U.S. Muslims are Americans too

CNN.com ^ | November 26, 2009 | By Hamid Dabashi

[Oldeconomybuyer]

New York (CNN) -- The serendipitous occurrence of this year's Thanksgiving holiday on the same evening as the Muslim Eid-ul-Adha is a festive occasion to reflect on the place of Islam in American collective consciousness.

On the same evening that millions of Americans gather around their Thanksgiving dinner to celebrate this most American of holidays, even more millions of Muslims around the globe, including the growing number of American Muslims, will do the same -- celebrating as well one of the most definitive moments of their faith -- Prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son for his God.

This holiday celebration comes soon after the tragic incident at Fort Hood, when the atrocious act of a mass murderer put Islam and Muslims under some pressure to either denounce or defend their faith.

For more than three decades now, I have taught generations of American students who come to college having scarce read a word about Malcolm X, and yet everything about Martin Luther King Jr.

Until Americans come to terms with the fact that they are deeply indebted to a Muslim revolutionary for the fruits of the civil rights movement they enjoy today, Islam and Muslims will continue to be seen as archetypically alien and an everlasting danger to American lives and liberties.

Americans are Christians, Jews, Hindus, agnostics, atheists, and anything else in between -- but Americans are also Muslims, millions of them, and Islam has now become integral to what the distinguished American sociologist Robert Bellah termed our "civil religion."

It is only apt that this particular Thanksgiving, Americans think about Eid-ul-Adha, as precious to Muslim-Americans as the occasion that has gathered us all "at the table." Let's make room for Muslims "at the table" because -- to quote Langston Hughes -- they "too, sing America."

[TNoldman]

“Muslims are Americans too?”

Not to me or other Real Americans.

[dagogo redux]

Cockroaches that live here are Americans too. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about them.

[gettinolder]

Good point.

[JoeMac]

I’ll go you one better. I’ve done this and gotten prevarication the likes of which would make Bill Clinton look like The Oracle of Delphi. Ask any Muslim if the State of Israel and the Jewish people have the right to exist. Ask that question and see what happens.

[RoadTest]

“U.S. Muslims are Americans too”

Until there’s a change in the Muslims more favorable to the United States and its culture and laws, calling Muslims “American” is stretching the definition farther than the Pilgrims or I would be willing.

[arthurus]

And if you hear them denouncing sharia how do you know that you are not hearing what is merely an expression of Taquiya?

[PoloSec]

May PISS be upon Mohammads Head

[thouworm]

Good ol’ author Hamid Dabashi -— that patriotic fount of American values:
~~~~~~~~~

[Hamid Dabashi:] Columbia University’s Hysterical Professor

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
December 1, 2004

Others may have sympathized on learning that Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University, felt threatened by a graduate student at his own university, but not me.

The incident began late on Sept. 27, 2004, when Victor Luria, a Ph.D. candidate in genetics and a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, wrote Dabashi an e-mail taking strong exception to what Dabashi had written about the IDF in an article, “For a Fistful of Dust: A Passage to Palestine,” he published in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram. In response, Luria wrote to Dabashi:

” I have rarely seen such a revolting excerpt of anti-semitism as your article in Al-Ahram. Your article implies no right of Israel to exist. … As an Israeli citizen, I welcome the right of Palestinians to have an independent state and a capital in East Jerusalem. At the same time, you clearly deny (and you are not even a Palestinian) my right to have a country.”

Rather than answer Luria’s critique, Dabashi early on Sept. 28 forwarded his note to several top Columbia officials, including the university’s provost, Alan Brinkley. He also commented on what Luria had written:

“I consider this slanderous harassment a conduct unbecoming of a student of Columbia University towards a member of the faculty whom he has never met or known. I bring this defamatory attack against a Columbia faculty to the judicious attention of your respective offices. Given the military record of this person, I also feel physically threatened. I would be grateful if Columbia Security were also to be informed of this slanderous attack against my character and appropriate measures taken to protect my person from a potential attack by a militant slanderer.”

Dabashi concluded, “For the time being, and in the best interest of our university, I will refrain from contacting the New York Police Department directly.”

Underwhelmed, Brinkley wrote him back the same day,.

Dear Hamid,

“I see nothing threatening in this message, however unfair its conclusions might be. I also see no grounds for alerting security, although you are certainly free to contact them if you feel otherwise.

I very much doubt the New York City police would have any grounds for intervening in this matter.

I’m sorry this attack has occurred, but you are no stranger to controversy and have encountered such ad hominem criticism before. This is one of the unhappy prices of a public life, and I would recommend ignoring Mr. Luria (whom I do not know).

Yours,

Alan

Indeed, Dabashi is “no stranger to controversy” and some of it concerns me. I report his exchange with Luria (which was first reported in the New York Sun) because it helps explain Dabashi’s behavior two year earlier, when he claimed to be threatened by an article Jonathan Schanzer and I co-authored on June 25, 2002.

We mentioned Dabashi as one of six professors in a catalogue of academic radicalism regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. The reference to Dabashi, replicated here in its entirety, merely noted two of his actions:

Columbia University: Hamid Dabashi, a specialist on Iran, compared Israel’s military maneuvers in Jenin (to prevent future suicide bombings) with the Nazi Holocaust. When one student protested his canceling class to attend a rabidly anti-Israel sit-in, he sneeringly replied, “I apologize if canceling our class in solidarity with [Palestinian] victims of a genocide . . . inconvenienced you.”
~~~~~~~~
See link for more:

http://www.danielpipes.org/2255/hamid-dabashi-columbia-universitys-hysterical-professor
~~~~~~~~~

Dabashi has denounced supporters of Israel’s right to exist as “warmongers” and “Gestapo apparatchiks,” calling the Jewish state a nest of “thuggery,” as well as a “ghastly state of racism and apartheid” which “must be dismantled.”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2187

[stephenjohnbanker]

Columbia? He’s right at home.

[thouworm]

ping to FRED NERKS (and see Post #68 for info on Hamid Dabashi)

“Until Americans come to terms with the fact that they are deeply indebted to a Muslim revolutionary for the fruits of the civil rights movement they enjoy today”

[thouworm]

exactly-—the viper den

[Texas Eagle]

This holiday celebration comes soon after the tragic incident at Fort Hood, when the atrocious act of a mass murderer put Islam and Muslims under some pressure to either denounce or defend their faith.

Shoot. We have to do the same thing every time there's a story about a sixth grader who wears a t-shirt to school that says, "Jesus Saves".

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

U.S. Morlocks are Americans, too.

[thouworm]

The defining characteristic of Dabashi's scholarship is his pronounced aversion to the United States and Israel. In this, he follows in the tradition of his idol and colleague, the late Professor Edward Said. (Following Said's death, Dabashi, writing in Counterpunch, penned a worshipful tribute to his colleague's "heroic character.")

Parroting almost verbatim Said's rhetoric, Dabashi maintains that "It is impossible to understand Islam outside colonialism." He portrays the Middle East as a historically hapless victim of Western colonialism, explaining that the current political realities of the region are reducible to the Saidian paradigm of the "abuse of labor by capital."

SOURCE

[Big Horn]

CNN and PC suck.

[BnBlFlag]

What a lying POS!

[ridesthemiles]

Yeah, but aren’t they also Muslims FIRST?””

EXACTLY!!

We already learned that at Fort Hood.

[Fred Nerks]

I won't post the link, freezes my comp. We all should know by now what Malcolm X was. One of the 'saints' depicted at Jeremiah Wright's Trinity 'church' -

Malcolm X had been a pimp, a cocaine addict and a thief. He was an unashamed demagogue. His gospel was hatred: "Your little babies will get polio!" he cried to the "white devils." His creed was violence: "If ballots won't work, bullets will."

source

I have to take time to mention that because, in my opinion, not only in Mississippi and Alabama, but right here in New York City, you and I can best learn how to get real freedom by studying how Kenyatta brought it to his people in Kenya, and how Odinga helped him, and the excellent job that was done by the Mau Mau freedom fighters. In fact, that's what we need in Mississippi. In Mississippi we need a Mau Mau. In Alabama we need a Mau Mau. In Georgia we need a Mau Mau. Right here in Harlem, in New York City, we need a Mau Mau.

source

[Fred Nerks]

The Dismantling Of America By Barack Hussein Obama
Posted by Ken Taylor
November 22nd

snips:

After taking office a traditional luncheon between the First Lady and Senate wives took place. In past administrations the First Lady met with the wives and established a relationship that extended in a friendly and working manner throughout past Presidency’s.

Michelle Obama did not attend the luncheon until after the meal was served and refused to associate with any of the wives upon or after her visit. She marched straight to the podium and informed the Senate wives that she was not there to be their friend nor exchange recipes. She was in Washington on a mission to support Barack who, in Michelle Obama’s own words was ”ordained,” from birth and,”divinely,” appointed to be where he is so that he could fulfill his destiny to, “change America.”

http://www.redstate.com/ken_taylor/2009/11/22/the-dismantling-of-america-by-barack-hussein-obama/

ORDAINED FROM BIRTH? DIVINELY APPOINTED? HOW/WHY? BECAUSE HIS FATHER WAS A KENYAN GOAT HERDER IN THE US ON A SCHOLARSHIP? OR IS HE THE SON OF A HERO OF MUSLIM BLACKS?

[thouworm]

thanks; had not heard that story. From same article (hopeful thought):

There are many in Washington who are working behind the scenes to slow and stop Obama’s power grab and his plans to deconstruct the country.

We still have within our power as citizens to stop this destruction by our voice which is still heard by most in Congress and especially our vote. Obama’s hands can be tied if we eliminate the one avenue he is trying to use to force government dependency and that is the Congress through legislative action.

They must fear the people more than they fear Obama.
~~~~~~~~~

Are there some Dems out there that haven't drunk the radical jihadist MX/communist/global socialist utopian Koolaid? some Dems who are getting nervous? ....maybe Obamaland might be a bad idea?