In today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman outdid himself in a piece titled, simply, “Pakistan.” He made the interesting observation that there was not a mass protest in Pakistan against the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, akin to the ones seen in the wake of the publication of the Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet, Mohammed, as a terrorist among other things. While admitting that Pakistani newspapers, intellectuals and feminists have spoken out against the attacks and have condemned their horrific nature, he still insists that more should have been done by everyday Pakistanis. He, finally, shrouds his hypocrisy in a mesh of thin veneer of concern for Pakistan and its civil society. What Thomas Friedman was doing, however, is raising the bar for Pakistanis, and in-a-not-so-veiled attempt, for Muslims in general in how loud they must condemn their own extremists until the western intelligentsia is satisfied. This is part of Thomas Friedman’s ongoing refrain of “Where are the Moderate Muslims?” and “Why don’t the Muslims of the World Speak Out?”
Of course, Friedman forgets to mention that Muslims and their leaders from around the world roundly condemned the Mumbai terrorist attacks. From President Mubarak of Egypt to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, from the Council of British Muslims to the Austrian Muslim Society (Islamishe Glaubensgameinschaft), even Ahmedinejad of Iran piled on his condemnation of the attacks. Not a single Arab or Pakistani newspaper that I looked up omitted to write a heated rebuke of the attacks on November 29th before anyone knew which group was behind the attacks and before the editorial boards of the Washington Post and the New York Times even mentioned the issue. “Islam Would Never Condone the Acts of Barbarity in Mumbai,” blared the Lebanese Daily Star. “No civilized person can be anything but revolted and sickened by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai,” bemoaned the Saudi Arab News. Indeed the reaction from the Middle East and surrounding Muslim countries was swift in its rejection of the crimes.
Alas, Thomas Friedman saw an opportunity to embarrass the Muslim community and its moral prevarication vis-a-vis terrorism instead of acknowledging a community in distress, genuinely outraged. Perhaps what is most interesting is that Friedman gave no examples of other people who marched in outrage of their fringes committing terrorism. Did the Irish or the Basques march out in protest every time a bomb blew up in Belfast or Madrid? Did Israelis and American Jews come out in protest every time a new settlement was built in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank? Did Americans go out in mass protest when it was published that as many as a million Iraqis and perhaps many more have died since the invasion of Iraq by the “coalition of the willing?”
Thomas Friedman, himself, never submitted an apology to his readers regarding how mistaken he was about the Iraq war. Of course, he subjected us to his racist analogies, although, there is no doubt that he didn’t realize the hubris and the arrogance underlying them. His pottery barn analogies in 2003 were simply nauseating, “I am among those who think that this is a job worth doing but…the first rule of any Iraq invasion is the pottery store rule: You break it, you own it.” Of course, we broke Iraq and we certainly don’t own it. Thomas Friedman, our own “liberal” Bush apologist, did not understand in 2003 and nor does he now that you don’t own a country just because you invade it, that you are not responsible for every terrorist attack perpetrated by Muslims just because you are a Muslim, and that the best way to end terrorism whether in South Asia or in the Middle East or in the Basque region is by resolving the underlying conflicts, not by further humiliating and polarizing their populations.
Related posts:
- VIDEO: Thomas Friedman gets pied
- Answering for Al-Qaeda
- American Muslim Organizations Issue Fatwa
- Jihad Watch Goes Mainstream
- Zionists Gone Wild
Much appreciated.
Posted by Jennifer | December 4, 2008, 7:59 amvery well said
Posted by Mehammed "Abou" Mack | December 4, 2008, 11:31 amvery well said
Posted by Mehammed "Abou" Mack | December 4, 2008, 11:31 amvery well said
Posted by Mehammed "Abou" Mack | December 4, 2008, 11:31 amvery well said
Posted by Mehammed "Abou" Mack | December 4, 2008, 11:31 amvery well said
Posted by Mehammed "Abou" Mack | December 4, 2008, 11:31 amvery well said
Posted by Mehammed "Abou" Mack | December 4, 2008, 11:31 amvery well said
Posted by Mehammed "Abou" Mack | December 4, 2008, 11:31 amI have three blog entries that are relevant to Sama Adnan’s argument:
For Tony Blair: The Real Extremism
Chabad Lubavitch’ Dangerous Game
Harvard Interfaith Mumbai Vigil Discussion.
Posted by Joachim Martillo | December 5, 2008, 4:31 pmJoachim, you wrote an article un-ironically claiming that the statement “everyone can enjoy Kosher food, not just Jews” amounts to Islamophobic racist incitement.
…It might be time to switch to decaf.
Posted by Joe | December 5, 2008, 10:11 pmthank you sama – friedman is just tired, to say the least.
hope all is well with you.
Posted by alfannaan | December 5, 2008, 10:35 pmHey guys, thanks for the comments. Alfannaan, how have you been? Looking good.
Thanks Joachim for the blog entries. It’s a lot of information I did not know.
Posted by Sama Adnan | December 5, 2008, 10:51 pmJoe, Are you referring to the note in Facts Cause Zionist Food Allergies?
I think you are misinterpreting.
There is nothing inherently Jewish about the food I listed. It is all Eastern European, and yes I do like it. I am part Eastern European and grew up with it.
That said, as the kosher meat industry collapses, I do think the Muslim halal meat industry should take it over because Muslims can do it better because of the economy of scale and because kosher meat is quite profitable on account of the premium orthodox Jews are willing to pay.
Posted by Joachim Martillo | December 6, 2008, 6:14 amBTW, I messed up the Harvard Interfaith Mumbai Vigil Discussion link. It was supposed to be: http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/12/harvard-interfaith-mumbai-vigil.html.
Posted by Joachim Martillo | December 6, 2008, 6:21 amShouldn’t we all feel sorry for Tom Friedman? He married into the Bucksbaum family which was theortically worth $4 BILLION via their control of General Growth Properties(GGP). With GGP now only worth a buck a share, most of the $4 BILLION family fortune is gone. Friedman doesn’t have any economic degrees, but for those who’ve been watching closely, most of his columns now address economic matters. It must have been really painful for him to watch his brother-in-law, John Bucksbaum, mismanage the the family business.
Posted by Anonymous | December 6, 2008, 12:44 pmI was referring to http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/03/harvard-jews-better-than-muslims.html
Posted by Joe | December 6, 2008, 5:06 pmNo need for the quotes around “liberal” as if Friedman has been erroneously labeled that all his life. Thomas Friedman is the epitome of liberalism. Your post outlined exactly that.
Great piece.
Posted by QuiQui | December 7, 2008, 7:00 amFor Joe. Harry Lewis was comparing the kosher commensality at the Harvard Hillel with a Muslim request for separate all female swimming times to suggest that somehow Muslims were being pushy.
I pointed out that Lewis was either ignorant of the laws of kashrut or misrepresenting them. In any case, the accusation that Jews are pushy and expect others to accommodate them is a staple of anti-Jewish prejudice.
As far as I can tell, Lewis has taken an expression of historic Judeophobia and recast it into Islamophobic incitement by substituting Muslim for Jew.
Thanks to the David Project, this type of anti-Islamism is a popular pastime for many Boston-area Jews (like Harry Lewis).
My blog entry was completely justified and speaks for itself.
I probably should have addressed the exclusionary invitation-only Harvard Hillel events that are dedicated to Jewish social networking, but it was supposed to be a publishable letter to the editor and would have become far too long if I had addressed the whole litany of misdeeds of the Harvard Hillel (e.g., support of Birthright Israel).
I remember that the WASPs that dominated the prep school I attended used to hold cotillions for students at the local Jew-excluding country clubs for the purpose of proper socialization and ASP social networking.
The Jewish parents used to get all cranked up about it.
Now that the Jewish elite has displaced the WASP elite for the most part in the USA, Jewish networking organizations like the Harvard Hillel are far more exclusionary and racist than the old WASP networks ever were.
Posted by Joachim Martillo | December 7, 2008, 12:53 pm“”or Joe. Harry Lewis was comparing the kosher commensality at the Harvard Hillel with a Muslim request for separate all female swimming times to suggest that somehow Muslims were being pushy.”"
Which, in this case, they were. Anyone can eat kosher food if they want (unless their silly religious beliefs prevent them, but that’s the silly religious person’s problem, not the rest of us), and it doesn’t prevent anyone from eating non-kosher food.
Shutting off the gym during certain hours fucks with everyone else’s schedule, and is very Not Cool.
Anything that forces me to adjust my *legitimate, secular* concerns to accommodate someone else’s silly religious beliefs deserves to be resisted. Religion isn’t worthy of such respect.
I pointed out that Lewis was either ignorant of the laws of kashrut or misrepresenting them. In any case, the accusation that
“”Jews are pushy and expect others to accommodate them is a staple of anti-Jewish prejudice.”"
Bullshit. Some Jews are pushy sometimes, and they shouldn’t be, and they deserve to be called out on it.
If some Muslims are being pushy in a situation where they shouldn’t be, again, they deserve to be called out on it.
Again, you managed to twist the above piddly concerns into being an example of “Islamophobic incitement”? Switch to decaf.
“”
I probably should have addressed the exclusionary invitation-only Harvard Hillel events that are dedicated to Jewish social networking, but it was supposed to be a publishable letter to the editor and would have become far too long if I had addressed the whole litany of misdeeds of the Harvard Hillel (e.g., support of Birthright Israel).
I remember that the WASPs that dominated the prep school I attended used to hold cotillions for students at the local Jew-excluding country clubs for the purpose of proper socialization and ASP social networking.”"
There’s nothing really wrong with invitation-only events. I know some groups that run Asian-American networking events in Los Angeles; I’m able to come to a few, not being Asian American, to better absorb their perspective, but generally it’s invite-only and I’m not a part of their target audience. That’s okay.
Birthright Israel isn’t a bad program, if you pick the right trip, i.e. one that doesn’t shy away from Israeli politics. I did one with UPZ and NIF, and it was great.
Posted by Joe | December 7, 2008, 4:45 pmOh, and “the Jewish elite” has displaced “the WASP elite”?
ROFL, dude, have you even *seen* America lately? The elite is pluralist. I was at an Ivy-league-plus-a-few-other-schools networking event in LA a week or two back, and it’s a veritable rainbow coalition. You’ve WASPs and Jews, sure, but you’ve also got the Black bourgeois, East- and South-Asian-Americans, Hispanic entrepeneurs, Arab Americans, the residents of all those Persian palaces in West LA… A hilariously wrong blanket statement like yours doesn’t capture what America’s elite today looks like.
Posted by Joe | December 7, 2008, 4:50 pmomg JOE! You write too much on here! Please. Get some friends. Go outside. It’s nice.
Posted by Salma | December 7, 2008, 8:14 pmOutside is nice indeed, though I’m spoiled — Southern California weather, 10 minutes from the beach. I went hiking today! You should be proud.
And yet, somehow, 20 minutes a day for KabobFest doesn’t kill my life. (Especially when I’m procrastinating on something else)
Now, care to address any of my points?
Posted by Joe | December 8, 2008, 12:15 amHarvard had at least three swimming pools when I was an undergraduate in the 70s. There are at least five nowadays. Not only would the number inconvenienced be tiny (as I remember the IAB pool’s utilization), but to request a few hours a week for single sex swimming is hardly unreasonable.
In contrast, Harvard Jewish groups are obnoxiously pushy. They have demanded last minute modifications of the academic schedule to conform to the Jewish religious calendar (even though the number of actually observant Jewish students is tiny).
Birthright Israel is not merely pushy. It is an obnoxious racist statement that Palestine really belongs to murderously genocidal racist Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim invaders, interlopers and thieves, and not to the native Palestinian population, who unlike ethnic Ashkenazim are descended from the ancient Judean populations and who have loved the country for millennia.
Yet, I believe that the real Jewish pushiness is best typified by a common Jewish slogan that I remember from my undergraduate days: “Shikses are for practice.”
More than anything else, I suspect that Lewis’ attack on Harvard Muslims relates to the implication that Jewish males would be denied access to Muslim women.
Let me be clear about this point, for it is not my analysis but was the immediate reaction of two Jewish women that work for my organization (Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel) when I showed them this discussion.
Lewis was completely out of line. They were quite sympathetic to the Muslim request and agreed that Lewis was engaging in gratuitous anti-Islamism and expressing common feelings of Jewish superiority.
In any case, there is good reason why high school and summer camp swimming is often single sex throughout the country. Guys can be real jerks and abuse the gals.
Posted by Joachim Martillo | December 9, 2008, 1:09 am“”Birthright Israel is not merely pushy. It is an obnoxious racist statement that Palestine really belongs to murderously genocidal racist Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim invaders, interlopers and thieves, and not to the native Palestinian population, who unlike ethnic Ashkenazim are descended from the ancient Judean populations and who have loved the country for millennia.”"
What the fuck are you smoking? Nobody on my birthright trip even bothered making claims about ancient connections to the land. They were explicit up-front: “We’re not asking you to love Israel… most Israelis have a love-hate relationship with this country, its politics, and its structure. We’re just trying to give you a firsthand perspective on how Israel works.” We visited unrecognized bedouin villages and met activists working on housing discrimination against Arab-Israelis, the heads of NGOs that work on issues such as Russian-Israeli assimilation, documentation of IDF war-crimes, etc. It was pretty fucking balanced, and your discription is almost cartoonishly wrong.
“”Yet, I believe that the real Jewish pushiness is best typified by a common Jewish slogan that I remember from my undergraduate days: “Shikses are for practice.”"”
Again, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SMOKING?
The vast majority of Jews in America don’t marry other Jews! I know maybe one or two Jewish guys who’d rather the girl they marry is Jewish, and about 20 or 30 Jewish guys who’d commit ritual seppuku before they’d marry a Jewish girl.
The most legitimate branch of American Judaism, reform Judaism, recognizes this plenty well, and changed the rules so that you can be a Jew via patrilineal as well as matrilineal descent.
Posted by Joe | December 9, 2008, 2:43 pm“”In any case, there is good reason why high school and summer camp swimming is often single sex throughout the country.”"
This sounds… like no summer-camp I’ve ever been to? Hell, some of them had co-ed cabins. How would anyone get laid under that set-up?
Posted by Joe | December 9, 2008, 2:45 pmWhat’s with this protest terrorism thing? It’s weird. You protest power and governments.
Posted by American Muslim Girl | December 9, 2008, 8:35 pm@ joe –
why don’t most jewish boys want to marry jewish girls?
Posted by Anonymous | December 10, 2008, 7:48 am“”@ joe –
why don’t most jewish boys want to marry jewish girls?”"
I’m sure everybody’s answer is different, but here’s mine — because it takes the best thing about Judaism, which is being the Other, and neuters it. It draws you into a Jewish community, makes you an insider of sorts, when Jews tend to work best, and have done their best work, as outsiders.
I’d like my kids to have a strong Jewish cultural background, even though I’m a staunch atheist. But my kids will have it better than I did; my dad is non-Jewish and my mom is Jewish, so even the ultra-Orthodox accept me wholeheartedly, which is really counterproductive — no struggle involved.
My kids, if their dad is Jewish and their mom is non-Jewish, they’ll be accepted by the Reform, but the Orthodox will shun them as non-Jews; they’ll better get that sense of being the outsider, the Other, than I ever did. Aside from a roof over their head and food to eat, decent morals, and unconditional love, that sense of being on the outside looking in is probably the single most valuable thing I can pass on to my kids.
Posted by Joe | December 11, 2008, 2:48 pmYou’re completely missing his point. Answer the question: Why do widespread demonstrations spring up in Arab countries when newspaper cartoons depicting Muhammad are published in the Netherlands, and not when lunatics murder in the name of Islam? Isn’t the slaughter of innocents a far greater insult to their faith than a political cartoon? The priorities are, at the very least, out of whack.
And your parallel with Ireland and Isreal is especially fatuous. Just because people didn’t protest in the streets in the past does not excuse inaction now. In fact, had Catholics marched through the streets of Dublin every time the IRA set off a bomb, the power of that terrorist group would have been greatly diminished. As Friedman said: It takes a village.
Posted by james | December 11, 2008, 4:07 pm@ American Muslim Girl
You are kidding, right?
Posted by james | December 11, 2008, 4:11 pmJoe’s comment shows why it is so impossible to have a civilized discussion with racist Jewish fanatics.
As long as they are breathing, they are lying, and if one challenges their nonsense, their only response consists of incoherent aspersions.
My wife wrote an excellent analysis of the Zioshmooze, which I posted here.
The Taglit Diary located here mentions the standard birthright Masada visit that is supposed to connect modern Jews to their alleged Greco-Roman Palestinian forebears.
As far as I know, the guides do not explain
1. that Palestinians are the descendants of the Judeans that lived in Palestine at the time of siege of Masada,
2. that ethnic Ashkenazim are descendants of people that converted to a different form of Judaism approximately a thousand years later or
2. that ethnic Ashkenazim in Palestine today are murderous genocidal invaders, interlopers, and thieves that all decent people in the world should hate and despise.
The blog entry Zionists Out of the Peace Movement: Shahak on Lying About Judaism contains a list of hyperlinks that cover ethnic Ashkenazi mendacity, delusion, fanaticism, irrationality, and bigotry in gory detail.
I recommend them to anyone attempting to conduct some sort of dialogue with a Zionist or apologist for Zionism.
I should have mentioned some other examples of ethnic Ashkenazi arrogance and pushiness.
Zionists invariably demand that a Palestinian point of view be balanced by the Zionist point of view in practically any discussion.
Yet when Zionists present their narrative, they never offer equal time to the Palestinian narrative, which represents the truth.
Zionist fanatics like Joe or James have no right to demand Muslims condemn terrorism against Zionists until the State of Israel returns stolen property to its rightful owners and repatriates the native population.
Israeli Zionists have no right to live in safety and security in a stolen country, generally on stolen property and often in stolen houses.
The example of John Brown shows that by American history and precedent terrorism against violent state sponsored racism is completely legitimate and heroic.
I have no doubt that if he were alive today, John Brown would have had living Zionists hacked to pieces with swords just as he treated living slavers in Bleeding Kansas.
As for the “Shiksas are for practice,” just google it to get a sense of ethnic Ashkenazi contempt for non-Jewish women, non-Jewish men and goyishe kep (non-Jewish heads, i.e., stupid non-Jews) in general.
Jews have to start taking ownership of the crimes that arise out of Jewish politics just as Jews demand that Germans and other peoples take ownership of the crimes that have arisen from their politics.
On a per person basis no modern population has been more culpable in mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide than ethnic Ashkenazim.
Posted by Joachim Martillo | December 15, 2008, 2:55 pm“”On a per person basis no modern population has been more culpable in mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide than ethnic Ashkenazim.”"
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
…Oh, wait. You seriously believe it?
…AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Posted by Joe | December 16, 2008, 10:14 pm