Why has the NY Times published an article today (”Veiled Democracy”) written by Harvard Law Professor, Noah Feldman, in which Feldman explains that if Turkey allows Muslim women to wear the Islamic headscarf in universities that Turkey will be that much closer to a liberal democracy?

Pinch me. I must be dreaming.

Isn’t Feldman the very man who wrote a long, bitter, and rather shameful article in the Sunday New York Times magazine in which he excoriated his own Orthodox Jewish brethren for (accidentally, as it turns out), not including a photo of himself together with his non-Jewish, non-Orthodox, non-convert wife at a class reunion?

Oh, how he carried on about the hard-hearted prejudices of Orthodox Jews (some of whom also wear head coverings). And yet, here he is suggesting that an Islamic religious symbol–a head covering–might be the key to a liberal democracy and, as such, might also render Turkey a worthy entrant into the European Union.

Turkey–but not Israel.

More: Feldman says that allowing the Islamic headscarf is the “best possible refutation of the claim that Islam and democracy are incompatible” and would be a “case study of religious freedom against coercive secularism.”

So, Feldman is a passionate warrior for Islamic religious expression but an equally passionate warrior against similar Jewish religious expression.

Why? Does Feldman think that Islam is more liberal than Judaism? Does the Professor understand that Muslims are not allowed to convert, nor can they marry a non-Muslim who does not convert to Islam? Does Feldman understand that Muslim women are being killed for refusing to wear the headscarf? Do the editors at the New York Times “get” it? If not, why not?

Maybe I’m just a bit cranky, what with the Archbishop of Canterbury calling for Shari’a law in Britain–a first article of faith in the Church of fundamentalist Liberalism. By the way: Rest assured, Shari’a law has already been hard at work in settling many disputes in the UK, ranging from violent crimes to divorces.

Is Feldman entirely out of touch with Muslim-world realities? How about the American woman who was just arrested and strip-searched in Riyadh for the “crime” of sitting in Starbuck’s with a male non-relative business associate? How about the two sisters in Iran who were savagely lashed and who are now slated to be stoned to death for the alleged crime of “adultery?”

What is wrong with Noah Feldman?

Every single day the handwriting on the sky becomes larger and clearer. The same Holland that decided they could not afford to pay the price of Aayan Hirsi Ali’s courage, has now decided to postpone Geert Wilder’s film about Islam.–and, I have told by a Dutch woman, banished Wilder’s from the country.

Simultaneously , in Canada, Islamists and multi-cultural relativists have challenged Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. Lee Harris has an excellent and troubling article about this in the current issue of The Weekly Standard. (Sorry, I only have the hardcopy). Harris, the author of “The Suicide of Reason. Radical Islam’s Threat to the West,” reminds us that the west values both freedom of speech and the preservation of life. These two values are now seemingly on a collision course. Why? If we know that criticizing Islam will lead to the masscre of 100 innocent civilians somewhere in the world, we proceed at our own risk.

On the other hand, my friend Ibn Warraq pointed out to me that remaining silent may ultimately cost more lives.

My friends: What do you think? I am reposting an article about this temporary “ban” on the film. It was written by Denis Schultz.

Source http://webpages.charter.net/maxflack/A220.htm

BANNED: “THE PASSION OF THE WILDERS”

Geert Wilders had a point: “If I had announced that I was going to make a film about the fascist character of the Bible would there have been a crisis meeting of Holland’s security forces?” Wilders had just announced that his 10-minute film would be postponed for two weeks and that Dutch authorities had ordered him to leave the country.

A ten-minute film about the fascist character of the Bible…hasn’t that been done by CCN or by Ted Turner or somebody at the UN? Seems like one is aired every night. No one has called the cops. There have been no bomb threats. Bill Maher’s anti-Christian rants last longer than 10 minutes. Between Real Time and the Playboy Mansion, he’s spent more time abusing Christ than Herod and Judas Iscariot did combined.

Suppose someone did propose a 10-minute film about fascism in the Bible who would be the narrator? Got to have a narrator. Bill Maher? Rosie O’Donnell? Would bin Laden be invited to the Premier? Got to have be a Premier. Would Bill Clinton apologize for the behavior of Mother Teresa? There would have to be an apology. Who would be the first dhimmi at CNN or MSNBC to insist that there are many versions of Christianity and that Opie Taylor and Potsy Weber shouldn’t be confused with …with…ah, Tim McVegh or…or…Eric Rudolph…yes, Eric Rudolph…don’t want to tar all Christians with the David Koresh brush.

Columbia and Berkeley would probably snap up the film for its freshmen indoctrination programs. Chances are an Obama or Hillary administration would show it to the FBI and the CIA. It’s time they took a closer look at who they are hiring in this War on Terrorism. Tighten up those screening procedures…some of those fuzzy-cheeked applicants might have belonged to the Catholic League while in college or worse…been a Promise Keeper. Can’t take chances with national security.

Would the Vatican protest—warn the producers not to show the film under penalty of excommunication? Would they get Ibrahim Hooper’s backing?

Wilders, 44, continued: “Would I have received as many death threats as I have done since announcing I was making a film about the Koran?” Of course not! He would be praised for his bravery; invited on The View; they would name a faculty lounge at Berkeley in his honor. Half the US Congress would say they might disagree with what he says but would defend to the death his right to say it—unless he used the N word or was insensitive to some minority group (list available on request).

Iran has warned the Netherlands what will happen if the Dutch are so foolish as to air the Wilders film. “The Iranian parliament will request to reconsider our relationship with it (the Netherlands),” said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of Majlis National Security. Iran is currently reconsidering relationships with the United States, Israel, Australia, Denmark, Lower Slobbobvia, Shangrila…

“In Iran, insulting Islam is a very sensitive matter and if the movie is broadcast it will arouse a wave of popular hatred that will be directed towards any government that insults Islam.” Succinct! Let’s see…Pim Fortuyn insulted Islam; Submission insulted Islam; Theo van Gogh insulted Islam; Salman Rushdie insulted Islam; the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons insulted Islam; the rondellhund insulted Islam; Kafirs gnawing on pork rinds insult Islam; women in miniskirts insult Islam; ringing church bells insult Islam. It is easy to insult Islam. Muslims are the most sensitive and most easily insulted people in the world and also the most tolerant and peaceful—and that is why every offender of Islam is given a day in court except during waves of popular hatred.

In Afghanistan a journalist who insulted Islam has been sentenced to death. He had questioned the Islamic marriage bed. Why should Muslim men be allowed four wives and Muslim women only one husband he asked? Would an American Horace Greeley have dared to ask Mitt Romney that question? Muslim clerics were humiliated—to suggest that a Muslim man couldn’t satisfy four women—with appropriate separate rooms—would be to question his fitness for the 72 virgins awaiting his expertise in Allah’s Great Whorehouse in the Sky. Is it any wonder that the Court’s decision was immediately praised by the Afghan parliament?

In Pakistan, Muslim men are abducting and killing Christian boys, not because of hatred though that is part of it, but to harvest their body parts for sale on the black market. In Saudi Arabia, a Nigerian woman was beheaded for drug trafficking in the holy city of Mecca. It’s a dark side to something.

Meanwhile in Washington DC, Floris van Hovell, spokesperson for the Dutch Embassy said, “The government is taking the announcement of this movie quite seriously. Obviously, because the movie hasn’t been made, we cannot say anything about the movie until the movie has been shown, but the message Mr. Wilders has told us he wants to portray is disturbing.” But not as disturbing as murdering young Christian boys for their body parts or beheading drug traffickers in Mecca? Right?

Maybe it is Wilders. “I believe our culture is much better than the retarded Islamic cultures,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of the intolerance in the world comes back to the Islamic religion and the Koran.”

UPDATE/NEWSFLASH

A Dutchman has written to clarify a matter. He writes under a pseudonym F.Vogelpest. He writes:

“On your article ‘First They Came for Ayaan..’: “Geert Wilders has been (temporarily?) banished from Holland” Not true: Wilders is in Russia on a trip with a group of Dutch parlement members. Foreign affairs experts of other parties. and his (Geert Wilders’) film put on hold.

When I asked him whether I could quote him on this, what his sources are, and how I might identify him, here are his answers:

“I’m a Dutchman living in Belgium. So I watch Dutch television, read Dutch papers, visit Dutch websites and so on. So I could provide you with some links to newssites but I guess you won’t undersland the language. The corrections I mentioned are the facts.
Ayaan is banished (in a way). Not Wilders (yet, but I don’t think the Dutch government will risk to banish him). Also: we are awaiting the film. It’s not put on hold by him. If the government had put it on hold he would have told us (the Dutch).

Wilders plays the media like no-one has ever done before in the Netherlands (well, the late Pim Fortuyn maybe).

Best greetings from Belgium, F

________________________________

>

Well—sure, if one counts organ harvesting, honor killings, church burnings, suicide bombings and female genital mutilation, but Bill Maher knows about all this, doesn’t he?

C’mon, whom are we kidding? How big does the elephant have to be before we’ll agree to discuss it? This coming American election is not just about universal health care–it is also about the survival of the free world as we have come to know it. And therefore, all about Islam.

If we say we are for women’s rights or for human rights, then a candidate’s gender, skin-color, or age may not be as important as their ideas about Islam.

Do our candidates understand that we are really at war and that we cannot talk our way out of it? That charm, even of the spellbinding variety, is not enough, nor can we “take a meeting,” Hollywood-style, or Tammany-Hall style, to set things right. Nor is simple, old-fashioned heroics the answer to the kind of Orwellian propaganda and guerilla-terrorism that America and our allies will continue to confront in the 21st century.

Does our next President understand that we have to fight with everything we have and risk losing it all in order to hold onto any of it?

Does our next President understand that a western concept of human rights is a universal vision and that America cannot protect such rights only for American women and then turn our backs on women in the Third World? Isolationism is cowardly, interventionism is both dangerous and almost doomed to failure; we need a new dialectical method to resolve these two seemingly intractable opposites.

Certain burning issues require immediate, not gradual solutions. Our dependence on Arab oil (a tragic addiction) must end. Alternate sources of energy must be found in a very short period of time. (Watch the Israeli electric car project). We must enact effective legislation to combat human sexual slavery/trafficking–but this is a global, not merely a national problem. While we may not be able to do so for the whole world, America must, finally, ameliorate the terrible suffering due to economic disparities at home.

Here is a question that an American President needs to answer.

Is revealing the truth about a particular religion or about its followers–be they Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jewish, tantamount to insulting or reviling someone else’s religion? If not–or rather, if only one group experiences the “truth” or any criticism, both valid and invalid, as an insult, what is the remedy? Sensitivity training about Islam for the presumably “Islamophobic” or sensitivity training about western standards of tolerance for too-easily injured Muslims?

This particular question will (or should) play a major role in the forthcoming American election which is not only about two individuals or two political parties but is also about defending the free world from barbarism, intolerance, and apartheid.

It’s bigger than World War Two. Bigger than Vietnam. Even bigger than the Superbowl.

Yes, I know, America is far from perfect–but compared to Iran or Sudan we are….better. Live with it.

In my last post, I wrote about Muslim taxi drivers whose private religious beliefs about wine, pork, and dogs led to behaviors towards passengers which were considered, at trial, to be crimes in North America. I also described a network of Muslim taxi drivers in the UK which, according to a government report, tracks and returns Muslim girls and women who are in flight from abuse and from being honor murdered. I did not indict all Muslim taxi drivers. Indeed, I was careful to write that many Muslim taxi drivers are also polite and courteous and that many non-Muslim drivers are not.

It wasn’t enough. The politically correct police turned out, not in droves, but with great passion. They thought I was saying things that I had not said. They were afraid that “people” would use my words to restrict Muslim immigration, profile or imprison Muslims, bar Muslims from working as taxi drivers, etc.

But I did not write any of this nor do I think it.

This issue is another thorny one, just like the Islamic headscarf.

Here’s what you must remember when you fear that your most creative or practical ideas might be “racist” : Repeat, as a mantra, that Muslims and people of color are also being victimized by Islamist suicide killers and tyrants; and that to date, it is Muslims who suffer most from Islamic gender apartheid.

But, we must wrestle with certain questions over a long period of time. There are no quick or easy answers. Do we ban the headscarf–and keep angry-and-intolerant Muslim men out of the service professions? Isn’t that profiling? And isn’t profiling racist? Just realize: If the “good” people do not start wrestling with these difficult questions, the “bad” people will step right in and do it for us.

NEWSFLASH AND UPDATE! A number of sites posted my article about
“Raging Muslim Taxi Drivers in North American Cities” (War to Mobilize Democracy, Worshipping Christian, Noisy Room–and Intellectual Conservative). A comment was posted at Intellectual Conservative which I will share.

In February of 2007, a Muslim Somali taxi driver, Ibrahim SheikhAhmed, was driving with a suspended permit in Nashville, Tennessee. The comment continues:

“The driver picks up two Christian college students and gets into a discussion about religion, telling them that Hitler was a “good man because he was trying to rid the world of Jews”. Nashville City Paper reports that when the students paid the cabby they expressed their disagreement by telling him “If you’re going to live in a country like ours, you’re going to have to tolerate other people’s beliefs.” This didn’t sit well with Mr. Ahmed who then proceeded to run them down, hitting one of the students, breaking his pelvis and leg. The police who arrested him, testified that Mr. Ahmed told them that he had a problem “managing his anger”. He was charged with attempted homicide. Check out the video of the newscast report here: http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=71vdfAgv6fg

According to the Nashville City Paper, SheihkAhmed pled guilty to two counts of aggravated assault and he will serve six years for each count, to be served concurrently. According to the Nashville City Paper. His sentencing hearing will take place on February 7, 2008. His sentencing hearing will take place on February 7, 2008.

If I were to do a study of taxi driver incident rates, I might discover that drivers of many religions (and of no particular religion) also get into fights with their passengers. If someone has done such a study, I would welcome the results.

HERE IS THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Are immigrant Muslim taxi drivers heroically selfless “family men” or are they soldiers in an advancing jihadic Army?

As a New Yorker, I have been driven by very friendly and exceptionally courteous male Muslim taxi drivers from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Somalia, and once, by an enchanting woman driver from Afhganistan–but I have also held on for dear life as ill-tempered, mentally unbalanced, unbelivably misogynistic male Muslim drivers have indulged in full-blown rage attacks as they careened in traffic.

Of course, I have also experienced similarly bad behavior at the hands of home-grown taxi drivers as well. Maybe long hours, low pay, and No Exit will do it every time.

Nevertheless: Aqsa Parvez’s father Muhammed, who honor-mudered his daughter because she refused to wear an Islamic headscarf worked as a taxi driver in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto. Yasir Said, who murdered his two teenage daughters, Amina and Sarah, because they had become too western, was also a taxi driver in Dallas.

Taxi drivers in England have been known to constitute a network in which they spy on and actively return girls and women who are trying to escape being honor murdered. According to a just-released report, UK teachers and police officials are “afraid to take action against so-called honour crimes for fear of being accused of racism.” The Daily Mail notes that, in addition,

“Researchers say taxi drivers, police and government workers of Asian origin are returning women to the domestic abuse they want to escape.”

Taxi drivers again!

In 1997, in New Orleans, a blind woman tried to enter a taxi with her seeing eye dog. The Muslim taxi driver physically attacked her and further injured an already-broken wrist. At trial, the judge described the driver’s behavior as a “total disgrace” and sentenced him to 120 days of community service at the Lighthouse for the Blind.

In 1999, a Muslim taxi driver in Cinncinati refused to transport a blind female passenger with a seeing eye dog. The woman complained; CAIR defended him as having acted in accordance with his religious beliefs. (Dogs are considered impure and contact with them is considered to render a Muslim ritually unfit for prayer).

In 2000, in Edmonton, Canada, a blind woman tried to enter a cab with her seeing eye dog. The driver first claimed “allergies,” but then stated that “taking a dog conflicted with his religion.” At trial, he failed to produce the necessary proof from an allergist. However, the case against him was dismissed because it had been improperly filed.

We also know that in 2005 and 2006, some Muslim taxi drivers in Minneapolis refused to pick up airport fares whom they suspected of transporting alcohol or pork. In 2007 the Metropolitan Airport Commission of Minnesota they unanimously voted to crack down on such drivers who “declined to transport passengers with alcohol or pork” ).

What next? Will Muslim taxi drivers refuse to transport “naked” women? “Naked” as in with their faces showing?

But, what’s true of some Muslim taxi drivers is also true of some Muslim convenience store owners.

For example, in 2003, in Edmonton, Canada, a blind woman tried to enter a convenience store owned by a Muslim and was forcibly ejected by the owner who stated that “this store is also my church because I pray and eat here and my religion will not allow dogs or any animal to come in here.” In 2004, at trial, she stated that he started yelling at her and did not allow her to explain why she needed the dog, what the dog meant to her, or to enunciate her legal rights.

In 2005, a blind man in Brooksville, Florida, who tried to enter a store with his seeing eye dog, was similarly thrown out by a raging Muslim.

Other correlates of “raging Muslim” behavior also exist: Poverty, a limited education, (but this is not always so), dim prospects for a brighter future–coupled with a very specific cultural and religious zero-frustration tolerance, hostility towards non-Muslims, and paranoia when non-Muslims are in control. However, “male” and “Muslim” are also correlates of this behavior.

Please understand: Nothing that I am saying has anything to do with “race.” Muslims come in all colors and ethnicities.

If I lived in England, I would now have to describe Muslim taxi drivers who engage in any of the above behaviors as committing “anti-Islamic” acts. By the way, I originally thought that UK officials had lost their last marble when they issued these new, Orwellian directives, but I also understand that these officials are finally getting desperate and want to inspire the hopefully “good” but all-too-silent Muslim majority to protest the jihadists who have hijacked their culture and religion.

Let’s see if this works.

A final point: Generations of immigrants to the West have “done time” as taxi and truck drivers, dishwashers, small shop owners. There is no shame in this. They have put their children through college and graduate school. I hope that the silent Muslim majority, including the taxi drivers, follow in their august footsteps–and yet, I remain uneasy about this.

POSTSCRIPT: Individual taxi drivers are innocent until proven guilty. Culturally different styles do not always rise to the level of a crime–although rudeness and arrogance in public life is always quite disheartening and intimidating. But, as a group, taxi drivers know city routes; convenience stores and gas station owners control the city’s food and gasoline supply. Were even a small group of drivers and shop owners united for an Islamist purpose–we would be vulnerable in these specific ways. Muslim citizens would be as vulnerable as non-Muslims.

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One week ago, burqa-clad, grassroots, humanitarian American aid worker, Cyd Mizell, was kidnapped in Kandahar, Afghanistan. News about this event was carried for about two days by thousands of newspapers. Now, all is silent. No group took credit for this malevolent deed or issued any demands. Perhaps they have done so privately; one has no way of knowing. But Mizell is in a wild, wild country in which lawmakers, not outlaws, have just condemned a young Afghan man to death for having downloaded an essay about women and Islam. (He is seen as “insulting Islam.”) Imagine the mindset of Arab-influenced kidnappers!

A little more than a month ago: Yasir Said murdered his innocent teenage daughters, Sarah and Amina, in Dallas and then disappeared…into thin air. (Perhaps he was a secret agent, under cover as a taxi driver and has been aided in his escape; perhaps I have read too many spy novels). However, unlike the kidnapping far away in Afghanistan, the American mainstream media absolutely refused to cover the Said case.

I have been contacted by someone with information and hope to speak with them soon. Stay tuned. I will share what I learn.