Wednesday, December 2, 2009

America vs. the Narrative

Here's the beginning of a surprisingly good article from the New York Times (gasp!).

What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?

Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”

What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in America, The Narrative still got to him.

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving. READ MORE.

3 comments:

Jon said...

If you're shocked that you're getting right wing talking points out of the New York Times and long time terrorist apologist Thomas Friedman then you aren't familiar with Thomas Friedman.

Go to the link below for blatant apologetics for state sponsored terrorist:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/14/friedman/index.html

Fernando said...

Jon saide: « »...

yep, thats not a mistake... he simply does not say anything worth willing... to sad... that's the level off muslim dawa...

Traeh said...

An excellent article, considering it comes from the NY Times. One can see that Friedman has probably been influenced by the strong critics of Islam, though Friedman discreetly hides it.

But one also sees Friedman's profound ignorance of Islam: he tells Obama to ask Muslims a question, and refer to human beings being made in the image of God. But that notion is not in Islam. That is a Judeo-Christian notion, that human beings were made in the image of God. The Qur'an, as pointed out for example by Daniel Boorstin, conceives human beings as slaves of God, absolutely not as sons and daughters or images of God.