By Robert Spencer
When I saw the above screenshot at Hot Air of a new Fox News promo, I immediately thought of Dinesh D'Souza, who in his new book The Enemy At Home says that "the cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11." I do not believe that either the left or the right in America is responsible for causing 9/11, which I believe took place because of the expansionist and totalitarian jihad ideology and the renewed strength of some in the Islamic world to further its ends -- with, to be sure, a healthy sense of grievance against the West used for recruitment purposes. But I have long stressed, and continue to believe on the basis of numerous historical precedents, that those grievances, if redressed, would not end the jihad, which would simply continue to recruit on the basis of different grievances.
In any case, I just discovered, via referrals from Powerline, that D'Souza goes farther, and blames me also for Islamic terrorism. I have his book but haven't finished reading it yet -- when I wrote this and this about interviews he conducted, I didn't know this was in his book. But I just found this on page 278:
In order to build alliances with traditional Muslims, the right must take three critical steps. First, stop attacking Islam. Conservatives have to cease blaming Islam for the behavior of the radical Muslims. Recently the right has produced a spate of Islamophobic tracts with titles like Islam Unveiled, Sword of the Prophet, and The Myth of Islamic Tolerance. There is probably no better way to repel traditional Muslims, and push them into the radical camp, than to attack their religion and their prophet.
|