I appreciated Prof. Bennoune’s book so much I felt like underlying every sentence. It’s a book that every college student should have to read, and a lot of the professors should read it, too. Note that Prof. Bennoune agrees with the (American) right on a number of things:
• She sneers at the idea that a film that no American had ever heard of was the cause of riots in the Muslim world on 9/11/12. [6]
• She denounces the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, and the Iranian regime. [16, passim]
• She admits that the fundamentalists say one thing in English or French and do another thing at home or say another thing in Arabic. [17]
• She knows the story of Molly Norris, who had to go into hiding and whom I assume most leftists have never heard of. [23]
• She does not like Tariq Ramadan, “who disapproves of homosexuality, feminism, and secular Muslims.” [25]
• She isn’t bothered by people like Terry Jones, the American preacher who burns Qur’ans. She quotes with approval another Muslim feminist saying that it is up to God to react to this kind of thing. [98]
• She never uses the word “radical” for the fundamentalists. I think it only appears once in connection with someone else’s views. I have always resisted using that word because it suggests that these people are on the left when in fact they are on the far right. Bennoune frequently refers to them as on the right.
There are naturally points about which I disagree with her. She inevitably brings up our having helped to create these fundamentalist monsters by using them as mercenaries in Afghanistan against the Soviets [262]. I don’t know why these people never want to blame the Soviets for being there in the first place, nor do they talk about horrible things the Soviets did there (why else were Muslims so eager to sign up?).
She also condemns our alliance with Saudi Arabia, saying that while the American right battles shari’a, our (presumably right-wing) government shields a big source of the problem: Saudi Arabia [106]. But it’s pretty clear that our government is only doing that for the oil; this is why the idea of fracking is so exciting for many on the right because it means that we can just cut loose from that entire area (except for Israel) and let them all kill each other to their heart’s content. And the people who want to foil our plans are people on the left: the environmentalists. They have also curtailed any hopes we could have had for nuclear energy, “because it’s dangerous.” Well, so is being allied with Saudi Arabia, but as Thomas Sowell would say, there are no solutions here, just trade-offs, and I will take the dangers of nuclear energy over that of being allied with Saudi Arabia any day.
My biggest gripe is that she doesn’t take seriously the fundamentalist threat we have here in America. She is against the anti-shari’a laws passed in places like Oklahoma, because she says there is about as much likelihood of that being instituted there as there is of the Talmud’s being used in Saudi Arabia [4]. No one in Saudi Arabia is pushing the Talmud on them, but we do have people pushing for shari’a for America. And it is not so much the fundamentalists as the left, which is doing everything it can to empower them. Bennoune herself mentions such a person (see my first post on her book and look for the item on page 20), who insists that we ought to adopt shari’a. In addition, such people, by controlling our educational system, seem to be indoctrinating young people with the idea that Islam is an amazingly egalitarian religion and that to criticize it is to be racist. Shari’a is not a threat to us today, it is true, but what about thirty years from now?
Let me conclude by saying that the left is making two big mistakes these days: believing in global warming and supporting the Islamists. I’m glad that Prof. Bennoune has written her book exposing the foolishness of that second mistake.
• She sneers at the idea that a film that no American had ever heard of was the cause of riots in the Muslim world on 9/11/12. [6]
• She denounces the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, and the Iranian regime. [16, passim]
• She admits that the fundamentalists say one thing in English or French and do another thing at home or say another thing in Arabic. [17]
• She knows the story of Molly Norris, who had to go into hiding and whom I assume most leftists have never heard of. [23]
• She does not like Tariq Ramadan, “who disapproves of homosexuality, feminism, and secular Muslims.” [25]
• She isn’t bothered by people like Terry Jones, the American preacher who burns Qur’ans. She quotes with approval another Muslim feminist saying that it is up to God to react to this kind of thing. [98]
• She never uses the word “radical” for the fundamentalists. I think it only appears once in connection with someone else’s views. I have always resisted using that word because it suggests that these people are on the left when in fact they are on the far right. Bennoune frequently refers to them as on the right.
There are naturally points about which I disagree with her. She inevitably brings up our having helped to create these fundamentalist monsters by using them as mercenaries in Afghanistan against the Soviets [262]. I don’t know why these people never want to blame the Soviets for being there in the first place, nor do they talk about horrible things the Soviets did there (why else were Muslims so eager to sign up?).
She also condemns our alliance with Saudi Arabia, saying that while the American right battles shari’a, our (presumably right-wing) government shields a big source of the problem: Saudi Arabia [106]. But it’s pretty clear that our government is only doing that for the oil; this is why the idea of fracking is so exciting for many on the right because it means that we can just cut loose from that entire area (except for Israel) and let them all kill each other to their heart’s content. And the people who want to foil our plans are people on the left: the environmentalists. They have also curtailed any hopes we could have had for nuclear energy, “because it’s dangerous.” Well, so is being allied with Saudi Arabia, but as Thomas Sowell would say, there are no solutions here, just trade-offs, and I will take the dangers of nuclear energy over that of being allied with Saudi Arabia any day.
My biggest gripe is that she doesn’t take seriously the fundamentalist threat we have here in America. She is against the anti-shari’a laws passed in places like Oklahoma, because she says there is about as much likelihood of that being instituted there as there is of the Talmud’s being used in Saudi Arabia [4]. No one in Saudi Arabia is pushing the Talmud on them, but we do have people pushing for shari’a for America. And it is not so much the fundamentalists as the left, which is doing everything it can to empower them. Bennoune herself mentions such a person (see my first post on her book and look for the item on page 20), who insists that we ought to adopt shari’a. In addition, such people, by controlling our educational system, seem to be indoctrinating young people with the idea that Islam is an amazingly egalitarian religion and that to criticize it is to be racist. Shari’a is not a threat to us today, it is true, but what about thirty years from now?
Let me conclude by saying that the left is making two big mistakes these days: believing in global warming and supporting the Islamists. I’m glad that Prof. Bennoune has written her book exposing the foolishness of that second mistake.
Thanks for the reports on the book. I am harkening back to your coverage of theories to why the American Left doesn't condemn them- the enemy of my enemy is my friend, etc.
Posted by: Steve Burri | 09/30/2013 at 08:52 PM