|  y newspaper, a major Canadian one of vaguely conservative bent called the National Post, has been judged by an outfit called the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) to be the most Islamophobic, anti-Muslim paper in the country and on the North American continent. Well, so claims its "Annual Report on Anti-Islam in the Media." The CIC smear is an example of how many Islamist organizations in the U.S. and Canada operate. They periodically issue reports and surveys designed to create a stir — i.e., that there are "7 million" Muslims in the U.S., or that around 80% of Muslims voted for George Bush, or, in this case, that the level of "anti-Muslim hatred" in the media has reached unprecedented heights. It is only after quizzical researchers look into any given report's methods that these claims are exploded. Indeed, they are found to be the result of self-administered, pseudo-scholarly, amateurish and profoundly unscientific surveys conducted by self-appointed "representative organizations" to advance particular political ends. In recent months, for example, sterling work has been done by, among others, Howard Fienberg and Iain Murray of the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), demolishing the grandiose "U.S. Muslim Population" estimate propagated by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). There are actually fewer than 2 million Muslims in America, a full 5 million less than CAIR had reported. In the Summer 2001 issue of The Middle East Quarterly, I examined the distorted claims of a massive Muslim Bush vote, which allegedly "won" him the presidency, and the concordant calls for a re-orientation of U.S. policy towards the Middle East as payoff for these "natural Republicans." But an exit poll conducted by the Detroit News, a leading news organization using scientific methods and a substantial pool, found that in heavily Muslim Michigan, 66% of Muslims voted for Gore. The CIC report is of a piece. The CIC's goal is to promote its line that Canadian Muslims are a "community under siege," one subject to waves of harassment and victimization whipped up by the media, and in particular, the National Post. Any empirically based claims to the contrary are dismissed as resulting from either unconscious hatred or ignorance. Thus, one National Post columnist, Andrew Coyne, was cited for "endangering the well-being of Canadian Muslims" for mentioning "the massive backlash against innocent Muslims that failed to materialize." Despite it being true that there has hardly been a backlash, the CIC perceived Coyne's observation to be hatemongering, so therefore, according to the precepts of identity politics, it is. Let's look at the CIC's methods of measuring racism. Volunteers — i.e., CIC activists — "monitored" newspapers and submitted examples of what they considered Islamophobia. Each instance was allotted a certain number of points on the basis of its offensiveness to the individual reader. Heading the list (100 points) was "identifying Muslims by their religion when they are involved in violent acts," followed by use of such terms as "Muslim terrorist" (80 points), "Muslim militants" (70), and "Muslim fundamentalists" (50). Other proscribed "anti-Islam" phrases, of which there are roughly 70, include: armed Islamic group, Islamic dictatorship, Islamic suicide-bomber, Islamist, Islamic extremist, Muslim activist, and Muslim rebels. Newspapers were punished (20 points a pop) for using "popular 'experts'" to analyze events and indulging in "selective presentation." The names of these popular "experts" (gotta love those sarcastic quote-marks) were suspiciously left unmentioned, but it is obvious the CIC wasn't referring to Edward Said and Noam Chomsky: Taking a stab, I would guess Daniel Pipes and NR's own David Pryce-Jones, both of whom have been published in the National Post. And since "selective presentation" is the essence of editorial and commentary, the CIC is deceptively using it as a catchall for anything it disagrees with. Newspapers were also chastened with 10-point hits for "failing to offer a balanced view on political events." Of prime importance to the CIC is to "increase the awareness" that we — the National Post in particular — are inherently racist, even if we "live in denial." We must be made to become conscious of our own hatreds, which produce "image distortion disorder" and thence "societal anxiety among Canadians," as well as "loss of identity and self-esteem, feelings of inferiority, and even suicidal tendencies, especially among teenagers." In the CIC's view, our Islamophobia manifests itself in our unconscious tendency to link Muslims with violence, restrictiveness, and intolerance. By editing out bad language, it seems, the CIC believes that correct thoughts will result, even at the necessary expense of reporting the truth. For this reason, the CIC avers that the obscenities of September 11, or any other act of Middle Eastern terrorism, had absolutely nothing to do with the religion of the hijackers. It is an act of hate to point out, therefore, as our columnist George Jonas did, that "while 99.9% of Muslims and Arabs aren't terrorists, 100% of terrorists who now threaten us are Muslims and/or Arabs." I myself was obliged to become conscious of my own thought-crime after I used the term "Islamic Jihad" in a sentence referring to, um, the Palestinian terror-group named Islamic Jihad. In order to cleanse ourselves of hate, the CIC recommends we hold "workshops on … sensitivity writing" and initiate "equity hiring to achieve diversity." Curiously, however, judging by its support for the Durban Conference, during which hook-nosed Jews were equated with apartheid and genocide, the CIC doesn't seem to have problems with some kinds of truly inflammatory racist language. It might also be argued that its fetish for censorship in the interest of "social harmony," as the CIC puts it, reeks of the very authoritarianism oppressing Muslims in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. |
