* Quite a mouthful from a bellicose and arrogant schmuck…
* An update on this story, with comments from Robert Spencer:
Pseudo Intellectual Tariq Ramadan Shills For The Obaminator
Master of doublespeak
In an endorsement of Obama entitled “A hope named Obama” in the Bangkok Post, November 1 (thanks to Weasel Zippers), Tariq Ramadan says this:
[…] Since September 2001, the Bush regime has been obsessed by the ”global war on terror” and the conflict with the “axis of evil.” But over time, Americans have awakened to the emptiness of these bellicose and arrogant slogans. […]
This is fascinating on many levels. For one thing, it reminds me of the furious reception I got from many Muslim students on university campuses these past three weeks: they insisted that I was exaggerating the jihad threat (one man at ETSU stated twice that jihadists had not wrought nearly as much damage in the world as “the Bush doctrine”), and that my doing so was a sign that I was hateful, bigoted, etc.
Of course, what if there really is a jihad threat? Then what would the effect be if large numbers of people were convinced that to think there was a jihad threat, or a “war on terror,” was bigoted and hateful, or “bellicose and arrogant”? Of course, they would let their guard down, and the jihadists would be able to take advantage of their lack of readiness.
I’m not saying that everyone who says there is no jihad threat, or that it is wildly exaggerated, are actually trying to advance the jihadist agenda. But is Tariq Ramadan trying to do so? InBrother Tariq Caroline Fourest examines Ramadan’s positions and actions in immense detail, and concludes that he is “remaining scrupulously faithful to the strategy mapped out by his grandfather, a strategy of advance stage by stage” toward the imposition of Sharia in the West. Ramadan’s grandfather, of course, was Hasan Al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the group dedicated in its own words to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.”
In the course of this work, says Fourest, Ramadan “disarms those who are wary of Islamism.”
On the most fundamental level, Colin Powell has laid out the terms of reference: Barack Obama is not a Muslim; he is black and Christian. But, in the final analysis, what if he were a Muslim? What is wrong with being ”African-American” or ”Muslim” in today’s America?
To bring “African-American” into this is simply to obscure the issue and try to make it out to be a racial one, which it is not. The problem with being “African-American” in today’s America? None. Black Americans have full equality of rights and equal access, as they should have. The problem with being “Muslim” is not quite the same thing. Colin Powell and Ramadan are trying to portray suspicion of Muslim groups in America as a matter of irrational prejudice. They completely ignore, of course, the Sharia imperative, the stealth jihad, the efforts to bring Islamic law “stage by stage” into the West. And so they aren’t even calling upon Muslims in America to renounce and work against this effort — to do so would be “Islamophobic.”
Yes, I see that as a problem.
While it now appears that the US can live with the election of a black American, indications are that a new, virulent anti-Muslim racism has arisen in the wake of the events of September 2001….
What is the evidence, Mr. Ramadan? CAIR’s trumped-up hate crimes report? The hoax “hate crimes” in Illinois and Ohio?
Of course, trying to portray Muslims as victims is a key element of the strategy to deflect attention away from the jihad. Ramadan is in this hewing close to the game plan that Caroline Fourest so capably exposes in her book.