Gabriel: moderate Muslims “irrelevant”

Naïve liberal idiot Deborah Solomon of the New York Times interviewed anti-Islam author Brigitte Gabriel in August. Among other questions was this:

What about all the moderate Muslims who represent our hope for the future? Why don’t you write about them?

The moderate Muslims at this point are truly irrelevant. I grew up in the Paris of the Middle East, and because we refused to read the writing on the wall, we lost our country to Hezbollah and the radicals who are now controlling it.

Here’s the entire interview:

Questions for Brigitte Gabriel

The Crusader

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

As a Lebanese-Christian immigrant who spent her girlhood amid the bloody devastation of the Lebanese civil war, you have lately emerged as one of the most vehement critics of radical Islam in this country. Are you concerned that your new book, “They Must Be Stopped,” will feed animosity toward Muslims?

I do not think I am feeding animosity. I am bringing an issue to light. I disapprove of any religion that calls for the killing of other people. If Christianity called for that, I would condemn it.

What about all the moderate Muslims who represent our hope for the future? Why don’t you write about them?

The moderate Muslims at this point are truly irrelevant. I grew up in the Paris of the Middle East, and because we refused to read the writing on the wall, we lost our country to Hezbollah and the radicals who are now controlling it.

In your new book, you write about the Muslim presence in America and bemoan the rise of Islamic day schools and jihad summer camp. Is there really such a thing?

Yes. Instead of taking lessons on swimming and gymnastics, the kids are listening to speakers give lectures titled “Preparation for Death” and “The Life in the Grave.”

You also lament the public foot baths that have been installed at the University of Michigan and elsewhere to accommodate Muslim students.

I lived in the Middle East for the first 24 years of my life. Never once did I see any foot-washing basins in airports or public buildings. So why are they pushing them down the throats of Americans?

I can’t get upset if people want to wash their feet before they pray.

This is the way they are taking over the West. They are doing it culturally inch by inch. They don’t need to fire one bullet. Look what is happening in Europe. Do we want to become like “Eurabia”?

But relatively few Muslims live in this country—about three million, or 1 percent of the population, whereas Amsterdam, for instance, has been estimated to be as high as 24 percent Muslim.

They started as guest workers in Europe; they grow at a much faster rate than any other religion.

Your last book related the story of your childhood in southern Lebanon, where you hid out in a bomb shelter for seven years after your house was destroyed by a Muslim militia. Were you surprised it became a best seller?

No, I was not surprised. Anyone can relate to a story about human suffering inflicted by radicals.

Are your parents still in Lebanon?

I became an orphan at the age of 23. Both my parents are buried in Israel, on Mount Zion, with Oskar Schindler.

Why did you bury them in Israel?

I wanted to honor my parents. After all, it is the Holy Land. And I wanted to ensure that both my children will know where my loyalty lies—with Israel, because Israel for me represents democracy, respect and human rights, something that no other country in the Arabic world offers.

Are you an agent of the U.S. government?

No.

Are you underwritten by the C.I.A.?

No. Are you kidding? In 2000, I voted for Al Gore.

But I see that R. James Woolsey, a former director of the C.I.A., serves on the board of American Congress for Truth, your educational foundation.

We also have John Loftus, a staunch Democrat and former Justice Department prosecutor. We are not Red or Blue.

Where do you live?

I do not share that information because of the death threats I receive.

Threats from anyone we know?

Al Qaeda mentioned my name on their top Internet sites and recently sent a press release about my work.

If you are worried about death threats, why would you put a glamorous photograph of yourself on the cover of your new book? [See photo in Times article.]

In Lebanon, we were raised to be glamorous, feminine and sensual. It’s the only good thing we inherited from the French.

[end of interview]

Notice how Solomon switches her argument. First she says that Muslims are not a problem, that moderate Muslims are the solution, and that the growing presence of Muslims customs such as ritual foot washing in America doesn’t bother her at all, of course not. But when Gabriel replies that Muslims will become widely dominant in the U.S. just as they have already become in Europe, Solomon replies that we don’t need to worry about Muslims in the U.S. because they are only one percent of the population, while they are 24 percent of the population of Amsterdam.

So, is Solomon’s position that she’s not worried about Muslim customs in the U.S., or is her position that she’s not worried about Muslim customs in the U.S. so long as Muslims are only one percent of the population? Is she saying that if Muslims were 24 percent of the U.S. population, as they are in Amsterdam, then they would be a problem? Then she’s just invalidated her position that Muslim customs per se are not a bother. If she admits that having a large Muslim population would be a problem, then she should favor doing whatever is necessary to prevent the Muslim population in the U.S. and other Western countries from getting any larger than it now is. But of course she doesn’t mean that either. Each position that she takes, she takes only to avoid a reality that has been stated by Gabriel. That is what liberalism practically consists of: the systematic and relentless denial of realities that would invalidate the liberal view of existence.

Certainly Solomon’s comment that she doesn’t mind Muslim foot washing is not literally true. If she walked into the ladies’ room of the New York Times editorial offices and saw Muslim employees going through the entire wudu ritual summarized by Carol Iannone in the New York Daily News last January, you can bet that she would suddenly mind it very much and insist that it stop. Solomon wants the tolerance of Muslim foot washing to be imposed on America’s unwashed masses, not on herself and her circle.

Iannone wrote:

Growing numbers of Muslims living in the United States are seeking to wash their feet in the sinks of public rest rooms. The foot-washing is part of wudu, the ritual ablutions a Muslim performs before the five prayer sessions he or she observes every day at intervals from morning till night. The ablutions can take several minutes and involve repeated washing or rinsing of the hands, mouth, nostrils, face, arms, forehead, hair, ears and, finally, the feet.

And see my further description of the Muslim ritual washing at VFR, October 2007:

But I think more basic to the question of assimilability is things like this foot washing business. No one has thought about this before. No one on our side, including me, had thought about what Muslims actually do as part of their daily routine. Maybe we figured they prayed or whatever in private. But now we suddenly realize that in institutions throughout America they are doing their Islamic thing in shared public spaces, and expecting everyone else to adjust. These issues never came up when we began letting Muslims immigrate; we never asked ourselves what their customs are and do we want these customs in America. The other day I stepped through the actual steps of both the washing and the prayer, as described at a Muslim website. It’s quite a complex procedure, for example, each foot must be washed three times, whatever that means. The person must “clean” his ears with his index finger and “clean” behind the ears with his thumb. The person must sniff water into his nostrils and blow it out. To think of people doing this in workplace restrooms or college dorm restrooms several times a day is simply appalling. Yet, as I’ve said, we’ve never heard about this before.

This is where the rubber meets the road in the assimilation question. No honest person can say that such customs are conformable with America and with any Western society. The Dennis Pragers and Norman Podhoretzes of the world, who want to us to wage war on “Islamofascists” abroad while we continue welcoming Muslims into America, cannot honestly maintain that Muslim foot baths belong in the shared public spaces of America.

- end of initial entry -

Gintas writes:

When you started out saying,

“Naïve liberal idiot Deborah Solomon…”

I thought, “Lawrence usually doesn’t just call people idiots.” After reading the interview, I can see you were restraining yourself. How about a question for Deborah Solomon: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”

LA replies:

Actually I wondered about my word choice. I mean, compared to many statements by liberals, whatever Solomon said here was pretty mild. But somehow it seemed right. She gave Gabriel a chance to say some tough things, which was good, but she seemed impenetrable to everything Gabriel was actually saying. And then there was the evasion of realities I noted in my comment.

Ben W. writes:

I’m about to start a religion that requires washing one’s rear in a public sink. Any problems with that?

Alan Levine writes:

I am not sure that Deborah Solomon is just a “naive liberal idiot.” One wonders what she, and people like her, would say if public institutions spend money installing special rooms and devices to placate sectarian Christian and Jewish concerns.

Or is it really necessary to wonder?

Gintas writes:

“Actually I wondered about my word choice. I mean, compared to many statements by liberals, whatever Solomon said here was pretty mild.”

Are not these odd questions:

“Are you an agent of the U.S. government?”

“Are you underwritten by the C.I.A.?”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 19, 2008 02:42 PM | Send