Islamic Republic of America: Part 9

So, what about those books by John Esposito? What in them has made them so attractive for Ibrahim Hooper’s Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to underwrite their placement in public libraries across America?

Well, here’s what the Amazon.com review said in part about Esposito’s Islam: The Straight Path:

Most westerners equate Islam with terrorism. The reason is simple: Muslims rarely make the evening news unless engaged in hijackings, suicide bomb attacks or bloody confrontations with Israelis or with their co-religionists. In this 3rd edition of his book on Islam, John Esposito does much to correct this and other pervasive misconceptions surrounding this great world religion.

See? You probably thought we equated Islam with terrorism because most terrorists are Muslim. Silly you. Just shows you haven’t been reading enough Esposito—or CAIR press releases.

In fact, when CAIR’s chairman, Parvez Ahmed, publicly chided President Bush over his use of the term “Islamic fascism,” he challenged the administration to show a relationship between terrorism and any particular religion. This particular outrageous claim was conspicuously omitted in most mainstream mediocracy accounts, leaving one to wonder how it would have been treated if the administration had told such a whopper.

On the other hand, here’s a somewhat more critical take on another Esposito book, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (from The Weekly Standard, May 27, 2002):

So the events of September 11 represent a political and intellectual crisis for Esposito, who has long championed the view that the Islamic threat is phony or exaggerated: The West has falsely and prejudicially portrayed Muslims as radically other, the problems of the Islamic world are a legacy of Western colonial domination, and Muslim terrorism, however regrettable, is best understood as a reaction to America's one-sided support for Israel and the sanctions America has so cruelly imposed upon the people of Iraq.

Got that? The Islamic threat is phony and exaggerated, a product of our own ugly prejudice—and a result of our own misguided policies. We’ve only brought these things upon ourselves. Pay no attention to that terrorist behind the curtain. . .