Australia’s espionage chief has agreed with Muslim leaders that tough new laws seem to single out Muslims. However, Dennis Richardson, head of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization, told the Joint Parliamentary Committee that he made no apology for it, the Herald Sun newspaper reported Friday.
See also “ASIO chief defends anti-terror laws”, The Age, 20 May 2005
Robert Spencer applauds Richardson’s “refreshing directness and honesty”.
Melanie Phillips can hardly restrain her enthusiasm for “Muslim refusenik” Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble With Islam, who recently visited Britain to much media acclaim.
Our Melanie expresses her doubts that Islam, unlike Judaism or Christianity, can ever be made compatible with individual liberty, even by Irshad Manji. “But her cause is the key to the future, and all of us who love freedom should give Irshad Manji – and all the other courageous Muslim refuseniks struggling towards the light – unequivocal backing in this war for civilisation.”
Well, Irshad Manji certainly has all the right people on her side – in addition to Melanie Phillips, there’s Daniel Pipes, Anthony Browne, Front Page Magazine … oh, and Peter Tatchell.
The protests against a copy of the Qur’an sold via Amazon being defaced with the slogan “death to Muslims” (see here) have failed to to sway Daniel Pipes. “Why should American Muslims be indulged in their exquisite sensibilities?” he wants to know. They’ll just have to learn to “adapt” to the American way of life.
“The latest whipping boy for the mess in Mesopotamia is Newsweek. According to one mullah over there, printing anything that might offend Muslims is sufficient reason for some of them to riot in the streets and end up killing one another. That is, when they are not blowing up each other’s mosques or innocent civilians in the marketplace.”
A comment on the Qur’an desecration scandal from the folks who almost make Robert Spencer look like the voice of reason.
“One recent Newsweek story alleged – or fabricated – that a single Koran was desecrated by an American soldier in Guantanamo Bay. The unsubstantiated rumor led to rioting and death in Afghanistan and general turmoil and rage across the Islamic world. Mullahs issued fatwas and the more lunatic even declared a ‘holy war’. What explains the unsubstantiated story and why the hysterical reaction?”
Victor Davis Hanson has the answer. It’s all due to “the increasing hatred of the United States and its policy of democratic idealism abroad”.
“… while we in the West anxiously monitor our words and deeds for even the slightest offense against Islamic sensibilities, we receive in exchange no such consideration; indeed, our eager protestations of respect merely excite more contempt. Thus even as we protest our respect for Islam, Jews continue to be vilified with anti-Semitic rhetoric redolent of Nazi Germany, Palestinian terrorists befoul one of Christianity’s most sacred churches, the Al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem still sits on the site of the Jewish Temple, and in Istanbul Hagia Sophia, once one of Christendom’s greatest churches, is still a mosque. Worse still, a whole revisionist history in which the intolerant, imperialistic conqueror is transformed into the tolerant, peace-loving victim of Western imperialism is propagated by self-loathing Westerners whose bigotry against their own culture confirms the Islamist view that we are indeed Godless heathens and spiritual cripples.”
Bruce Thornton at Private Papers, 18 May 2005
“While it may appear easy to dismiss Hirsi Ali as the migrant who has reacted against her ‘traumatic’ background and become a reactionary as a result, it is only possible to do so without actually listening to her.” Alexander Linklater gives a major boost to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the right-wing Dutch MP and friend of the late racist Theo van Gogh.
Following the media splash on Irshad Manji last week, it’s clear that there’s a booming market for Muslims slagging off Islam – for reasons that will be obvious to anyone familiar with our site.
“Newsweek magazine may have apologized, but to many in the Muslim world, it’s too late and much too little…. Critics called it a strategic move in the face of the overwhelming and violent reaction. The report sparked protests in Afghanistan, where at least 15 were killed and more than 100 injured. Many Muslims believe Newsweek succumbed to pressure from the U.S. government to backtrack.”
You know, they could just have a point. Furthermore, as already noted, Newsweek‘s backtracking was ambiguous to say the least.
“The Left’s journalistic jihad against the War on Terror inspired the deaths of 16 Muslims, the injury of at least 100 more, the destruction of numerous Western buildings, and untold hatred for U.S. troops stationed in the Arab world – with a lie.”
Ben Johnson attacks Newsweek for reporting that torture of Guantánamo Bay detainees included the desecration of the Qur’an.
Front Page Magazine, 16 May 2005
However, in its forthcoming issue, Newsweek points out that it was “not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur’an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then.”
(See, for example, Al-Jazeera, 7 July 2004 or BBC News, 4 August 2004)
Reporter Evan Thomas also states that Newsweek has since contacted Marc Falkoff, a New York defence lawyer representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. “According to Falkoff’s declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt – when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003 – was triggered by a guard’s dropping a Qur’an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff’s clients told him, ‘Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur’an and threw it in the toilet’. A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. ‘If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels,’ he said.”
So that’s alright, then. Along with other allegations of torture at Guantánamo, it’s all an Al Qaeda plot, aided and abetted by the “Left”.
For Juan Cole’s take on the Newsweek report, see Informed Comment, 16 May 2005
Louay Safi takes on Daniel Pipes and other Muslim bashers.
See also Insight weblog, 3 May 2005