providing the school community with health services, counseling, youth leadership development, and English as a second language classes for parents.” The article quotes Moustafa Bayoumi, a professor at Brooklyn College and co-editor of The Edward Said Reader, saying that “It’s not uncommon for Arab students to feel isolated — I think it’s seen as a foothold.” That the school is in large part intended for native Arabic-speakers to learn English is supported by the “English Language Learner Grants” for which it is eligible. The school sounds like a place to indulge Arab grievances and support Arab immigrants. It worries me that the school’s purpose is not really to teach Arabic to non-Arabs.

Can’t a school have more than one purpose? How does the first purpose prove that the second purpose isn’t real? The two purposes complement each other, it seems to me.

In a separate posting, Beila Rabinowitz points out Almontaser’s fashion evolution of late, from frumpy cowl to chic headscarf with jewelry. Wonder why she’d do that.

There was much laughter about this objection at last night’s forum.

Apr. 28, 2007 update: In a comment on this article on the New York Sun site, one of the members of the KGIA Advisory Council, Daniel Meeter, helpfully provides a list of that council’s makeup:

• Rev. Dr. Daniel Meeter, Old First Reformed Church
• Rev. Dr. Calvin Butts, Abyssinian Baptist Church
• Rev. Dr. Charles H. Straut Jr., The Riverside Church
• Rev. Khader N. El-Yateem, Salem Arabic Lutheran Church
• Rabbi Andy Backman, Congregation Beth Elohim
• Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, Rabbis for Human Rights
• Rabbi Micah Kelber, The Bay Ridge Jewish Center
• Lisel Burns, Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture
• Imam Talib Abdul-Rashid, Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood, Harlem
• Imam Shamsi Ali, 96th St. Mosque, Manhattan
• Imam Khalid Latif, Chaplain, NYPD

Comment: If the KGIA has no religious content, then why is every one of its advisory council members a reverend, rabbi, or imam, plus one Ethical Culture representative? Is this not a blatant contradiction?

Any decent high school curriculum will include some information about the history and teachings of the major religions. The important question is not whether there is any “religious content,” but whether religion is discussed in an objective and nonpartisan way. Given that the possibility of religious bias has been a matter of public concern regarding this school, what better way would there to ensure neutrality than to have a bunch of advisors representing different religions (plus one representative of the organized atheist/humanist movement)? Surely a bunch of clergy advisors would be better for this purpose than a bunch of laypeople.

Such a religiously diverse advisory board could have made a great supervisory board, along the lines that Daniel Pipes himself has called for elsewhere. However, the KCIA advisory board’s purposes seem to have revolved around public relations, without any supervisory authority.

Further down on the page, Daniel Pipes writes:

Comment: How does Klein reconcile the completely religious nature of KGIA’s advisory council (see the Apr. 28, 2007 update above) with his assertion now that “If any school became a religious school, as some people say Khalil Gibran would be, … I would shut it down”?

A religious school is one that teaches a particular religion. The advisory board of a religious school would consist of clergy of just one religion, not a bunch of different religions plus an atheist/humanist leader.

Aug. 27, 2007 update: The Thomas More Law Center, a Christian public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced that it is representing New Yorkers opposed to the opening of the KGIA in just over a week. “This proposed public school is nothing more than an incubator for the radicalization that leads to terrorism,” says Richard Thompson, president of the center.

Sheesh!

Another thing: In various parts of the above-discussed article, Daniel Pipes exhibits a general prejudice against what he calls “coddling” the grievances of immigrants. I’m not sure what he means by this or what his problem with it is. To me it seems only reasonable to take steps to protect immigrant children from harassment by other students, for example. Anyhow, given his remarks about “coddling” the grievances of immigrants, it seems that Daniel Pipes’s concern isn’t solely with church-state separation issues or with preventing terrorism and extremism. He seems to have another agenda too, about which the above-discussed article isn’t clear. Perhaps he has discussed it in other writings of his and assumes his readers will know what he’s talking about? Or perhaps he’s just making an appeal to generic anti-immigrant prejudice? All I can tell from his remarks about immigrants in the the above-quoted article is that he seems to have a general tendency to dismiss the concerns of immigrants.

Whatever his reasons for that tendency, it’s a complicating factor. To say the least, it would make dialog on the other issues much more difficult.

P.S., 5/26/2008: The quote from this post on the FrontPage magazine site

My post, above, has been quoted on the FrontPage magazine site in an article titled Fantasizing “The New McCarthyism” by Phil Orenstein, FrontPageMagazine.com, Friday, May 23, 2008. Below is an excerpt from a comment I posted here:

To Phil Orenstein: Quote out of context, etc.

I’m quoted above as saying that Debbie Almontaser is “a traditionalist-leaning Muslim and as such, has ties to the more fundamentalist Muslim groups.” You left out a crucial first part of that statement of mine: “It does appear that ….” I don’t know her personally, and I’m certainly no expert on her actual religious orientation, or on what groups she has ties to or how close any given tie is. The blog entry you quoted was merely my preliminary attempt to piece the story together from what people on both sides of the controversy had to say. I’m surprised that you deemed me worthy of quoting on this particular matter at all; don’t you have any better sources?

By the way, if you were wondering what the campaign against Debbie Almontaser has in common with McCarthyism, it is precisely your obsession with guilt-by-association, even to the point of quoting not-very-knowledgeable sources (such as, in this case, me) about someone’s associations.

I*ll have more to say about Phil Orenstein’s article in a subsequent post. For now I just want to clarify that my impression of Debbie Almontaser’s religious orientation, and of the groups that she has the closest ties with, is only a preliminary impression, not something I know for sure. There is a possibility that I might be wrong about this.

I finally got a response on the “Creeping Sharia” blog. (See my earlier post More about Islamism and bigotry against Muslims.) Below is my reply.

On the “Creeping Sharia” blog, creeping wrote, in response to a comment by me:

This blog was started to build awareness among the general public. Some on your list of Muslim reformers have commented or linked to us and some on your list may not be as helpful to a coalition as you might think.

That may depend, in part, on what you want the coalition to accomplish, and what your reasons are for being concerned about Islamism in the first place.

Looking more deeply into your blog, it appears that you and I have very different ultimate aims. My aim is religious freedom and separation of church (mosque) and state. Your interest, on the other hand, seems to be in preserving a Christian monopoly. For example, in your post Illinois Muslims Force Elimination of American Festivities in Schools, you even praise Roy Moore’s placement of a Ten Commandments monument in front of a courthouse.

What’s the point of having a Ten Commandments monument in front of a courthouse? The U.S. legal system is not now and never was based primarily on the Ten Commandments. It would have been fine to have had a monument that somehow included many different ancient roots of the U.S. legal system, e.g. elements of Roman and ancient Anglo-Saxon law, in addition to the Ten Commandments. On the other hand, a monument with just the Ten Commandments, in front of a courthouse, is an attempt to give unique official status to Christianity and Judaism as religions.

By the way, the first few paragraphs and the title of your post contain inaccurate old news. See School Keeps Christmas, Halloween; Adds Ramadan, CBS 2 Chicago, October 4, 2007.

I would suggest that you not trust Jim Kouri as a source of reliable and up-to-date information. Double-check what he says. (I’ve critiqued some other writings of his, on another topic, here.)

Back to your comment here:

Research their words and actions.

I would be interested to hear your specific complaints about specific individual Muslim reformers, if you care to discuss this matter further.

You state on your blog that your own organization “will need to tread a very delicate balance as far as Islam is concerned” and “Muslims, have themselves been the target of a lot of bigotry here in the U.S.A.”.

It seems if you oppose Islamism then you need to stop presuming that Muslims are victims

That’s not a “presumption.” Here in the U.S.A., many Muslims have, in fact, been harassed quite a bit since 9/11/2001. Do you personally know any Muslims? I would suggest that you talk to them and ask them about their experiences.

and treading lightly when addressing them.

What is your aim in “addressing them”? If one of your aims is to dicourage Islamism (the political ideology) and extremism among Muslims, then, obviously, Muslim reformers and moderates are in a better position to do that than total outsiders are. The rest of us can help mainly by listening to and calling public attention to the reformers and moderates.

And those who oppose Islamism should start demanding the mainstream media and others who continually use terms like “minority of extremists” or “majority of peaceful Muslims” or “Muslims are targets of a lot of bigotry” start substantiating those claims with facts.

More coverage should indeed be given to what various different Muslim leaders and groups are saying. People who are concerned about Islamism should set an example by doing likewise - but in a balanced way, rather than by just trying to whip up hysteria. For more of my thoughts on this matter, see my post Islamism vs. Muslim reformers and moderates: Response to “The Apostate”.

P.S., 4/30/2008: I just now tried to post the following as a comment on the About page of “Creeping Sharia,” but it didn’t go through for whatever reason, though I tried several times:

Creeping wrote:

The facts are that hate crimes against Jews occur much more frequently than against Muslims.

Your sources of statistics for this? In the U.S.A., specifically? I would expect this to vary quite a bit from one country to another, and from one region to another.

In any case, what’s your point in bringing that up? Do you blame all Muslims, in general for hate crimes against Jews? Or do you think that the large number of hate crimes against Jews somehow implies that we shouldn’t be concerned about hate crimes against Muslims too, as well as hate crimes against Jews?

Anyhow, watch my blog and you’ll see that I do take a stand against bigotry against Jews, too. See, for example, my post Refutations of some classic libels against Jews.

Diane – Please refrain from deliberately and incorrectly attributing words to this site which we have not stated.

Specifically what words have I attributed to you that you have not stated? And why do you suggest that I have done so “deliberately”?

New Yorkers Against Religion-Based Bigotry will oppose both Islamism (the political ideology of Sharia supremacy) and bigotry against Muslims, as stated here (as well as opposing bigotry against people of various other religions too).

As I now envision our activism, it will include, among other things, both (1) participating in political actions against torture and in favor of indicting Bush, Cheney, et al for war crimes, and (2) attempts to reason with anti-Muslim bigots, who often seem to be motivated by valid concerns about Islamism.

In trying to reason with anti-Muslim bigots, I’m inclined to argue from a pragmatic point of view, rather than an abstract moral point of view. Specifically, I think a good approach might be to empathize with their concerns about Islamism (which I share) and point out that there are many Muslim reformers and Muslim moderates who are not just different from Islamists but also our natural allies against Islamism and against the more repressive and retrograde forms of Islam.

These past several days, I’ve been giving this approach a trial run here on WordPress.com.

For my first attempt, see my post More about Islam & Islamism: Response to “Islamoscope” and the subsequent comment thread.

I then posted a comment on the About page of a website called Creeping Sharia. My comment went through, but, so far, there hasn’t been any response.

I also posted comments on a blog called The American Infidels, specifically on pages titled Nice religion you got there, Muhammad and The definitive list of Islamic strategies. No response there either, which surprises me.

If the folks at “American Infidels” ever do respond, I should try to engage them some more on the issue of “fake moderates.” My first response was to agree that there are a lot of fake moderates, but that this doesn’t prove that real moderates don’t exist too. However, the issue is really more complex than that. Although “fake moderates” do exist, I’ve also seen accusations of “fake moderation” which, in my opinion, simply reflect an inability, on the accuser’s part, to deal with subtlety and complexity.

“The Apostate,” an ex-Muslim, has been more responsive. See my post Islamism vs. Muslim reformers and moderates: Response to “The Apostate”

I also posted several comments on a blog called Stop The Madrassa, a blog by a local political group which opposes what they say is a taxpayer-funded New York City public school with an Islamist agenda. If indeed this allegation is true, then the group has a valid church-state separation issue. They may also have a valid complaint about a lack of transparency in the city bureaucracy. I have not yet independently investigated the issue to determine whether their complaints are true.

But they complain that they’ve been dimissed as bigots, and indeed their blog does come across as generally bigoted. But I figured that perhaps they might be educable, at least by someone who shares their stated concerns.

I posted four comments there, of which two have not been moderated yet, and the other two have been deleted. In my comments, I bent over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt, predicating my comments on the admittedly very questionable assumption that their stated church/state separation concerns are sincere. Below, I will post copies of the two still-pending comments.

On the About page, I wrote:

Hi! I would like to call your attention to the existence of Muslim reformers, most of whom would probably agree with your opposition to the establishment of an Islamist-oriented school with taxpayer funds. If you were to form an alliance with at least some of these Muslim reformers, you would be less vulnerable to charges of anti-Muslim bigotry.

For a list of Muslim reformers and their websites, see the post Islam and religion-based bigotry on my blog. I would especially recommend that you contact Irshad Manji, who teaches at NYU.

In response to a post titled Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy- A response to a comment, I wrote:

You wrote:

A madrassa is a school that teaches the Arabic language and culture.

That is incorrect. A madrassa is a school that teaches Muslim law and theology. See the dictionary definitions of madrasa and madrassah.

Islam is a religion, whereas Arabs are an ethnicity. The two are quite distinct. There exist plenty of non-Muslim Arabs (e.g. Arab Christians), and there also exist plenty of non-Arab Muslims (Iranians, Pakistanis, etc.), although the Arabic language does have a special place in Islam, being the language of the Quran.

I’ve only recently become aware of the controversy surrounding the KG school. I haven’t studied the issue enough to take a definite position on it yet, but, if indeed the KG school is using taxpayer funds to promote a religion (or, even worse, to promote a religiously intolerant ideology like Islamism), then I would agree with you that this is a matter of serious concern. It is vitally important to defend separation of Church and State.

The above two comments, which I posted yesterday, are still pending. I also posted two other comments which have been deleted. I remember only one of them.

On the About page, someone posted a comment here complaining about the Muslim day parade.

I posted a reply saying that I don’t see any problem with the parade, given that New York City has long had parades for many different groups, starting with the St. Patrick’s Day parade for the Irish. On the other hand, if indeed a public school is being used to promote a religious belief, then that is a matter of real and serious concern.

That comment of mine has been deleted. The original comment, objecting to the parade, is still there.

Alas, it does not appear that these people are very open to constructive criticism.

(P.S., 4/28/2008: Looking into this matter some more, I am more and more inclined to believe that this group’s actual main aim is to simply to stir up hatrad of Arabs and Muslims, and that they are crying wolf on the alleged church-state separation issues. More about this later.)

Today, on an ex-Muslim’s blog, Basharee Murtadd, I wrote the following, in reply to a post titled Fight Islam because it’s Intolerant, Not because it’s False:

Hi! First off, it’s good to see people leaving Islam, and it’s great to see ex-Muslims taking a stand together on the Internet.

However, to oppose the barbaric political ideology of Islamism effectively, it seems to me that it will be necessary to do more than just convince Muslims to leave Islam. As we can see from the history of Christianity in the West these past few centuries, especially here in the U.S.A., people who leave their religion altogether are relatively rare, whereas reformers and moderates are much more commonplace. Most likely the same will be true of Islam. Therefore, to fight against Islamism effectively, it will be necessary to encourage both ex-Muslims and Muslim reformers.

What do you think of alliances between ex-Muslims and Muslim reformers, such as Secular Islam?

What do you think of the efforts of some Muslim reformers to defend the rights of apostates, e.g. Supporting Islam’s apostates by Ali Eteraz?

My comment there has not been moderated yet.

Anyhow, a recurring issue on many anti-Muslim blogs is an insistence that the reformers are “dishonest,” due their downplaying of the nastier stuff in the Qur’an and Hadith. To this, I would say the following:

The Qur’an, like the Bible, says many different things and can be intepreted in many different ways. For example, the Qur’an really does contain that famous verse about “no compulsion in religion” (Surah 2:256), and there are also other similar admonitions in the Qur’an and Hadith, despite contrary teachings that can also be found in the Qur’an and Hadith. Different Muslim scholars have developed different systems of intepretation, emphasizing different aspects of the Qur’an and Hadith.

I’ve been having a very interesting discussion with “The Apostate,” who is “a Pakistani woman, raised as a Muslim in Saudi Arabia, and an atheist since the age of 17,” now 25 and living in San Francisco.

In a post of hers titled Why I Criticize Islam and Muslims, she wrote:

Nevertheless, I don’t wish to ‘demonize’ Muslims, nor to paint a monochromatic picture of them. There are Muslims who have commented on this blog who represent a kinder gentler Islam. I know they exist – I also know they are, at this point in time, few and far between. I can also differentiate between truly enlightened Muslims and those who are primitive in their religious interpretations but who have good hearts.

In a comment here, I replied:

I’m glad to see you say this. Your blog otherwise conveys the impression that you think all Muslims are regressive and backward, or that you think the reformers are stupid for continuing to think of themselves as Muslims.

Yes, the regressive and backward forms of Islam are all too commonplace. But, to oppose them, it seems to me that it would behoove you to help the reformers by giving them publicity, at least by listing some of the reformers on your blogroll if nothing else, and better yet by also discussing what the reformers are doing.

For a list of some Muslim reformers’ websites, see the post Islam and religion-based bigotry on my blog. You’re probably already aware of others, I would imagine. For more of my thoughts on this matter, see also my post More about Islam & Islamism: Response to “Islamoscope”.

Im my comment, I didn’t really explain why I think it would behoove her to help the reformers. Nor was I entirely clear about what kinds of help I think it would behoove her to consider giving them. More about these issues later, below.

Anyhow, “The Apostate” replied to me here. Below is my further response.

“The Apostate” wrote:

I don’t wish to see reform in Islam. I wish to see liberal-minded people leave Islam.

I too would like to see more people leave Islam. However, the historical reality is that people who leave their religion altogether are relatively rare. Look at the history of Christianity in the West, especially here in the U.S.A.

I don’t mean to suggest that you shouldn’t try to convince Muslims to leave their religion. However, if you also want to counteract Islamism as a repressive institution and as a worldwide political threat, then it seems to me that, as far as Islam is concerned, you should consider broadening your focus beyond just trying to convince people to leave it.

You wrote:

There is also another reason: As long as they choose to be loyal to Islam, they are choosing to leave me — one of the few outspoken apostates, but doubtless one of many silent ones — out in the cold.

…

I don’t see them supporting me or the truth, so they don’t get support from me.

Many of the more vocal reformers do support you, at least politically if not personally or intellectually. As far as I am aware, all of the more outspoken reformers oppose the persecution of apostates. They might not be supporting what you think of as “the truth,” but they do support your survival and your freedom, do they not? Thus they are your natural allies in terms of opposing Islamism and its dangers. Are you aware of Secular Islam, which aims to build an alliance between Muslim reformers and ex-Muslims?

See also Supporting Islam’s apostates by Ali Eteraz. I would be interested in your opinion of that article – in terms of pragmatic politics, as distinct from pure philosophy.

You wrote:

I also think their efforts are futile because most of them are not accepted as Muslims by mainstream Muslims like my parents.

In other words, many of them are seen as apostates, correct? Thus they are in essentially the same boat as you, politically and socially. All the more reason to see them as natural allies, it seems to me.

In any case, you wrote that “most” of the reformers are not accepted as Muslims by mainstream Muslims like your parents. But, apparently, at least a few of them are accepted as Muslim by mainstream Muslims? If so, that’s good news, because it puts them in a better position to make arguments of the kind suggested by Ali Eteraz. To the extent that they do so, they’re your natural allies too, it seems to me.

But you wrote:

My main reason for not supporting them is that I have absolutist views on religion. I consider religion harmful. I believe that, as long as people go on legitimizing the scriptures on which religions are based, we won’t get rid of the harmful side-effects of religion.

Perhaps that’s true. But, given a choice of the following two hypothetical scenarios, which would you prefer?

1. A world in which 20% of all Muslims leave Islam, but none become more liberal within Islam, resulting in a society in which the 20% must hide or be killed.
2. A world in which only 10% of all Muslims leave Islam, but 60% become more liberal within Islam and create a society in which the 10% have full human rights.

You wrote:

I also simply have no respect, on a purely intellectual/philosophical level, for people who can look the reality of Islam in the face (such as barbaric punishments, women’s inferiority, etc.) and say, well, it’s still Eternal Truth.

I might be wrong, but it seems to me that you’re seeing this issue primarily in “intellectual/philosophical” terms, whereas I’m seeing it primarily in practical political and social terms. To me, the important questions are: (1) How can we best resist the dangers that militant Islamism poses to the entire world? (2) How can Islamist societies become more secular and more tolerant?

Do you believe that your absolutist approach is the most effective way to oppose Islamism? If so, why?

You wrote:

I am like the radical feminist political lesbians of yore who gave no quarter.

These radical feminist political lesbians isolated themselves into insignificance. The more moderate N.O.W. was the organization that got things done.

I myself was active in the feminist movement for a while back around 1980. Alas, I wasn’t a very productive feminist, because I was too caught up in one particular form of radical feminist ideology.

I don’t mean to say that you shouldn’t be a radical feminist. Perhaps radical feminism might be more productive for women of your background than it ever was for American-born women. I don’t really know, one way or the other, on this matter. Have you found that a lot of ex-Muslim women from Muslim countries agree with you on this?

However, it doesn’t seem to me that a political strategy analogous to lesbian separatism would be productive for ex-Muslim “apostates” as a way of winning freedom of religion. If you think I’m wrong about this, I would be interested to hear why.

Politically, I do think it’s important for ex-Muslim “apostates” (especially atheists) to create their own organizations and networks, apart from the reformers. But, if they are to accomplish anything in terms of winning rights, they’ll need allies too, in addition to their own separate groups.

Anyhow, when I said it would behoove you to help the reformers, I didn’t mean that you should agree with them, or even that you should refrain from criticizing them. The main way you could help them is simply by acknowledging their existence more, preferably by name, thereby aiding their visibility, and thereby helping to counter the impresssion that all Muslims are regressive Islamists.

Likewise, it seems to me that it would be helpful (to the cause of fighting Islamism) if you could give more acknowledgement to the existence of the more mainstream moderate Muslims too. I would also suggest that you try, in your own way, to convince these moderate folks to support your rights and to oppose the persecution of “apostates.” It might be easier to convince them of that than to convince them to give up their religion altogether.

As I said earlier, I don’t mean to suggest that you shouldn’t try to convince Muslims to leave their religion, too. I just mean to suggest that it might be in your own best interests to (1) broaden your focus and (2) make a more consistent effort to avoid stereotyping all Muslims as regressive Islamists.

Back in 2001, shortly after 9/11, I remember seeing rhetoric about how the U.S invasion of Afghanistan was going to liberate Afghanistan’s women. Various “gay conservatives” claimed that a U.S. invasion would be good for Afghanistan’s gays, too. Likewise, various gay neocons thought the U.S. military was going to bring human rights to Iraq as well.

Some have belatedly changed their minds, at least about Iraq.

Lesbian Muslim reformer Irshad Manji writes, in a post titled George W. Bush, icon of the multicultural Left:

On November 23, NBC Nightly News aired a story about women in Iraq becoming the targets of murder by Shiite fanatics. The TV story pointed out that even police are too afraid to investigate these killings.

What a damning indictment of my own belief that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would lead to a better human rights scene in Iraq. I’m embarrassed but honest about how wrong I was.

It’s good to see someone willing to admit she was wrong. Sorry to rub it in, but I do wonder how she managed to make the mistake she describes below:

Here’s one of the reasons I got it so wrong: I assumed the Bush administration would forge ties with Iraq’s most consistent champions of democracy — secularists and feminists. Any serious alliance with them would have ensured that the new Iraqi constitution gives civil law more prominence than religious law. This, in turn, would have put Muslim fanatics on notice that they can’t get away with human rights violations by invoking Islam as cover. But the exact opposite has happened. Both Iraq and Afghanistan have adopted Sharia supremacy clauses in their constitutions, with the blessing of the Bushies.

Well, of course. What I’m wondering here is why on Earth anyone would ever have expected Bush, of all people, to form an alliance with feminists and secularists. Remember, he was elected with the help of the Religious Right Wing. Bush sure isn’t an ally of feminists and secularists here in the United States; so, why should anyone have expected him to be an ally of feminists and secularists anywhere else?

Furthermore, the U.S. government has a long history of aiding Islamist militants, starting with the Soviet-Afghan war, and continuing in various parts of the former Soviet Untion and in the Balkans, even after the fall of the Soviet Union. See the following, on the Cooperative Research site:

• The use of Islamist militants by American and Israeli militarists
• Al-Qaeda in the Balkans
• Saudi Arabia

In fact, aid to Islamist regimes and movements seems to have played a key role in U.S. imperial geostrategy up until 9/11/2001. And, guess what? It seems to have continued even after 9/11. See also Iraq & Iran on Jared Israel’s website “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

Let’s now look at the Slate article How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? by Andrew Sullivan, a well-known gay neocon writer. One of his confessed errors is this:

As a child of the Cold War and a proud Reaganite and Thatcherite, I regarded 1989 as almost eternal proof of the notion that the walls of tyranny could fall if we had the will to bring them down and the gumption to use military power when we could. I had also been marinated in neoconservative thought for much of the 1990s and seen the moral power of Western intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo.

I don’t see the Western interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo as having had “moral power.” On the contrary, they were one-sided interventions in a situation where atrocities were being committed on both sides, with one side being demonized in the Western mass media and too few people questioning it. In fact, in all the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the U.S. government and NATO sided with Islamist, clerical-fascist, and neo-Nazi-influenced separatist movements against a far less fascistic Serbia.

For more about this matter, see Jared Israel’s writings on Yugoslavia. Note: Jared Israel is far more of a pro-Serbia partisan than I am. For example, I’m not inclined to agree with his denial of the Srebrenica massacre, for which I’m inclined to think there’s enough evidence that it really did happen. But it’s possible that some other alleged Serbian atrocities may have been faked, and it definitely is true that Slobodan Milosevic has been unfairly demonized. (For example, a 1989 speech of his has been described as viciously nationalistic, when in fact it was anything but.) On the other hand, atrocities by the separatist movements against Serbians were under-reported in the Western mass media.

I’ve always regarded the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia as extremely murky in terms of any attempt to figure out who started them or who the worst aggressors really were. To this day, many aspects of these conflicts remain a mystery to me.

But I’ve never trusted the war propaganda in the Western media, especially regarding Bosnia and Kosovo. One thing I did notice, from the very beginning, was that these conflicts were yet another example of the U.S. government’s longstanding and very strange pattern of siding with Islamists.

Why has the U.S. government been so fond of Islamists? I’m not sure. Back in the 1980’s, Islamists were used as a weapon against the Soviet Union. I suspect that many folks in the U.S. ruling class, and in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, may still see Islamists as a lesser evil compared to the remaining Communist countries. Why? Perhaps because Islamists, unlike Communists, don’t have a problem with huge disparities in wealth.

Anyhow, if there’s one lesson I think we should all learn from the Iraq war, it’s that we should never trust war propaganda. The U.S. ruling class wages wars for its own self-interested reasons. The stated reasons, as popularized in the mass media, are almost never the same as the real reasons. The stated reasons are always nice and ethical-sounding. The real reasons are amoral.

Andrew Sullivan says, on page 2 of his article:

Misreading Bush
Yes, the incompetence and arrogance were beyond anything I imagined. …

But my biggest misreading was not about competence. Wars are often marked by incompetence. It was a fatal misjudgment of Bush’s sense of morality. I had no idea he was so complacent—even glib—about the evil that good intentions can enable. I truly did not believe that Bush would use 9/11 to tear up the Geneva Conventions. When I first heard of abuses at Gitmo, I dismissed them as enemy propaganda. I certainly never believed that a conservative would embrace torture as the central thrust of an anti-terror strategy and lie about it, and scapegoat underlings for it, and give us the indelible stain of Bagram and Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib and all the other secret torture and interrogation sites that Bush and Cheney created and oversaw. I certainly never believed that a war I supported for the sake of freedom would actually use as its central weapon the deepest antithesis of freedom—the destruction of human autonomy and dignity and will that is torture. To distort this by shredding the English language, by engaging in newspeak that I had long associated with totalitarian regimes, was a further insult. And for me, it was yet another epiphany about what American conservatism had come to mean.

I know our enemy is much worse. I have never doubted that. I still have no qualms whatever in waging war to defeat it. But I never believed that America would do what America has done. Never. My misjudgment at the deepest moral level of what Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld were capable of—a misjudgment that violated the moral core of the enterprise—was my worst mistake. What the war has done to what is left of Iraq—the lives lost, the families destroyed, the bodies tortured, the civilization trashed—was bad enough. But what was done to America—and the meaning of America—was unforgivable.

In my view, politicians are almost always amoral and will do what they can get away with. Bush promoted torture because he could get away with it. He got away with it because, as of yet, there is no one able and willing hold him accountable. Because the U.S. is now the world’s only superpower, there is no international body with the power to try Bush for war crimes. On the other hand, within the U.S., the Democrats don’t have a big enough majority in both houses of Congress to remove him from office via impeachment.

In my opinion, we, the American people, must demand that Bush, Cheney, et al be indicted for their crimes. Otherwise, future presidents will only get worse.

To demand this, we will need an organized mass movement. Alas, it will probably be very difficult to build such a mass movement. Most Americans probably don’t care all that terribly much about what is done to foreign accused terrorists. As Martin Niemoller famously said, regarding the Nazis:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Andrew Sullivan says, back on page 1 of his article:

For most of my adult lifetime, I had heard those on the left decry American military power, constantly warn of quagmires, excuse what I regarded as inexcusable tyrannies, and fail to grasp that the nature of certain regimes makes their removal a moral objective.

I wouldn’t say that there is anything abstractly “wrong” with removing a severely oppressive regime. The problem is that doing so by means of war is, in most cases, unlikely to result in much if any improvement, unless we’re willing and able to commit ourselves to a very intensive and expensive postwar occupation. Furthermore, war itself is a horror, not to be engaged in lightly. Worse yet, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, we simply cannot count on our government to fulfill an alleged moral objective, once it goes to war.

If we want to influence the rest of the world toward modern Western secular values, it is far better for us to do so by peaceful means.

Back to Irshad Manji. She then goes on to complain about the U.S. government’s lack of condemnation of a notorious Saudi rape case. Well, the U.S. government has always been exceedingly cozy with the king of Saudi Arabia, despite (or perhaps because of?) that country’s notorious barbarity. What else is new? All the more so is this true of the Bush family, with its history of investment in Saudi Arabia. Oil wealth trumps everything.

Yes, this is horrible. But it’s not even slightly surprising. Why is Irshad Manji surprised?

We cannot and should not count on the U.S. government to enforce modern Western values around the world. If we wish to influence the rest of the world toward modern Western values, we can do so only by building a voluntary mass movement.

After publishing my previous post, I clicked on the “Islamism” tag to see what other folks were saying on that topic here on WordPress.com. One of the blogs I came across was Islamoscope, whose About page says:

We believe that by creating awareness of the radical element of Islam both moderate Muslims and non-Muslims from all religious and ethnic persuasions can ensure we can still enjoy the freedoms created in the West free from radical persecution.

I agree so far.

However, to fight against Islamism, I would suggest that you also try to “create awareness” about the reformers as well as the “radicals.” I’ve listed some of them in my previous post. You’re probably already aware of others. Let’s help the reformers in their fight against the Islamists, by giving the reformers more publicity, shall we?

Our Statement Concerning Muslims:

“Don’t judge the Muslims that you know by Islam and don’t judge Islam by the Muslims that you know. ”

Islam is an ideology

Islam is not a single ideology, but a religion, with many interpretations. In my opinion, Islam in general should not be confused with Islamism, which is a political ideology.

Muslims are individuals. We passionately believe that no Muslim should be harmed, harassed, stereotyped or treated any differently anywhere in the world solely on account of their status as a Muslim.

Agreed.

Islam is not simply a belief about God. It is a word that means Submission. Islam is a set of rules that establish a social hierarchy in which Muslims submit to Allah, women submit to men and all non-Muslims submit to Islamic rule.

…

Yes, there are Muslims who take issue with these aspects of Islamic theology, but it doesn’t change what Islam is.

By accepting the above definition of “what Islam is,” you are siding with the “radicals” against the reformers. Why are you letting the “radicals” decide what “Islam” is, in your eyes? Why are you siding with your enemies against your friends?

I’m not saying you should necessarily endorse the reformers’ definitions either. I would suggest that we non-Muslims refrain from setting ourselve up as judges of Muslim orthodoxy, whether in favor of the “radicals” (as you are doing) or in favor of the reformers. I would suggest that we non-Muslims take a neutral stance on the question of what constitutes “true Islam,” rather than presume to tell Muslims what their religion really is. At the very least, I think it behooves us non-Muslims not to side with our enemies against our friends! I think we should help our friends (Muslim reformers) in whatever way we can, and we can do that, most of all, by giving them publicity and not pooh-poohing their interpretation of Islam. To defend our freedoms against Islamism, I think we need to educate the public about the beliefs of both the “radicals” and the reformers, but without pontificating, ourselves, on what “true Islam” is. Let Muslims fight out the latter question amongst themselves.

Of course, the rest of us should be free to disagree with the reformers as well as the “radicals.” But we can do that without setting ourselves up as judges of Muslim orthodoxy.

Islam must be understood on the basis of what it is, as presented by the Qur’an the Hadith and Sira (biography of Muhammad).

The Qur’an, like the Bible, says many different things and can be intepreted in many different ways. For example, the Qur’an really does contain that famous verse about “no compulsion in religion” (Surah 2:256), and there are also other similar admonitions in the Qur’an and Hadith, despite contrary teachings that can also be found in the Qur’an and Hadith. Different Muslim scholars have developed different systems of intepretation, emphasizing different aspects of the Qur’an and Hadith.

If our years of dialogue with literally hundreds have taught us anything, it is that most Muslims (even devout ones) have only a superficial understanding of their religion.

Are you assuming here that all Muslim reformers have only a superficial understanding of their religion, and that no Muslim reformers have studied their religion deeply? I think we should refrain from making such an assumption about our natural allies.

New Yorkers Against Religion-Based Bigotry will need to tread a very delicate balance as far as Islam is concerned.

On the one hand, the Muslim world seems to be dominated, to a large and very scary degree, by extremely intolerant Islamist factions. We need to take a stand against Islamist persecution of “apostates,” persecution of gays, etc. (Among other things, this means we should expose the history of U.S. government support for Islamist militants – continuing even after 9/11/2001!)

On the other hand, Muslims in general, including the more moderate and reformist Muslims, have themselves been the target of a lot of bigotry here in the U.S.A. We need to oppose that, too. We also need to oppose the egregious human rights violations, e.g. torture, that have been justified in the name of opposing Islamist terrorism.

Bigotry against Muslims in general is often justified on the alleged grounds that moderate and reformist Muslims don’t really exist, that all Muslims are really terrorism-supporting, apostate-killing extremists, some of whom just don’t admit it.

In fact, Muslim reformers do exist. And, in my opinion, it is in the best interests of everyone else to support the efforts of Muslim reformers by giving them more publicity. That, to me, would seem to be the best way to counteract the influence of the Islamists. I don’t see what any of us gain by denying the existence of Muslim reformers.

Here are some examples of what seem to me to be undeniably sincere Muslim reformers:

• Asra Q. Nomani
• Irshad Manji
• Italian Muslim Assembly
• Jihad for Love
• Liberal Islam Network
• Muslims Agains Sharia: Islamic Reform Movement
• Muslims for Progressive Values
• Queer Muslim Revolution

And here are some examples of what seem to me to be sincere Muslim moderates:

• American Islamic Congress
• American Islamic Forum for Democracy
• Center for Islamic Pluralism
• Quilliam Foundation (but see also this response by Ziauddin Sardar, to which see this reply by Maajid Nawaz)

Furthermore, it should be acknowledged that even Islamists don’t necessarily approve of terrorism, even though all too many do. Below is a collection of fatwas by scholars of many different branches of Islam:

• Fatwas against terrorism and extremism
• Reza Aslan – Battle of the Fatwas

Of course, in addition to supporting Muslim reformers, we should also support ex-Muslims, who, according to the most retrograde forms of Islam, are to be killed for leaving Islam.

Alas, so far I’ve found only a few websites which concern themselves with the plight of Muslim “apostates” but which also acknowledge the existence of Muslim reformers, and which attempt to form a secularist alliance between ex-Muslims and Muslim reformers:

• Organized Ex-Muslims Use the Web in their ‘Quiet Revolution’
• Supporting Islam’s apostates by Ali Eteraz
• Apostasy and Islam

Another site which tries to build a secularist alliance between ex-Muslims and Muslim reformers is Secular Islam.

On the other hand, I’ve run into quite a few ex-Muslim sites that either ignore or deny the existence of Muslim reformers, or that regard Muslim reformers with contempt. These sites typically claim or imply that Islam in general is always, everywhere, and inherently intolerant and violently so, and cannot be reformed. Some examples:

• The Fate of Infidels and Apostates under Islam
• Apostates of Islam
• Faith Freedom International (to which here is a Muslim response)
• Not Muslim Anymore
• The Apostate (here on WordPress.com)
• Basharee Murtadd (here on WordPress.com)

Their attitude is certainly understandable. Here in the United States, even ex-Christians from fundementalist backgrounds are often very bitter against Christianity as a whole, rather than seeing liberal Christians as a useful ally against the religious right wing.

However, liberal Christians are an essential part of the secularist alliance here in the U.S.A. All the more so would Muslim reformers be an essential part of any secularist alliance in Muslim-dominated countries.

So, it is in the best interests of all of us to reject blanket bigotry against all adherents of any given religion.

Anyhow, some good news on the rights of apostates: Egypt’s Grand Mufti comes out against the killing of apostates by Omar Sinan, Associated Press, as copied on a blog on July 26, 2007. On the other hand, here on WordPress.com, I’ve run into a fundy Shi’ite blog defending the killing of apostates: Apostasy and Blasphemy in Islam << Shia The Right Path.

P.S., 5/28/2008: Another moderate Muslim group is the Free Muslims Coalition, whose site includes a very interesting proposed solution to the Israel/Palestine problem.

The website of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, a moderate group already mentioned above, includes links to articles by Stephen Schwartz on Kosovo, Macedonia, and Tibet (another copy here) and The Myth of Muslim Silence; The Persistence of MSM Silence. CIP comes across as basically conservative, denouncing Wahhabism (Saudi Salafism) in the name of older Muslim traditions. However, the CIP’s ability to appeal to Muslims is likely to be limited by its ties to Daniel Pipes, a staunchly pro-Israel Jew who aggressively promotes the “shunning” of lots and lots of people and groups in the Muslim community whom he disapproves of for various reasons. (CIP’s ties to Daniel Pipes are mentioned numerous places on Daniel Pipes’s own website, and in the news story ‘Anti-Islamist’ Crusader Plants New Seeds by Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, February 25, 2005, as reprinted on antiwar.com.)

Another interesting group is Al-Baqee, a coalition of American Muslims opposed to Saudi Arabian sponsorship of Wahabi extremism in Iraq and elsewhere, discussed in Saying ‘No’ to the Saudis by Stephen Schwartz, New York Post, October 18, 2007

After posting my recent blog entries on same-sex marriage and religious right wing groups here in New York, I clicked on the tags “gay rights” and “same-sex marriage” to see what, if anything, other people on WordPress.com were writing about these topics. Among other things, I came across a few different blogs in which there was some agonizing over whether it was okay to feel good about the death of Jerry Falwell.

I agree with those who say it’s fine to feel good about the death of someone who has caused so much misery for so many people, especially if you yourself happen to be one of those people.

But I do think we should refrain from expressing any such happy feelings in a truly tasteless manner, such as by picketing Falwell’s funeral a la Fred Phelps and his clan.

Guess what? The Phelps clan will be picketing Falwell’s funeral, or so says this news story on 365Gay.com. Apparently Falwell wasn’t homophobic enough for Fred Phelps, who, according to the 354Gay.com article, complains that Falwell “spent his entire life prophesying lies and false doctrines like ‘God loves everyone.’” (P.S.: I’ve subsequently confirned this story. The front page of the Phelps clan’s website God Hates America now proclaims their intent to “preach” at Falwell’s funeral.)

Anyhow, I also suspect that some folks may be rejoicing out of a mistaken belief that the death of Falwell was a crippling blow to the religious right wing. That it most definitiely wasn’t. Although he was a kingmaker in the early 1980’s, Falwell has not played nearly as significant role in the religious right wing since then. His “Moral Majority” was soon eclipsed by Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition as the leading religious right wing organization. More recently, the most powerful leader of the religious right wing now seems to be James Dobson.

In my previous post, I mentioned a brief news story about the Coalition to Save Marriage in New York. I just now found that group’s website here. Their links page provides a handy list of major right wing groups here in New York State.

Of course, as I hope will be obvious to nearly everyone who would bother to read my blog, the Coalition’s name is just plain idiotic. Exactly how is the legalization of same-sex marriage going to destroy or in any way harm heterosexual marriages???

Anne F. Downey, co-chairwoman of the Coalition to Save Marriage in New York, is a lawyer practicing in the Town of Boston, according to the brief bio following an op-ed by her in the Buffalow News.

According to a page on the Albany Times-Union site:

The group’s steering committee includes the Rev. Duane Motley of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, a frequent face at the Capitol on hot-button issues. Among the advisors is Mike Long, the state Conservative Party chairman. Signing on to a position statement opposing same-sex marriage were such groups as the New York Christian Coalition and New York Family Policy Council.

The Times-Union site also has a PDF copy of a press release by the Coalition to Save Marriage in New York.

The coalition’s site’s links page lists the following:

• New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms (NYCF) – “The Christian Voice in Albany,” run by Rev. Duane Motley, who claims to be “New York State’s only full time Christian Lobbyist. Lobbying on Religious, Family and Moral issues.” Well, nice to know there’s only one, if indeed that’s the case.
• Concerned Women for America of New York (CWA of NY) – local chapter of one of the older national religious right wing organizations. The national organization is run by Beverly LaHaye, wife of Tim LaHaye, author of the “Left Behind” series and one of the leading members of Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” back in the 1970’s.
• New York Family Policy Council – an evangelical Christian-oriented group. Judging by its name, I would have expected this to be an affiliate of James Dobson’s empire, but I find no reference to Dobson or his organizations in any conspicuous part of the site such as the About page. Lots of very scary rhetoric about Christians “occupying” the rest of society.
• New York State Christian Coalition. Judging by its name, this would seem to be a local branch of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, though the website doesn’t say so, at least not on any page I’ve looked at so far.
• The Association of Politically Active Christians (APAC) – run by some evangelical Christians.
• Caucus for America, run by Rabbi Aryeh Spero.
• New York State Catholic Conference – this site appears to be entirely in Chinese (or some closely related Asian language), at least on the browser where I am working now. I’ll see later if it still is on my computer at home. Seems strange that a New York “Catholic Conference” website would be in Chinese; I didn’t know that there were that many Chinese-American Catholics.
• The Conservative Party of New York State – site contains a link to What Is Conservativism?, an interesting collection of articles about the Conservative movement in the U.S.A., on the website of the American Conservative Union Foundation

.

This post is a little belated, because it has been at least a few weeks since the last time I paid close attention to the same-sex marriage issue here in New York. But it appears that New York State’s governor Eliot Spitzer has indeed fulfilled his promise to draft and propose a same-sex marriage bill. Here are some relevant news stories:

• “Spitzer Files Gay Marriage Bill,” April 27, 2007 – 10:00 am ET, 365Gay.com
• “Spitzer unveils gay marriage bill; Senate leader balks,” by Marc Humbert, Associated Press, April 27, 2007, 3:08 PM EDT, New York Newsday
• “Spitzer Offers Gay Marriage Bill Today” by Paul Schindler, Friday, April 27, 2007, Gay City News
• “New York governor proposes legalizing gay marriage,” By Holly McKenna, April 27, 2007, Reuters, Boston Globe

Good for him. More recently the governer sent out a memo reaffirming his support for same-sex marriage:

• “Gay Rites Will Help Families, Spitzer Says: New Memo Discloses Governor’s Case,” by Jacob Gershman, May 8, 2007, New York Sun
• “N.Y. Governor Says Gay Marriage Protects Families,” by Kilian Melloy, Tuesday May 8, 2007, EDGE Boston

The following commentary claims that Spitzer could more easily just issue an executive order legalizing same-sex marriage, without needing to go through the legislature:

• “Governor Eliot Spitzer’s Same-Sex Marriage Hoax’” by Kimberly Wilder & Ian Wilder, OpEdNews.com

But, in 2006, there was a court decision that the issue of same-sex marriage had to be decided by the legislature.

In any case, Spitzer has issued an executive order requiring the state insurance department to recognize same-sex marriages from out-of-state jurisdictions:

• “Same-Sex Spouse ‘Open Enrollment’,” by Andy Humm, 05/10/2007, Gay City News
• “NY Gay Couples Married In Mass. Have Weddings Validated,” May 16, 2007 – 11:00 am ET, 365Gay.com

Here’s an article about a coalition of local conservative groups opposing the same-sex marriage bill:

• “New York Coalition Opposes Same-Sex Marriage Bill: New Yorkers resisting governor’s proposed bill,” May 14, 2007, EURweb.com

But the member groups in that coalition are not named in the above article. I guess I’ll have to try to dig up that info later.

Below is a summary of the summary of the situation in various states across the U.S.A.:

• “Civil Unions & Same-Sex Marriage State By State,” May 10, 2007 1:27 pm US/Central, CBS2Chicagolcom

I just now came across the following:

• In Brazil, pope to face a church losing hold
  Priest shortage, evangelicals represent challenges
  By Monte Reel
  Washington Post, via MSNBC
  Updated: 4:02 a.m. ET May 9, 2007

This article said some things I expected, such as the following:

Latin America is still predominantly Catholic, but not like it used to be. In Brazil, for example, as evangelical Pentecostalism has spread, the country’s population has gone from being 89 percent Catholic in 1980 to about 64 percent today, according to a survey released this week by the Brazilian polling firm DataFolha.

But there were also some surprises (to me, anyway). In particular:

Young people have shown a greater reluctance to join the clergy, resulting in a priest shortage that is 10 times more severe regionwide than it is in North America or Europe.

…

“There is a trend here — even among priests — that people should be more free to follow their own conscience, and there’s a growing distance between most Catholics and the church’s hierarchy,” said the Rev. Luiz Roberto Benedetti, a Catholic priest who is a professor of social science at the Catholic University of Campinas, near Sao Paulo. “It’s a trend that goes in the complete opposite direction of the message that the pope wants to send.”

Very interesting, and quite contrary to Philip Jenkins’s characterization of the Catholicism of the southern hemisphere, in general, as a hotbed of Catholic traditionalism and love of hierarchy. (See The Next Christianity by Philip Jenkins, originally published in The Atlantic, Volume 290, No. 3, October, 2002, about the recent explosive growth of the more fanatical forms of Christianity in non-Western countries.)

I would be interested to hear from anyone who can give me solidly sourced information about religious trends in Latin America.

(For more about religious trends in general, see the many articles listed on my page about The growing number of Christians of kinds which inherently fear demons, Satanists, witches, occultists, Pagans, and atheists.)

Hi everyone! I’d like to experiment with the idea of using WordPress categories/tags to create a de facto unmoderated forum, as a possible replacement for my Theistic Satanism forums on Yahoo, in the event that I decide to phase out the latter.

For every tag, WordPress.com has a page of all the recent posts on WordPress.com with that tag. So, if a bunch of us regularly use a sufficiently rare tag, that page becomes a defacto forum for all relevant posts by us here on WordPress.com.

Publishing this post with the tag “theistic Satanism” will enable me to find the page for the tag “theistic Satanism.” I’ll then add a comment with a link to that page.

To put a tag on a post the first time, type the tag in the text field under the heading “Categories,” next to the “Add” button, at the top of the side panel of the page where you write a new post, and then click the “Add” button before you publish the post. To add the same tag again to a subsequent post, check the checkbox for that category/tag.

As we can do with the tag “Theistic Satanism,” so some of us can also do with the tags “Black Goat Cabal” and “Church of Azazel.”

To try out another neat feature, let’s experiment with trackback pings. In your post, put a link to this post. (Note: That’s a link to this individual post, NOT to the page for the tag, or to my home page.) Soon afterward, a link back to your post will automatically appear as a comment on my post.