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As reported last week by Campus Watch, Dalia Mogahed, appointee to President Obama's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, executive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, and co-author, along with Georgetown University's John Esposito, of Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, appeared (by phone) earlier this month on the UK-based Islam Channel television program "Muslimah Dilemma" (view here and read the complete transcript here.) Ibtihal Bsis, the show's host, is a member of the Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir; Mogahed's fellow guest, Nazreen Nawaz, is the group's national women's media representative....

In thinking about women's rights, sharia law, or Islamic law, doesn't typically come to mind.Yet, according to a survey conducted by Dalia Mogahed, executive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and appointee to President Obama's Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the two are closely intertwined. Her survey alleges that a majority of Muslim women believe sharia law should either be the primary source or one source of legislation in their countries, while viewing Western personal freedoms as harmful to women.The survey's findings appear in the book, Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims...

CINNAMON STILLWELL  Eight years after the Islamic terrorist attacks of 9/11, it appears that America has largely drifted back into complacency. Certainly, many Americans still understand that the threat of repeated attacks remains real, but the sense of urgency has faded with time. Meanwhile, the country's current leadership and its supporters are inhabiting the willful blindness of a pre-9/11 mindset, if not acting as apologists for and, in some cases, active supporters of America's enemies. Misconceptions that began with the Bush administration continue unabated. There is an inability to grasp that, to quote Robert Spencer, the "stealth jihad," being visited...

Writing at his new blog, The Rubin Report, GLORIA Center Director Barry Rubin points to Shampa Biswas, Whitman College Director of Global Studies and associate professor of politics, as an example of the "terrible, anti-democratic, and anti-American ideas" pervading higher education. As demonstrated in a glowing profile at the Whitman College web site and a 2007 convocation address, Biswas is yet another Edward Said acolyte helping to turn the field of Middle East studies (in which she specializes) into a forum for political activism and moral relativism. Rubin elaborates: Professor of politics Shampa Biswas explains that Edward Said's Orientalism is...

Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, has been caught in a lie. Khalidi concluded a January 8, 2009, op-ed that appeared in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune with the following quote ascribed to former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon: The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people. The problem is Ya'alon never made this statement and both publications have since had to excise it from the op-ed and issue corrections. Here's the New York Times: An Op-Ed...

In yesterday's "Best of the Web" (OpinionJournal.com), James Taranto took the New York Times to task for providing Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi an op-ed platform upon which to wax poetic about his supposed solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Qaddafi is a proponent of the "one-state solution," whereby Israelis and Palestinians are to live together in a single, secular, democratic state he terms "Isratine." He's even written something called the "White Book" outlining his proposal. The problem is, as Taranto put it: Whatever appeal this idea may have in theory, in practice it is even more fanciful than the two-state solution....

Hamas's Academic Cheerleaders [incl. Hamid Dabashi, Rashid Khalidi, Fawaz Gerges, Joseph Massad, Muqtedar Khan, Mark LeVine, et al.] If further proof was needed that the field of Middle East studies is marred by a politicized, morally vacuous approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the reaction of many of its leading lights to the current war in Gaza should suffice.According to these self-appointed arbiters of international law, Israel's military campaign against Hamas following the firing of over 6,000 rockets at Israeli civilian targets since 2005 is unjustified. Hamas, they tell us, is not a terrorist organization bent on Israel's destruction, but rather...

Israel's long overdue military response to the daily barrage of Gaza rockets aimed at its citizens has led to the usual round of protest/counter-protest confrontations in the West. Whether it's here in the San Francisco Bay Area or across the United States and Europe, Arab protesters and those on the left who have bought into their false victimhood narrative are enraged. They have directed their hatred and vitriol towards the few pro-Israel counter-protesters who have shown up to counter their monolithic message, and in some cases rioting and violence has ensued. For the most part, the mainstream media continues to...

In December 2007, we alerted readers to a new Campus-Watch.org feature called Setting The Record Straight. The section (which can be accessed by passing one's mouse over the "About Campus Watch" category in the left-hand tab and clicking on "Setting The Record Straight") is designed to correct false accusations made against Campus Watch. As we explained at the time: Campus Watch readers are no doubt familiar with the numerous smears, false allegations, and hysterical accusations leveled against us by our opponents. Frequent charges of "McCarthyism," "censorship," "silencing professors," and "threats to academic freedom" are hurled at Campus Watch by those...

Stanford University journalism professor and former New York Times foreign policy correspondent Joel Brinkley has written a commendable article in the San Francisco Chronicle questioning Princeton University professor emeritus of international law Richard Falk's role as special representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Falk is charged with investigating alleged Israeli human rights abuses against the Palestinians or, in other words, drumming up false charges against Israel on behalf of a "human rights council" that includes the Organization of the Islamic Conference, among other unsavory participants. As Brinkley puts it: The Human Rights Council is already an embarrassment to the...

It was often said after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that everything had changed. And for a few years afterwards, indeed it had. After decades of denial, America and its allies went on the offensive against Islamic terrorism, both militarily and morally. Most importantly, there was no hesitancy to name the enemy or to condemn his inhumanity. But if the lack of outrage over the Islamic terrorist assault on Mumbai, India last month was any indication, everything has changed back. The obfuscation that characterized much of the early reporting on Mumbai is partially to blame. Watching a number...

Biased Middle East studies professors are nothing new, but what about a professor who actually states in his course syllabus that he has no intention of presenting a scholarly, balanced approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict? This is how Vassar College history professor Joshua Schreier introduces the syllabus for his fall 2008 course, "The Roots of the Palestine-Israel Conflict": Students should keep in mind that this course is NOT designed to present "an objective" account of a "two-sided" conflict. The fact that there are supposedly two sides does not obligate us to portray each as equally right and/or equally wrong. The...

Earlier this week, I was shocked and saddened to learn of the death of Dan Kliman, 38, who was a founding member of San Francisco Voice for Israel (SFV4I). I knew Dan from my days as a Bay Area pro-America, pro-Israel grassroots activist, which included a year-long stint with SFV4I. Alongside Dan, other SFV4I members, and members of Protest Warrior, I counter-protested the local Israel-haters on many an occasion and it became an integral part of my political education. (Read some of my after-reports here, here, and here). Dan was dedicated, passionate, and very in-your-face, both as an outspoken Zionist...

For a brief time during the 2008 presidential campaign, Columbia University's Edward Said professor of Arab studies Rashid Khalidi was the most famous Middle East studies academic in the country. Khalidi's relationship with now president-elect Barack Obama brought him national attention and unprecedented media scrutiny. At the heart of the controversy was Khalidi's role as a spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) when he lived in Beirut in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During those years, the PLO was listed by the State Department as a designated foreign terrorist organization. But this was not the first time that...

I have a confession to make. I voted for John McCain, and yet I'm incredibly relieved that Barack Obama won the presidential election. Let me explain. The past eight years have been defined largely by Democratic and leftist opposition to George W. Bush and to all things deemed Republican. As someone who rallied to Bush's side after 9/11 and supported him in the 2004 election, only to find myself deeply disappointed both in his second term and in the arrogance and complacency of the GOP, I've grown quite weary of the partisan culture wars. So it's with great relief that...

Islam Awareness Week 2008 is underway at the University of Pennsylvania. Organized by the Muslim Students Association, Islam Awareness Week also has academic sponsors, including the university's Middle East Center. While "awareness" may be a laudable goal, blatant proselytizing is another matter entirely. Yet today's event, "State and Need for Dawah in the West," promises just that. Here is the description (received by e-mail; emphasis added): Harvard Chaplain and well-studied individual of Islam, Taha Abdul-Basser will deliver the Friday sermon on the lack of Dawah (invitation) on the part of Muslims in North America, not only to convey a message...

As much as we like to think otherwise, human behavior is fairly predictable, and sometimes ironically so. Muslims reacting to depictions of violence within the Muslim world (during the Danish cartoon controversy) with, well, violence, comes to mind. This time around, it's been Obama supporters responding to my SFGate column on Palin Derangement Syndrome with, well, Palin Derangement Syndrome. The avalanche of e-mails I received (not to mention the 913 comments at SFGate) was evidence of the collective nervous breakdown that has met Sarah Palin's arrival on the political scene. It was all there: the condescension, elitisim, sexism, paranoia, personal...

Ingrid Mattson, director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary and president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), has been all over the news lately. Mattson was one of the speakers at an interfaith gathering at the Democratic National Convention in August, and now word comes that she's a member of the "leadership group" for the U.S. Muslim Engagement Project. The latter consists of a bipartisan coalition of American leaders from a variety of backgrounds, which, as described at its website, seeks to form "a clear and strong consensus on...

Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) will be hosting a conference on October 23 that asks the loaded question: "Is There a Role for Shari'ah in Modern States?" The Saudi-funded ACMCU and its founding director, John Esposito, one of the foremost apologists for radical Islam in the academic field of Middle East studies, have certainly been doing their bit to make the idea more palatable. The Saudi prince for whom ACMCU was named has been pumping millions of dollars into Middle East studies at Georgetown, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and beyond, and as the case of Esposito demonstrates,...

There's a new affliction sweeping the nation, and it's known as Palin Derangement Syndrome. The phenomenon is similar to Bush Derangement Syndrome, a term coined by political columnist Charles Krauthammer to describe the personal animosity and irrational hatred directed at President Bush by his leftist opponents. But this time, Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, is the object of wrath. The feeding frenzy began with the news of Palin's selection, but it was her electrifying speech at the Republic National Convention last month that really set it off. In one fell swoop, Palin managed to energize the...

Hello Free Republic. Add 6 votes to the McCain/Palin vote tally from Connecticut from this disgruntled family of traditional Democrats. I'll spare you the details on our politics, suffice to say we are, generally, left leaning libertarians. We disagree on probably 55% of issues with you, and agree the rest of the time, but we have made a decision as a family to vote Republican this election. If you're curious, this is my personal reasoning(here I speak for myself, not for the clan) 1) Obama is the emptiest candidate I've seen in my lifetime (I'm only 25 so that isn't...

This weekend, the "Popular Palestinian Conference 2008" will be held in Chicago, and if past is prologue, a slew of anti-Israel propaganda will be part of the repertoire. The organizers make no effort to conceal their nefarious intentions, titling one of the workshops [emphasis added], "Inserting Palestine into High School Curricula in the US & Empowering Students to Challenge Dominant Narratives" and subtitling the conference, "Palestinians in the US: Reclaiming Our Voice, Asserting Our Narrative." Unfortunately, this "narrative" is a false one in which Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians its perpetual victims, and the United States an accomplice in...

San Francisco's political establishment has long prided itself on providing a haven for illegal immigrants. Mayor Gavin Newsom even launched a taxpayer-funded $83,000 "public awareness campaign" earlier this year assuring illegal immigrants that the "sanctuary city" by the bay was in their court. And indeed it is. Under the city's 1989 voter-approved sanctuary ordinance, police officers and other city employees are prohibited from inquiring into immigration status. In addition, the city will not direct municipal funds or employees towards assisting federal immigration enforcement, unless such assistance is required by federal or state law or a warrant. No doubt such protections...

While the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has long dominated the field, its highly politicized leadership's inability to withstand criticism, inattention to radical Islam, and apologetic approach towards the West's foes has left many Middle East studies scholars feeling unwelcome by their umbrella professional organization. Enter the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). Founded last year by Professors Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, ASMEA offers an alternative to MESA's post-colonialist biases and a venue for studying those elements of Islam and the Middle East that MESA's leaders ignore or downplay.ASMEA's emergence is cause for optimism....

Hot on the heels of my column yesterday, "Islam in America's Public Schools: Education or Indoctrination?," which included mention of the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Fairfax, Virginia, comes news that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has released its findings from a review of the school's textbooks and found that they promote hatred, intolerance, and violence. As reported by the Associated Press: -The authors of a 12th-grade text on Koranic interpretation state that apostates (those who convert from Islam), adulterers and people who murder Muslims can be permissibly killed. -The authors of a 12th-grade text on monotheism write...

With fatal terrorist attacks on the decline worldwide and al Qaeda apparently in disarray, it would seem a time for optimism in the global war on terrorism. But the war has simply shifted to a different arena. Islamists, or those who believe that Islam is a political and religious system that must dominate all others, are focusing less on the military and more on the ideological. It turns out that Western liberal democracies can be subverted without firing a shot. Nowhere is this more evident than in the educational realm. Islamists have taken what's come to be known as the...

On June 15-16, a conference will take place at the University of Southern California titled, "How Free is the University?" Sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance, the conference features an impressive lineup of speakers, all addressing the subject of academic freedom in higher education. As Northern California Representative for Campus Watch - a conference co-sponsor - I will be speaking on a panel titled, "Middle East Studies Departments: Who influences and controls them?" In doing so, I hope to shed light on the crucial part played by Middle East studies in the ongoing politicization of the classroom. On a related...

I returned to my apartment building last Saturday night to an unsettling sight. A young, seemingly Arab-American man was sitting smack dab in the middle of the doorstep, accompanied by a bulky backpack and all the while talking to himself and gazing at the cover of the large, leather-bound Koran on his lap. He appeared to be drunk or under the influence of something and when I tried to get past him with a careful, "excuse me," he merely mumbled incoherently. Keeping a watchful eye on him and making sure he wasn't watching back, I managed to get into my...

There's definitely something fishy about 25-year-old, Saudi, female, dissident blogger Hadeel Alhodaif's untimely death. Via the Arab News, we learn that Alhodaif "unexpectedly" fell into a coma and 25-days later, simply "passed away." But considering her legacy of activism, both within the blogosphere and without, and the fact that she insisted on blogging under her real name, it's more likely she was targeted for death by Saudi authorities. That she was a proponent of women's rights in this most backward of nations (and regions) is even more reason the enemies of progress would want her out of the way. The...

It isn’t often that characters based on the field of Middle East studies show up in current fiction, but the novels of author Daniel Silva are an exception. The last three novels of his series featuring Israeli secret agent/art restorer Gabriel Allon explore the intersection of Middle East studies and international intrigue. The sixth novel in the series, Prince of Fire, begins with a horrific terrorist attack at the Israeli embassy in Rome, explores the origins of the modern state of Israel, and ends in an archaeological excavation trench in Provence. Figuring throughout is the handsome and mysterious Paul Martineau,...

According to the Mount Vernon Gazette, twenty-two soldiers from Fort Belvoir in Fairfax, Virginia just graduated from the nearby Islamic Saudi Academy's "Arabic as a Second Language" program, where they also learned about "Middle Eastern culture and traditions." While this would sound fairly harmless on the surface (and Arabic language instruction is certainly needed in the U.S. military), it turns out this school has Wahhabi skeletons in its closet. This would be the same Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) that came under scrutiny last year over its Saudi-produced textbooks. As reported by the Washington Post at the time: In a report...

As further evidence of the not-so-great minds inhabiting higher education, political science professor and director of the UCLA Globalization Research Center on Africa, Edmond J. Keller, recently made the following statement about Zimbabwe's destructive dictator, Robert Mugabe: Mugabe has tried to start programs that would increase indigenous business opportunities, but the high inflation rate, the worthless Zimbabwe currency; and a vibrant civil society which has become anti-government make it impossible for him to hold on to power.That's funny, last I checked, Mugabe had been in power for 28 years. And he's been destroying the country (once labeled the "bread basket...

In his 2002 Commentary article, "Jihad and the Professors," Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes makes a compelling case for "the nearly universal falsification of jihad on the part of American academic scholars." Rather than acknowledging the aggressively military nature of jihad (otherwise known as "holy war"), such academics would have us believe that it consists either of defensive warfare, a struggle for spiritual and personal improvement, or the promotion of social justice. Here are a few of the quotes he cites in the article: Jihad as "usually understood" means "a struggle to be true to the will of God...

As I noted in a recent column on the perils of ethanol and other biofuels, using food for fuel is wrought with difficulties. One of them is hunger, which is on the rise throughout the Third World, largely due to biofuel production. As a result, discontent is brewing, food riots and hoarding are becoming the norm, and governments are finding themselves facing an increasingly hostile and hungry populace. An International Herald Tribune article (linked at Drudge) spells out thelooming disaster in startling detail (emphasis added): "It's the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years," said Jeffrey Sachs,...

In the pantheon of well-intentioned governmental policies gone awry, massive ethanol biofuel production may go down as one of the biggest blunders in history. An unholy alliance of environmentalists, agribusiness, biofuel corporations and politicians has been touting ethanol as the cure to all our environmental ills, when in fact it may be doing more harm than good. An array of unintended consequences is wreaking havoc on the economy, food production and, perhaps most ironically, the environment. Biofuels are fuels distilled from plant matter. Ethanol is corn-based, but other common biofuel sources include soybeans, sugar cane and palm oil, an edible...

Obama fever has overtaken San Francisco. Undeterred by the conspiracy theories, hatred, and vitriol spewed by Obama's 20-year "like an uncle to me" pastor, Jeremiah Wright, local liberals are in thrall to their perceived savior. They seem to think that every problem, no matter how trivial, can be solved by Saint Obama. As a case in point, an elderly man I was chatting with yesterday at a city bus stop about MUNI delays (a time-honored tradition in San Francisco) concluded by stating, "I hope Obama gets elected so these things will be fixed." So, along with ending poverty and creating...

When San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom initiated a program in conjunction with Google last month to provide phone and messaging facilities to the homeless, it was the latest chapter in the city's seemingly never ending quest to tackle homelessness. While the program may prove useful for those inclined to better their situation, it is unlikely to have an impact on the chronically homeless. San Francisco has the highest per capita number of homeless in the nation, and city officials have quite a challenge on their hands. And to hear Mayor Gavin Newsom or Angela Alioto, his appointee to chair the...

The proliferation of dubious conferences on "academic freedom" continues unabated. And, in each case, biased and politicized Middle East studies academics are a major component.In October, 2007, the University of Chicago hosted, "In Defense of Academic Freedom," an event whose unifying theme was "the notion that Jewish groups have degraded the quality and breadth of discussion in the media and in Washington." Hardly the stuff of self-described progressives, but such is the state of discourse in the corridors of academia today. Then there was the "DePaul Academic Freedom Conference" earlier this month. It featured the usual suspects, all alleging "academic...

History professor and former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Joel Beinin, went on "extended leave" from Stanford in 2006 due to what he described as the university's "minimal institutional interest in the study and teaching of the modern Middle East." Since that time, Beinin has been serving as director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. But was it scholarly concerns or mounting criticism that caused Beinin to leave Stanford for AUC? In a 2006 interview with Egypt Today, Beinin was portrayed as a victim of "conservative reaction" on the part of Middle...

Georgetown professor John Esposito, director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding has a reputation as an apologist for radical Islam. And it's one he lived up to with a Stanford University speech last week titled, "Dying for God? Suicide Terrorism and Militant Islam." Esposito claimed that Islamic terrorism grows primarily out of a sense of political and economic grievance and, of course, "occupation" on the part of "neo-colonial powers." This spin allowed him to deflect responsibility for Islamic terrorism to the West while negating the need for self-reflection among Muslims.When an attendee asked him why...

Like most of us here in the Bay Area, I've been following the brouhaha over the Berkeley City Council's latest anti-military shenanigans involving a U.S. Marines recruiting office and the "anti-war" (translation: pro-terrorist and pro-dictator) group, Code Pink. In reading Melanie Morgan (of Move America Forward)'s report from the frontlines of yesterday's patriot protest/lefty counter-protest in Berkeley, I couldn't help but notice her description of the Berkeley Police Department's behavior. Here's what she had to say: ...The cops were openly hostile toward the people who showed up at 5:00 a.m., never stepping in to protect the patriots from the assaults...

Public school children in grades K-12 are being assigned textbooks that misrepresent and, in some cases, glorify Islamic beliefs and history – often at the expense of other religions and cultures. The apologetics and indoctrination common in university Middle East studies programs is being carried into public schools by contentious, ahistorical, and inaccurate textbooks written by those same Middle East studies professors. History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, a textbook published by the Teachers' Curriculum Institute, was removed from the Scottsdale, Arizona school district in 2005 for this very reason. The textbook is now causing controversy in California and...

Like many others on the right, I have been a consistent critic of the Western feminist movement's veritable silence on the oppression of women in Muslim culture. Putting multiculturalism and leftist political preoccupations such as being anti-American and anti-Israel ahead of women's (and, indeed, human) rights, the movement is out to lunch on the great feminist calling of our time. In a recent SFGate column on the rise of so-called honor killings in the West, I elaborated on the subject: Fearful of giving offense or being branded with the ubiquitous "Islamophobia" label, law enforcement, journalists, social workers, government officials and,...

When it comes to off-the-wall commentary on the Middle East conflict, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole is the gift that keeps on giving. If there's anti-Israel propaganda to be found, one can be sure Cole will be peddling it at his ironically named blog, Informed Comment. His labeling of Gaza in September, 2007 as "the worst outcome of Western colonialism anywhere in the world outside the Belgian Congo" is a case in point. As noted by Noah Pollack at Contentions, Cole's latest blog ramblings ratchet up the hysteria another notch. Not content with alleging persecution of the self-defeating...

In the months since once-presidential contender Al Gore's documentary (otherwise known as "docu-ganda") "An Inconvenient Truth" came out, we have seen the Powerpoint progenitor transformed into a Nobel Peace Prize winner and a veritable object of worship. Not to mention his film, which did for global warming acolytes what the 2000 election did for George W. Bush's opponents: induced mass hysteria. I forced myself to sit through Gore's tedious, overwrought, and stunningly inaccurate film in order to write an SFGate article on the subject. In said article, I came to the conclusion that Gore's brand of fear mongering was based...

SFGate printed a rebuttal from CAIR to my column, "Savage vs. CAIR: The Battle over Free Speech" today titled, "Free Speech vs. Hate Speech." It consists of the usual CAIR talking points and obfuscation and the author, CAIR-San Francisco Bay Area Executive Director Safaa Ibrahim, demonstrates a marked lack of understanding (whether purposeful or not) of the concept of free speech. In addition, she doesn't disprove any of the allegations made in my article. And, if the reader comments are any indication, the American public isn't buying it. Update (1/5): Conservatarian weighs in on CAIR's "dissimulation" here and Douglas Hagmann...

Cinnamon Stillwell's recent column in SF Gate, "Savage vs. CAIR: The battle over free speech" on Dec. 19 offers a holiday assortment of misleading truths and omissions of facts. In her misguided defense of the "Savage Nation" radio show, Stillwell essentially defends anarchistic hate against minority groups including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, immigrants and women. She does so under the pretense of defending free speech. Of course, most elementary school students will tell you that hate speech is not to be confused with free speech. CAIR, the California Council of Churches, Rabbi Haim Dov Beilak and other...

Conservative talk radio show host Michael Savage is no stranger to courting controversy. Savage is known for his blunt commentary which at times goes beyond the realm of the politically incorrect into the confrontational. It is a style Savage describes as "psychological nudity" and the opening to his show warns overly-sensitive listeners as much. But, in the process, Savage touches on some fundamental truths that hit home with his fans, while simultaneously motivating his opponents. Whether they love him or hate him, 8 million listeners tune into "The Savage Nation" each week. The fact that the show originates in left-leaning...

Amidst all the hoopla in recent years over the "War on Christmas" or, rather, the campaign to erase Christmas, and, therefore, Christianity from the public square, the idea that Jews are somehow oppressed by Christmas continues to be pushed. Indeed, much of the stated impetus for the use of the bland catchphrase, "Happy Holidays," over the dreaded utterance, "Merry Christmas," is to protect the allegedly delicate sensibilities of Jews celebrating Hanukkah in December. Muslims, Hindus, and Pagan practitioners of Winter Solstice are thrown into the mix for good measure. But the "holiday season" in America has always been about Christmas...

At the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in Montreal earlier this month, fear and trembling were the order of the day. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Mideast Scholars, Meeting in Montreal, Worry About a Splinter Group and Academic Freedom," the leading lights of Middle East studies are feeling both "besieged" and "blessed" by the post-9/11 increase in attention to their field. Being forced to contend with the twin horrors of outside criticism and competition from groups such as the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) must indeed be...