''This can't continue, Dr. Jasser said, because the American people aren't stupid. He said it's really true that American Muslims, as a whole, don't sign on to the anti-American Islamism of the Muslim-American leadership class (e.g., CAIR, ISNA and other wolves in sheep's clothing).''
I just had a great phone interview with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, the transcript of which will be published in the Dallas Morning News this weekend. At one point, I brought up David Brooks' column today, especially this point of Brooks's:
A shroud of political correctness settled over the conversation. Hasan was portrayed as a victim of society, a poor soul who was pushed over the edge by prejudice and unhappiness.
There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors.
This response was understandable. It's important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion. But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn't carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.
Worse, it absolved Hasan -- before the real evidence was in -- of his responsibility. He didn't have the choice to be lonely or unhappy. But he did have a choice over what story to build out of those circumstances. And evidence is now mounting to suggest he chose the extremist War on Islam narrative that so often leads to murderous results.
The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality.
Dr. Jasser says this is absolutely correct, and that by refusing to discuss the role of religion in this act, the U.S. media and elite opinion makers are not doing American Muslims any favors. The only way the U.S. Muslim community is ever going to be forced to deal with the radicals within their own communities -- and in their pulpits -- is through outside pressure. He told a story about an imam at a Phoenix mosque who, during a sermon, held up a provocative propaganda picture from the Iraq war, which featured an Iraqi woman holding up a sign claiming that a U.S. soldier standing next to her impregnated her. Dr. Jasser said the image was probably Photoshopped in the first place, but the more important thing is how provocative it was. He told me he confronted the imam afterwards, and chastised the cleric for poisoning the minds of people in his congregation. Dr. Jasser said there must have been 500 people in that congregation, but to his knowledge, he was the only one who spoke up. He added that everyone he talked to from the congregation subsequently objected to what the imam had done -- but they had remained silent. http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/11/politically-correct-paternalis.html