Working for logical immigation reform based on a stable population, a recognition of the finite nature of our natural resources and the adverse impact of continued growth on our quality of life, standard of living, national interest, character, language, sovereignty and the rule of law. Pushing back and countering the disloyal elements in American society and the anti-American rhetoric of the leftwing illegal alien lobbies. In a debate, when your opponents turn to name calling, it's a good sign you've already won.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Muslim Mau-Mauing


Rod Dreher

One Dallas journo’s experience

Two years after standing on the Brooklyn Bridge and watching the second tower fall, I joined the Dallas Morning News. My wife, a native Dallasite, praises our new city as “a September 10 kind of place.” She means that the anxieties attending our post-9/11 New York life simply don’t exist here. The downside is that people lull themselves into a false sense of security about the Muslim community. From where I sit, it looks to me as though the entire mainstream media also live in a September 10 kind of place. We—and I say “we” because I’m part of the dreaded MSM—really don’t want to know what’s happening among Muslims in Dallas, Brooklyn, or anywhere else.

Dallas is home to a large and relatively prosperous Muslim community. The Dallas Central Mosque is Texas’s largest. The area’s Muslims, though, have had a contentious relationship in recent years with the Dallas Morning News, mostly because of the paper’s groundbreaking 2001 reporting on the Holy Land Foundation, whose leadership is now under federal terrorism indictment. Since then, local Muslim leaders have engaged in a running dialogue with the News, with the declared aim of improving relations.

It was in that spirit that Sayyid Syeed, then head of the Islamic Society of North America, came in, together with a local delegation, to see the editorial board a few months after I arrived from New York in 2003. Syeed made a laborious presentation about how journalists needed to join with the organization in promoting peace, tolerance, and reconciliation. I knew something about ISNA and asked Syeed why—if his group truly supported peace and suchlike—its board included members directly linked to Islamic extremism and anti-Semitism, including the notorious Wahhabi-trained Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj. The professorial Syeed dropped his polite mask, shook his fist at me, told me that I would one day “repent,” and compared my question with a Nazi inquisition.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor Ultima. Mexicans, Muslims, people... the horror!

ultima said...

Lupita, you will notice that the article was quoted without comment. I guess you are the original "what me worry?" kid. Do you disagree with the facts presented in the article? If so, perhaps that would be a more useful comment to make.

The terrorists, the illlegals, the welfare parasites, the criminals,... the horror!

Anonymous said...

Posting it on your blog is comment enough. As to the opinion piece you posted, it contains no facts that I can agree or disagree with.

The neoliberals, the imperialists, the mercenaries, the warmongers, the speculators... the horror!

ultima said...

"I knew something about ISNA and asked Syeed why—if his group truly supported peace and suchlike—its board included members directly linked to Islamic extremism and anti-Semitism, including the notorious Wahhabi-trained Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj. The professorial Syeed dropped his polite mask, shook his fist at me, told me that I would one day “repent,” and compared my question with a Nazi inquisition."

If you have no comment on this, I take it you are in favor of Islamic extremisim and anti-Semitism. Perhaps you could benefit from a little research on the ISNA.

ultima said...

The capitalists, the ordinary workers and taxpayers of America, the people who pay your salary, -- the horrors!

Anonymous said...

My comment is that the question was loaded. "Linked" is meaningless. What kind of link? They share the same religion? Nationality? The coincided in 1987 in the same city?

ultima said...

Make your own realistic definition of linked -- financially, support of extremism by the failure to denounce the known extremists, take your pick.

I can understand your rants against imperialists, etc. but not your benign view of muslims who fail to denounce the extremists among them.
Don't you think this is a little ostrich-like?

ultima said...

I post direct quotes from others to promote discussion. This may or may not imply endorsement.

ultima said...

ISNA has a matrimonial website if you are interested in becoming a Muslim bride. Ha!