Howler of the Month (archive)

"It wasn't the 21-year-old Michael Enright who drunkenly slashed his New York city cab driver after asking 'Are you Muslim?' It was the Republican National Committee. . . . Newt Gingrich and Rick Lazio may as well have kept Enwright in their basements in chains and whipped him into a frenzy as to spew their hatred on the airwaves."

Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, in a web log entry titled, "Republican National Committee Slashes New York Muslim Cabbie," August 25, 2010. (link to source)

We Couldn't Have Said it Better (archive)

"You can respect your adversary without agreeing or giving in. They have profound, deeply held beliefs and one of the great challenges for secularists is they can't understand the level of passion that a belief which is derived from an underlying religious form leads one to have, which is why, frankly, deeply believing Christians and Jewish Americans have a much better understanding of what's going on than do secular intellectuals in deracinated universities looking out of their ivory tower or trying to wonder what it is that would lead people to kill themselves and having no comprehension of the emotions and the depth of passion engaged."

Newt Gingrich, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, speaking on "America at Risk: Camus, National Security and Afghanistan," July 29, 2010, at AEI in Washington, D.C. (link to source)

CAMPUS WATCH, a project of the Middle East Forum, reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America with an aim to improving them. The project mainly addresses five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Campus Watch fully respects the freedom of speech of those it debates while insisting on its own freedom to comment on their words and deeds.

The Latest on Campus

The Idiocy Left Behind [incl. Tariq Ramadan]
September 4, 2010 - The Australian

Students Heading to the Middle East to Study Abroad
September 3, 2010 - CBS 21 News

Crown Center Hosts Panel on Mid-East Politics, Economics [incl. Shai Feldman]
September 3, 2010 - The Brandeis Hoot (newspaper of Brandeis University)

I Am Not Against Islam, But Islamic Extremism [incl. Tariq Ramadan]
September 3, 2010 - The Guardian (U.K.)

Ramadan Unites Muslim Students During Camp Yale [incl. Omer Bajwa]
September 3, 2010 - Yale Daily News

WaPo Spreads Myths About Mosques in America While Claiming to Clear Them Up [incl. Islamic Saudi Academy]
September 2, 2010 - Jihad Watch

The History and Psychological Roots of Anti-Semitism Among Feminists, Their Gradual Palestinianization and Stalinization [incl. Rashid Khalidi]
September 2, 2010 - News Real Blog

Smyrna Student Learns Arabic
September 2, 2010 - The Daily News Journal (TN)

Palestinian Representative Calls Yale Conference 'Anti-Arab' [incl. Jytte Klausen]
September 2, 2010 - Yale Daily News

O, Palestine! [incl. Rashid Khalidi]
September 1, 2010 - American Thinker

Blog

Who're You Calling a 'Bigot'? Middle East Studies Professors Attack Opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Wed, 1 Sep 2010, 12:33 PM | Permalink

In an article written for Campus Watch and posted at the American Thinker, Brendan Goldman takes a look at the response of Middle East studies academics to the proposed Ground Zero mosque:

John Esposito, director of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, having observed that a large majority of Americans oppose an Islamic center at ground zero, could not decide whether American society now more closely resembles that of Birmingham, Alabama circa 1963 or Nazi Germany on the eve of Kristallnacht:

[Newt Gingrich is] somebody...from the South [who] can remember the problem of racism and civil rights. He's also reportedly a Christian.... He's got to remember how a theology of anti-Semitism led to a history of pogroms that ultimately led to the Final solution.

Such callous historical analogies were but one component of a concerted effort by a group of Middle East studies professors to discredit the opponents of the ground zero mosque, whom they helpfully labeled "rural rednecks," "so-called Christian ministers," and "the Israel lobbies."

To read the entire article, please click here.

John Esposito, Islamophobia, and the Ground Zero Mosque

By Winfield Myers | Tue, 3 Aug 2010, 8:22 AM | Permalink

John Esposito

This morning at American Thinker, Stephen Schwartz offers a rigorous critique of Wahhabi apologist Georgetown professor John Esposito's support for the so-called Ground Zero mosque. Schwartz writes as a convert to Sufi Islam, and his essay offers three concise reasons why his religious beliefs support his stance. Here's the introduction:

John L. Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs and director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, is America's best-known apologist for Saudi Wahhabism, the Turkish fundamentalist Justice and Development Party (AKP), and Islamist ideologies in general. To many, he personifies all that's wrong with Middle East studies in America today.

On July 19, 2010, Esposito contributed a column to the CNN website titled "Islamophobia and the Muslim Center at Ground Zero." In it, he downplays complaints about the project for a fifteen-story Islamic cultural center near the site of the 9/11 atrocities by focusing on angry comments from Manhattanites who see the proposal as an expression of Islamist supremacy. Here's how he sums up criticism of the mosque project: "Islam-bashing charges leveled with no concrete evidence by pundits and politicians."

To read the rest of the essay, please click here.

Norton Mezvinsky: Chelsea Clinton's LaRouchite Uncle

By Winfield Myers | Sat, 31 Jul 2010, 7:46 AM | Permalink

New York Daily News

Today at American Thinker, Asaf Romirowsky and I expose the ties between Norton Mezvinsky, a Middle East specialist who recently retired from Central Connecticut State University, and Lyndon LaRouche, the serial conspiracy theorist and presidential candidate. Mezvinsky, who will today become the uncle of Chelsea Clinton, won't be at the wedding in Upstate New York:

Norton Mezvinsky told the New York Daily News this week that he wasn't invited to the wedding because of a family feud with his nephew that stemmed from his support for his disgraced brother, former Iowa Representative Edward Mezvinsky, whose plans to move to New York and write a book after his release from prison were opposed by nephew Marc.

But there's another reason the Clintons might want to keep the Mezvinsky -- who says he's the "senior male member of the family, and Marc's only uncle" -- well away from Rhinebeck on Saturday: Mezvinsky's ties to the conspiracy mongering anti-Semite Lyndon LaRouche.

To read the rest of the essay, please click here.

Campus Watch "Setting The Record Straight" 2010 Update

By Cinnamon Stillwell | Thu, 29 Jul 2010, 1:40 PM | Permalink

Since our last update, the number of corrections in Campus Watch's "Setting The Record Straight" section has grown exponentially. Hardly a day goes by when Campus Watch (CW)'s opponents aren't hard at work hurling false accusations, smears, and paranoia in our direction.

The nature of the fabrications generated by CW's critics over the years has remained predictably static, and they tend to fall into just a few categories. The most ubiquitous are the histrionic allegations that we "silence," "censor," "harass," or "intimidate" academics; that we engage in "blacklisting"; that we interfere in tenure decisions; that we represent a threat to "academic freedom"; and that most hackneyed cliché of the Left's vocabulary—that we practice "McCarthyism." Only in the insulated world of academia would mere criticism and accountability be likened to state-sponsored repression. Moreover, the irony seems to be lost that eight years after CW's 2002 launch, such academics are still busy talking—about being silenced.

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