danny “crack” pipes: how muslims view b HUSSEIN o

In today’s Jerusalem Post, Daniel Pipes does his best to explain to us what the Muslim world thinks of Barack X Hussein al Obama–and, of course, the Jerusalem Post is exactly where you want to find incisive insight into the Muslim world, and who better to provide it than Daniel Pipes, champion of soft numbers and other stuff he pulls out of his ass.  Check it:

How do Muslims see Barack Obama? They have three choices: either as he presents himself, as one who has “never been a Muslim” and has “always been a Christian”; or as a fellow Muslim; or as an apostate from Islam.

That’s an awesome summary, but it seems to me there must, simply must, be a fourth choice: We Muslims view Barack Obama as the Presidential candidate least likely to kidnap us, send us to Gitmo, and rape us with a chemical light, as the Presidential candidate not so insane as to jump to war with Iran and Syria and murder further hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters in hopes of–what did we hope to achieve in Iraq again? well, whatever that was, but regrettably, as yet another Presidential candidate who will continue the Syriana policies of Ango American administrations since the turn of the last Century.

But let’s forgive that oversight.  Digging deeper, we find that ZOMG!!11! HUSSEIN X OBAMA IS A TRAITORous apostate infidel, and that the Muslims are going to get explodey should he become the next president:

BUT THIS excitement also has a dark side – suspicions that Obama is a traitor to his birth religion, an apostate (murtadd) from Islam. Al-Qaida has prominently featured Obama’s statement “I am not a Muslim” and one analyst, Shireen K. Burki of the University of Mary Washington, sees Obama as “bin Laden’s dream candidate.” Should he become US commander-in-chief, she believes, Al-Qaida would likely “exploit his background to argue that an apostate is leading the global war on terror… to galvanize sympathizers into action.”

Of course, the thought that Al Qaida might also exploit John McCain’s current profile as a greedy warmongering a**hole apparently doesn’t seem to rate mention.  Nor, indeed, does the Obama-is-Rushdie meme get much traction outside the neocon press, as Pipes himself notes:

Mainstream Muslims tend to tiptoe around this topic. An Egyptian supporter of Obama, Yasser Khalil, reports that many Muslims react “with bewilderment and curiosity” when Obama is described as a Muslim apostate; Josie Delap and Robert Lane Greene of the Economist even claim that the Obama-as-apostate theme “has been notably absent” among Arabic-language columnists and editorialists.

I guess it hasn’t occurred to Mr. Pipes that the claim is “notably absent” because most people in the Muslim world think it’s “incredibly stupid” and “really don’t care.” But, I’ll have to admit, I probably don’t have as firm a grasp on what Muslims want, hope, and believe as Daniel Pipes thinks he does.

islamophobia: what it is and how not to deal with it

So I went to a conference held at Masjid As-Salaam in Burnaby on Friday called Islamophobia: What It Is and How to Deal With It.  Speakers were Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Dereck O’Keefe of rabble.ca, and Khurram Awan, one of the legal team that took Macleans to the Canadian, Ontario, and BC Human Rights Commissions for Islamophobic publications.  And no big surprises.

One thing I did take out of it was a better understanding of why Br. Khurram did what he did.  I’m virtually convinced now that it was out of frustration–they couldn’t get Macleans to apologize or to admit wrongdoing, or to publish a rebuttal, so they took it to court.  I get it now.  But I agree with him even less now.

Look, I don’t want to come down too hard on my brothers.  I get where they’re coming from.  But if Macleans Magazine wants to degenerate itself into a reactionary Neocon bullet-point mag, let them, and let the market decide whether or not it wants to consume that kind of swill.  If the market is happy with that product, and–here’s the kicker–if the Muslim community and its friends can’t field a saleable alternative, the Government ain’t the solution.

I understand that the Canadian Islamic Congress doesn’t agree with that position, and they’ve got a lot of their political capital invested in a position precisely its opposite, so I don’t blame them for that.  But the way I see it, there are three potential social scenarios we’re facing here in Canada:

1. The people of Canada can’t stand us Muslims and are willing consumers of Macleans/CanWest neocon Islamophobia.
2. The people of Canada are relatively ambivalent about Muslims and consume Macleans/CanWest neocon Islamophobia because they don’t really care–but they don’t really buy it, either.
3. The people of Canada don’t really agree with Macleans/CanWest neocon Islamophobia and don’t really buy it, and what we’re really watching isn’t a series of potent strikes against Islam and Muslims, but rather the death-spasms of redundant media trying to shock-and-awe its way back into Canadian hearts and minds.

Whichever it is, litigation won’t help.  What will is ensuring Canadians at least have access to entertaining and informative commentary that offers a true (or at least truthy) picture of what Canadians’ Muslim neighbors believe and do.