y
newspaper, a major Canadian one of vaguely conservative bent called
the National Post, has been judged by an outfit called the
Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) to be the most Islamophobic, anti-Muslim
paper in the country and on the North American continent. Well,
so claims its "Annual Report on Anti-Islam in the Media."
The CIC smear
is an example of how many Islamist organizations in the U.S. and
Canada operate. They periodically issue reports and surveys designed
to create a stir i.e., that there are "7 million"
Muslims in the U.S., or that around 80% of Muslims voted for George
Bush, or, in this case, that the level of "anti-Muslim hatred"
in the media has reached unprecedented heights. It is only after
quizzical researchers look into any given report's methods that
these claims are exploded. Indeed, they are found to be the result
of self-administered, pseudo-scholarly, amateurish and profoundly
unscientific surveys conducted by self-appointed "representative
organizations" to advance particular political ends.
In recent months,
for example, sterling work has been done by, among others, Howard
Fienberg and Iain Murray of the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS),
demolishing the grandiose "U.S. Muslim Population" estimate
propagated by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
There are actually fewer than 2 million Muslims in America, a full
5 million less than CAIR had reported. In the Summer 2001 issue
of The Middle East Quarterly, I examined the distorted claims
of a massive Muslim Bush vote, which allegedly "won" him
the presidency, and the concordant calls for a re-orientation of
U.S. policy towards the Middle East as payoff for these "natural
Republicans." But an exit poll conducted by the Detroit
News, a leading news organization using scientific methods and
a substantial pool, found that in heavily Muslim Michigan, 66% of
Muslims voted for Gore.
The CIC report
is of a piece. The CIC's goal is to promote its line that Canadian
Muslims are a "community under siege," one subject to
waves of harassment and victimization whipped up by the media, and
in particular, the National Post. Any empirically based claims
to the contrary are dismissed as resulting from either unconscious
hatred or ignorance. Thus, one National Post columnist, Andrew
Coyne, was cited for "endangering the well-being of Canadian
Muslims" for mentioning "the massive backlash against
innocent Muslims that failed to materialize." Despite it being
true that there has hardly been a backlash, the CIC perceived Coyne's
observation to be hatemongering, so therefore, according to the
precepts of identity politics, it is.
Let's look
at the CIC's methods of measuring racism.
Volunteers
i.e., CIC activists "monitored" newspapers
and submitted examples of what they considered Islamophobia. Each
instance was allotted a certain number of points on the basis of
its offensiveness to the individual reader. Heading the list (100
points) was "identifying Muslims by their religion when they
are involved in violent acts," followed by use of such terms
as "Muslim terrorist" (80 points), "Muslim militants"
(70), and "Muslim fundamentalists" (50). Other proscribed
"anti-Islam" phrases, of which there are roughly 70, include:
armed Islamic group, Islamic dictatorship, Islamic suicide-bomber,
Islamist, Islamic extremist, Muslim activist, and Muslim rebels.
Newspapers
were punished (20 points a pop) for using "popular 'experts'"
to analyze events and indulging in "selective presentation."
The names of these popular "experts" (gotta love those
sarcastic quote-marks) were suspiciously left unmentioned, but it
is obvious the CIC wasn't referring to Edward Said and Noam Chomsky:
Taking a stab, I would guess Daniel Pipes and NR's own David
Pryce-Jones, both of whom have been published in the National
Post. And since "selective presentation" is the essence
of editorial and commentary, the CIC is deceptively using it as
a catchall for anything it disagrees with. Newspapers were also
chastened with 10-point hits for "failing to offer a balanced
view on political events."
Of prime importance
to the CIC is to "increase the awareness" that we
the National Post in particular are inherently racist,
even if we "live in denial." We must be made to become
conscious of our own hatreds, which produce "image distortion
disorder" and thence "societal anxiety among Canadians,"
as well as "loss of identity and self-esteem, feelings of inferiority,
and even suicidal tendencies, especially among teenagers."
In the CIC's
view, our Islamophobia manifests itself in our unconscious tendency
to link Muslims with violence, restrictiveness, and intolerance.
By editing out bad language, it seems, the CIC believes that correct
thoughts will result, even at the necessary expense of reporting
the truth.
For this reason,
the CIC avers that the obscenities of September 11, or any other
act of Middle Eastern terrorism, had absolutely nothing to do with
the religion of the hijackers. It is an act of hate to point out,
therefore, as our columnist George Jonas did, that "while 99.9%
of Muslims and Arabs aren't terrorists, 100% of terrorists who now
threaten us are Muslims and/or Arabs." I myself was obliged
to become conscious of my own thought-crime after I used the term
"Islamic Jihad" in a sentence referring to, um, the Palestinian
terror-group named Islamic Jihad.
In order to
cleanse ourselves of hate, the CIC recommends we hold "workshops
on
sensitivity writing" and initiate "equity hiring
to achieve diversity." Curiously, however, judging by its support
for the Durban Conference, during which hook-nosed Jews were equated
with apartheid and genocide, the CIC doesn't seem to have problems
with some kinds of truly inflammatory racist language. It might
also be argued that its fetish for censorship in the interest of
"social harmony," as the CIC puts it, reeks of the very
authoritarianism oppressing Muslims in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi
Arabia.
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