Pajamasmedia
In the days since President Obama’s highly touted “speech to the Muslim world,” a number of commentators have pointed out that Obama, a self-described “student of history,” managed to serve up a pastiche of half-truths, exaggerations, and utter nonsense about Islamic history, and that even in his supposedly gutsier moments — as when he criticized the treatment of women in Muslim societies — he was hardly as forceful as the circumstances warrant.
Newslinks:
It’s no coincidence that the commentators who have made these points have done so, almost without exception, not in major media organs but in places like Pajamas Media. For the flattering account of Islam that Obama served up in Cairo — the celebration of imaginary Islamic achievements in [1] science and culture, the evocation of a golden-age Andalusia where Christians and Jews were treated with respect and equality, and the references to the Koran that made it sound like the Sermon on the Mount — are of a piece with the fictions about Islam found regularly in the mainstream press.  This is certainly true of the New York Times, and it’s equally the case with the Washington Post — a fact that will be obvious to any reader of my new book, [2] Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom, in which the index includes the following entry:
Washington Post, 66, 102, 103, 149-51, 156, 163-64, 238, 262, 263-64, 276
Now, with the single exception of the very last Post reference (the one on page 276, which is a thumbs-up for columnist Anne Applebaum), my mentions of the Post in Surrender all point to the reliability with which the newspaper clings to what one might call a wishful-thinking view of Islam — as if Islam were, say, nothing more than Episcopalianism with prayer rugs and burkas.
On page 102, for example, I recount a 2008 speech in which Post managing editor Philip Bennett “lamented that the media, including his own newspaper, had failed to give the American public a clear understanding of Islam.” He was right — but his point was not that the Post routinely skirts the severity of Islamic doctrine and whitewashes Islamic views of freedom of speech and religion, women’s rights, and so forth. No, his argument was that his and other newspapers portray Islam too negatively. The answer to this dilemma, in his view? Employ more Muslim reporters and editors.
Continue reading Bruce Bawer: Media Takes Whitewashing of Islam to a Whole New Level
Surviving jihadist in Mumbai killing spree…
Here’s how the others ended…
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