Opinion: Is Time a Muslim Magazine? Elul 14, 5770, 24 August 10 11:57 by Phyllis Chesler (Israelnationalnews.com) Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D. is emerita professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies and a frequent contributor to FOX News, Pajamas Media, and Middle East Quarterly. I did not think that the pro-Muslim/pro-Islamist and anti-Western propaganda could get any worse—and yet it just has. _TIME magazine_ (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2011798,00.html) has an August 30 cover story titled “Is America Islamophobic?” Within, the article is titled: “Islam in America: It’s part of the fabric of life, but protests reveal a growing hostility to the religion of Muslims.” President Obama’s rather strange assertions that “_seven million_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html?pagewanted=all) ” Muslims live in America (only 2.5-3 million actually do), and that “Islam has always played a role in America,” actually contradict the point of this piece, but no matter. One might wonder why any “hostility” to a productive, historically significant Muslim presence in America exists. TIME magazine does not tell us. The article portrays Muslims as innocent victims and American non-Muslims as prejudiced racists who, historically, once banned Catholicism, tried to limit immigration, burned African-American churches, passed anti-Chinese legislation, criminalized certain Native-American rituals (polygamy, rejection of modern medicine), spawned the Ku Klux Klan, failed to elect a Catholic President until 1960, allowed Father Coughlin’s anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi rants to appear over the airwaves, and interned 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War Two. This is all contained in TIME’s “Brief History of Intolerance in America.” This article could easily appear in an Egyptian or Syrian magazine; however it would be Israel that would be blamed for various alleged atrocities, and Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, even al-Qaeda, who would be seen as the innocent victims. TIME magazine does not balance out their history of American intolerance with a history of American tolerance, which included separating the state from religion, reforming religions, instituting a tradition of free speech, fighting a bloody Civil War in order to free the slaves, giving women the vote and educational opportunities, freeing Europe from Nazi fascist rule and waging a Cold war against Soviet totalitarianism. Also missing in the TIME magazine article is the fact that Muslim leaders, in the name of Islam, have behaved very badly and for a very long time. Missing is an equal history of Muslim countries which have practiced colonialism, imperialism, forced conversions, slavery (which is still practiced), and a far more barbaric mistreatment of non-Muslims infidels. Muslim leaders, in the name of Islam, killed and forcibly converted Hindus in India for 800 years—and are still persecuting them; they have also destroyed the Christian Church in the Middle East and Central Asia—it is no more; in its place are only mosques and minarets where once only churches stood. Muslims vanquished Zorastrianism and Buddhism, and both exiled and genocidally exterminated Jews, Armenians, and Greeks. According to Israeli historian, Benny Morris, the Arab 1948 war against Israel must now also be understood as a religious holy war, a jihad, one that is still ongoing (“The 1948 War Was an Islamic Holy War,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2010). TIME magazine fails to note all this—and gives little credence to more recent historical events. Recently, Muslims, in the name of Islam, have hijacked planes, blown themselves and other people up, flown planes into tall buildings, plotted bomb attacks in New York City’s Times Square and over Detroit, shot American soldiers down on a military base in Texas, plotted to do so on military bases in New York and New Jersey. In addition, mosques everywhere, even in the West, have been preaching death to the Jews, death to Zionists, infidels, and Jihad Now! These mosques and their imams or mullahs have been funded by Arab and Muslim pro-jihad financiers. After years of denial, indifference, and anti-racist, multi-culturally relativist political correctness, Europeans and Americans are only now just waking up to what Israel has been living with for 63 years. Too little, too late, they are now trying to halt some of the Islamist practices which are crimes and are best described as Islamic gender and religious Apartheid. When westerners protest Islamic Apartheid, they are demonized as “ Islamophobes” and “racists.” This means that any resistance to aggressive Islamification is shamed and slandered. If that doesn’t work, physical intimidation and lawsuits (“lawfare”) follow. Incredibly, the Western media and political establishment has taken the Islamist side. They confuse “Islamism” or “radical Islam” with the majority of silent Muslims who are too afraid to take on the Islamists, (or who agree with them), and with the small but precious number of Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents, feminists, secularists, and moderates who do stand up to the Islamists but who are not consulted by western leaders or quoted in the Western media. TIME magazine does not quote Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Seyran Ates, Zeyno Baran, M. Zuhdi Jasser, Magdi Allam, Bassam Tibi, Khaled Abu Toameh, who are Muslims and ex-Muslims who have written major works against Islamism, and who have argued for human rights within Islam, including the right to leave Islam without risking death. TIME magazine’s approach has also been adopted by the mainstream media in how they cover the controversy over the controversial mosque near Ground Zero. Those who oppose it are being called “bigots,” “racists,” and madmen, at least in the mainstream media. Those who defend it are seen as enlightened, tolerant “victims” whose religious freedom has been impinged. Just yesterday, _Daisy Khan_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/nyregion/23protest.html) , Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf’s wife, claimed that the attacks have gone far beyond “Islamophobia” and are now in the realm of “discrimination against Jews.” Next thing I expect to hear is that the “Zionists” are behind the discrimination against the “Jewish” Muslims. Folks: Welcome to the Middle East in New York City. Now, we are really all Israelis. Phyllis Chesler is the author of thousands of articles and of thirteen books, including "Women and Madness" (1972), "Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman" (2002) and "The New Anti-Semitism" (2003).
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