Reviewing the National Review

If Kafka met Monty Python, and George Orwell edited their collaboration, they might have come up with something like the following real-life exchange.

It took place in an Australian court where two Christian pastors were found guilty of "religious vilification" of Muslims by lecturing to their flock on Islam -- a set-up that right away projects grimly satirical possibilities. At one point during the trial, defendant Daniel Scot began to read Quranic verses in his own defense. The Pakistani-born pastor hoped to prove to the judge that his discussion on the inferior status of women under Islam, for example, had a specific textual basis in the Quran.

As he began to read, a lawyer for the Islamic Council of Victoria, the plaintiff in the case, objected. Reading these verses aloud, she said, would in itself be vilification. Scot, ultimately convicted, put it best: "How can it be vilifying to Muslims when I am just reading from the Quran?"

Like a frustrating dream, the Australian experience echoes a depressingly similar situation in this country. Not in a court, not at a church-sponsored seminar, but in journalism. In the marketplace, literally, of ideas. I'm talking about an online bookstore run under the imprimatur of National Review magazine. There, "The Life and Religion of Mohammed" (Roman Catholic Books, 2005) by J.L. Menezes, a Roman Catholic priest, used to be for sale. So did "The Sword of the Prophet," (Regina Orthodox Press, 2002) by Serge Trifkovic.

Suddenly, last week, they weren't. It seems that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) decided National Review shouldn't sell these books. The magazine could have told the, shall we say, controversial Muslim lobby group -- three of whose former associates have been indicted on terrorism-related charges, and whose executive director, Nihad Awad, has publicly declared his support for Hamas -- to run along and boycott books somewhere else. Instead, National Review whipped those tomes off their e-shelves practically before CAIR could get its "action alert" online. Just a little pressure -- including a CAIR letter about the books to Boeing Corp., a big National Review advertiser -- did the dirty trick. (CAIR promised to copy its letter to ambassadors of Muslim nations that buy Boeing planes.)

Here's the thing. I am not writing to mount a defense of these eminently defensible books, nasty bits and all, including, according to advertising copy, "the dark mind of Mohammed," his multiple wives (among them a little girl), "rapine," "warfare," "conquests" and "butcheries." Suffice it to say, as crack scholar-author of Islam Robert Spencer has written, "Everything with which CAIR took issue can be readily established from Islamic sources." (And if that doesn't suffice, read his analysis, "CAIR's War Against National Review," at www.frontpagemag.com.) He should know. Not only is Spencer familiar with the books in question, he happens to have written the ad copy for the Menezes book CAIR found so objectionable.

Of greater concern is the philosophical battle National Review declined to fight, and the reasons the magazine declined to fight it. According to National Review editor Rich Lowry's post at National Review Online, because the magazine's book service is put together by an independent publisher, and since the CAIR-provoking copy wasn't written by a National Review staffer, Lowry saw no capitulation in removing the Menezes book at CAIR's behest. (National Review recently returned "The Sword of the Prophet" to its bookstore.) "In contrast," he wrote, "Robert Spencer and some others on the right feel very strongly that it is important to discredit Mohammed and Islam as such in order to win the war on terror. That's certainly their prerogative, but it is not the tack NR has taken ... ."

This statement reveals an unnerving disconnect. The study undertaken by Spencer and kindred Islamic scholars isn't calculated to "discredit Mohammed and Islam" -- as if "discrediting" Mohammed and Islam would convince jihadis to make peace. The fact is, a thorough examination of the expansionist, religious-cum-political ideology of Islam is vital to any successful defense against its jihadist expression. Ignoring facts about Mohammed and Islam, given their role in animating terrorism, would be like ignoring facts about Marx and communism in that earlier ideological struggle National Review championed -- worse, even, considering the inspiration Muslims draw from the personal life of Mohammed.

But what may be most damaging about National Review's act of reference-cleansing is that it helps legitimize CAIR's drive to tar all criticism of Islam as "hate speech" and, thus, squelch it.

This, of course, was roughly what an Australian court ruled against Preacher Scot. It can't happen here? Maybe not. But the only way to preserve freedom of speech is to speak freely.

It would be like pretending that the Katyn Massacre, the execution of the Romanovs, the gulags, and the Stalin show trials never happened. It's a demented seventh-century genocidal warrior cult. If the historical details are embarrassing for the squeamish, maybe they should surrender command.

Let's face it, part of the intel work in the struggle against Middle Eastern terrorism, is to make the case that Western Christian civilization is preferable and the morally superior. It's not entirely different from the challenges posed by National Socialism ane expansionist Soviet Communism. Some may not like to hear it, but they enjoy many of the cultural and political advantages of Christian morality, the rule of law, due process, and the basic piety of Western culture - that you just don't go around chopping people's heads off.

It took a lot of hard work and many sacrifices to get to the point where savagery and genocidal barbarism were the exception and not the rule. "Thou shalt not kill" and "Love Thy neighbor" had something to do with that. Those are superior principles to "slay the infidels wherever thee shall find them." When we reach a point where our cultural and political leaders are unable to bring themselves to understand or pronounce those principles to be superior, we shall be lost as a humane and moral civilization.

I believe NR missed a great opportunity by giving in so quickly (no such thing as bad publicity) but I suspect they did so because they've just come out of 1 lawsuit and can hardly afford anymore legal fees.

It would be like pretending that the Katyn Massacre, the execution of the Romanovs, the gulags, and the Stalin show trials never happened.

But noöne would try and do that.

Standard liberal line during the 1970s and 1980s - "there is no Communist threat." There is no "evil empire." They laughed at Reagan. Now they take credit as in "we won the Cold War." We? What did liberals do during those years?

That there was a militant international Communist conspiracy to commit mass murder, overthrow Western Christian civilization, and replace it with a secular humanist tyrannical dictatorship is rarely ever mentioned outside of select conservative circles. Although the KGB and Stasi archives now PROVE the vast and extensive networks of subversion far exceeding even Joe McCarthy's claims of Soviet penetration, liberals still ridicule those who defended the West during the Cold War.

Cowardly, effete National Review, worthless as teats on a boar. They long ago acquiesced to the cultural genocide the establishment is waging against America and now occupy themselves with their only real concern, defending the country club. Collaborators in every sense of the word.

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

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