The Arabist

The Arabist

By Issandr El Amrani and friends.

"The Muslims' turn"

Take a noble idea, a tragic event, a grave issue and pervert it with bad analogies and facile rhetoric. You'll get something like this. Putting Algeria, Sudan and Iraq in the same basket is insane. It's the sign of a mind without historical context, or indeed much knowlede of what it talks about. But he saves the best for the end:

Many of those in academic and even official circles here view the events in the Islamic world through politically-correct glasses. Hamas and Iran are judged by the actual, physical threat that they pose and not by their murderous ideology. Everyone is focusing on Iran's nuclear program, but Israel has accepted the chilling, poisoned clouds emerging from the mouth of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iranian religious leaders, which are visible even without expensive, sophisticated satellites. At most, Israel puts its "public relations" machine into operation. After all, the Israeli denial machine goes, what can demonic propaganda do when we have the means - according to remarks made by the president and the prime minister on Holocaust Remembrance Day - to destroy anyone who comes to kill us.
Judging groups by their actual capabilities rather than their ideology? God forbid. But then again I must just be politically correct. I think I will have to re-read this article many times to understand what it means, or what it is trying to imply.