The quintessential Usual Suspects; or, Why the direct targets of Islam don’t understand the Islam threat

Khurrum Awan, the Canadian Muslim who sued Mark Steyn and Maclean’s before several Canada’s human rights commissions, ultimately unsuccessfully, is now suing Canadian writer and blogger Ezra Levant. Kidist Paulos Asrat highlights the response of Canadian conservative bloggers to the suit. As Kidist insightfully points out, most of them see it as entertainment, and none of them gets the seriousness of the threat.

Unfortunately, among those who don’t get the seriousness of the threat is Levant himself, who writes at his blog:

Awan’s letter is an attempt, a year later, to change the embarrassing history of his big public campaign against Maclean’s. He was eaten alive by every journalist in the country, and was made a laughingstock in the blogosphere. Even his fellow sock puppets had the sense to abandon his suicide run. Not Awan: he’s still proudly out there calling for more censorship powers for the government. If I were a Canadian Muslim, I’d be pretty embarrassed that Awan was claiming to speak for me.

“If I were a Canadian Muslim, I’d be pretty embarrassed that Awan was claiming to speak for me.” Levant thinks that there is a rational and loyal-to-Canada Muslim population to whose rationality and shared loyalty he can appeal, and who will in the end rescue Canada from the bad, radical Muslims. He doesn’t recognize (as Kidist recognizes) that Muslims may pursue a great variety of jihad tactics, ranging from mass terrorism to freelance terrorism to intimidation to annoying and even silly harassment, and that each of these in its own way helps the Islamic aim, which no serious Muslim opposes, of subjecting the host society to the power of Islam.

Kidist writes: “One clear-cut and practical way [of preventing further Awan-style disruption] is simply to reduce and reverse Muslim immigration. The fewer Awan’s, the fewer lawsuits and other disruptive activity by Muslims…” Of course. And let me add that Miss Asrat, a native of Ethiopia and also a Christian, seems to be the only writer in Canada who grasps this indispensable truth.

But here is a further irony, which I will bring out by means of three questions.

First, of all ethnic groups, which has the most vocal Muslim critics? The Jews, of course, for reasons well known (the Muslim campaign to destroy Israel) and less well known (Jews are the number one hate object in the Koran, even more than Christians, and that’s saying something).

Second, of all ethnic groups, which is the most devoted to the ideal of universal equality, democracy, and non-discrimination? The Jews, of course, by far the most liberal ethnic group on the planet.

And third, of all ethnic groups, which is the most identified with, and therefore the most unable to criticize, immigration? Of course, the Jews. Seeing themselves as the archetypal outsiders and immigrants, and as the spokesmen for all outsiders and immigrants, most Jews cannot remotely conceive of reducing or stopping the immigration of any ethnic group.

So: the Jews are the most anti-Islamic of all ethnic groups, and the most anti-discrimination of all ethnic groups, and the most pro-immigration of all ethnic groups. Though the most alarmed critics of Islam, or rather of “radical” Islam, are disproportionately Jewish, the very notion of stopping (let alone reversing) Muslim immigration is beyond Jewish ken.

Jews, in short, are the natural Usual Suspects, which I’ve explained as “VFR’s rueful and ironic term for those very vocal Islam critics who issue an endless stream of articles breathlessly warning readers that the growth of radical Islam threatens the very existence of American and Western society, but who never suggest any measures by which this threat can be averted.”

Finally, Jews, being the most vocal critics of Islam, or rather of “radical” Islam, will tend to be the most frequent targets of Muslim harassment techniques including human rights suits (like Levant and also like Steyn, who is part Jewish). But, even as Jews are being singled out by Muslims, the same Jews continue to think that the Muslim threat is only caused by an unrepresentative minority of Muslims, and they will automatically reject the very thought of reducing, stopping, or reversing Muslim immigration.

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LA writes:

Here is an earlier entry by Kidist on the new suit by Awan against Levant, and how Levant and his joking fund-raiser Mark Steyn don’t get it. They don’t see that their tormenter, as silly as he may seem, is winning, and that they’re losing. Kidist also points out that Levant describes himself as a critic of “radical Islam,” but of course Muslims themselves indignantly reject the notion of a “radical Islam” and a “moderate Islam.” There is only Islam. What can we say about Westerners—and not just any Westerners, but professional Islam critics—who ignore what Muslims themselves tell us about their religion, that it’s a religion that aims at the subjection of mankind? As I’ve said before, the Muslims are predators, and we are prey—prey that wants to be prey.

Bill Carpenter replies:

Re the idea of prey animals who want to be prey, liberalism is a kind of submission behavior, aimed at communicating to the dominant animal, “Don’t hurt me! I submit!”

LA to Kidist:

Have I misstated by including Levant among the Usual Suspects? A Suspect is a person who warns against Islamization but doesn’t propose doing anything about it. But didn’t you say about him that he doesn’t get it, he sees the problem as one of human rights suits, not of Islam or radical Islam?

Kidist replies:

On one hand, Levant has never approached this problem in terms of encroaching Islamization, and I think he would be very uncomfortable doing so.

On the other hand, he talks about the Danish cartoons in his book Shakedown, as a radical Muslim problem. Yet he never really gets much into the Muslim or Radical Muslim dialogue—he seems much more interested in freedoms (of speech and expression). But, yes, I would call him a Usual Suspect, since he does have some understanding of the problem, misidentifies it as “radical Islam,” occasionally speaks about it, and doesn’t find ways out of it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 17, 2009 03:44 PM | Send