Our Delicate Muslims

by David Cole, TAKI’S MAGAZINE 

A phone rings in the Oval Office. President Obama drops his practice club and rushes to his desk. Raising the handset of the turquoise-green, crescent-decorated emergency phone to his ear, he listens, his face reflecting the intensity of the moment. It’s as he feared—somewhere in America, a Muslim’s feelings are hurt. Brunch with Pharrell will just have to wait; this president has a tweet to compose.

Okay, so maybe it didn’t exactly happen that way. But last week, when a Muslim high school kid’s homemade clock that resembled a suitcase bomb was bafflingly mistaken for a suitcase bomb, the most powerful man in the world took time out of his day to tweet support for the humiliated student. But this piece isn’t about Mark Zuckerberg (or Obama, who also happened to send a supportive tweet). It’s about how Muslims in the West are often held to the kind of standard normally reserved for the delicate or the disabled.

By all accounts, young Ahmed Mohamed’s jerry-rigged clock was just that, and nothing more. But the fact is, this kind of overreaction to “potential” threats is all too common in post-Columbine American schools. Non-Muslim kids have been arrested or suspended for chewing a Pop-Tart into an L shape, writing a story about hunting dinosaurs, or coming into contact with an ordinary, everyday leaf, and none of those incidents merited a personal tweet from the president or an invitation to the White House. But a Muslim kid being “victimized” by overzealous school administrators became a headline-grabbing, cataclysmic event. Based on news reports of the incident, Mohamed’s engineering teacher told him to keep his invention out of sight during the school day, and he didn’t. He purposely turned it on in another class, a different teacher saw it and heard it doing its R2-D2 impression, and typical bureaucratic fumbling ensued. But rather than suggesting that young Ahmed should have obeyed his engineering teacher’s sage instructions, President Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, and the mainstream media quite literally accused the school of trying to kill the very future of mankind.

“There is a double standard at work here, but it’s hardly ‘Islamophobic.’ If anything, it’s Islamoprotective.”
There’s been a lot of speculation regarding young Ahmed’s motivations, and I’ll leave that for other writers to explore. I’m more interested in the reaction of the media, the politicians, and those fine folks who yell “Islamophobia!” anytime a Muslim gets a case of the butthurts. There is a double standard at work here, but it’s hardly “Islamophobic.” If anything, it’s Islamoprotective. The expelled and arrested non-Muslim kids didn’t receive outpourings of sympathy because they were expected to know the “rules” and never accidentally breach them. However, in young Ahmed’s case, of course he should be able to parade through school with an item that, to the average person, might look a little “bomby.” Of course he should be allowed to disobey his teacher. It’s not his responsibility to be cautious; it’s the school’s responsibility to preserve his self-esteem at all costs.

This double standard goes beyond the schoolyard. In 2004, I was working on a documentary film about Mel Gibson’s father, Hutton. When The Passion of the Christ opened, various advocates for “tolerance” called on Mel to repudiate and renounce his dad, a traditionalist Catholic with admittedly unfriendly views toward Muslims and Jews (and, for that matter, mainstream Catholics). Around the same time, in Lodi, Calif., a Muslim named Hamid Hayat was arrested for being part of a terrorist sleeper cell. What none of Hayat’s defenders—the press, Lodi city officials, local imams—denied was that Hayat hated Jews and collected “jihadist” literature. The argument of those who defended Hayat boiled down entirely to “he’s full of hate, but he didn’t kill anyone. It’s just words.”

I was struck by the difference in the way Hayat and the Gibsons were treated. In the case of the elder Gibson, the outrage was purely over his words, and his own son was expected to denounce him. In Hayat’s case, “it’s just words” was his defense. Nobody in the Lodi Muslim community was pressured to denounce him for his words. As long as he didn’t actually kill anyone, he’s an okay Joe.

Non-Muslims, whites specifically, are held accountable in a way that Muslims are not. We see it with Canadian and European “hate speech” laws, which are almost exclusively applied to whites. “White speech matters” might as well be the rallying cry. With Muslims, the standard is different. Hate speech from Muslims is dismissed with a wave of the hand and a “they don’t mean no harm.” Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter approvingly explains why Muslim words don’t matter:

Of course it’s hard to admire Muslims who spew hate as good people. [UNC professor Charles] Kurzman explains the inflammatory rhetoric as the product of what is sometimes called “Radical Sheik,” in homage to the “Radical Chic” white supporters of the Black Panthers who gathered at Leonard Bernstein’s apartment in 1969 and were famously chronicled by Tom Wolfe. He argues that as offensive as it might be, the rhetoric should not be confused with real terrorism…. The connection between words and deeds turns out to be tenuous at best.
On the other hand, Alter claims that “hate speech” from non-Muslims is “very potent,” and contributes directly to violence.

This double standard is especially glaring in the case of Escondido (Calif.) city employee John Friend. Friend was fired from his clerical job in the Escondido city manager’s office because, in his spare time, he “operates an anti-Semitic website and is active in a movement that blames Jews for the 9/11 terror attacks” (according to The San Diego Union Tribune. Friend is indeed guilty as charged of being an anti-Jewish blogger, and my goal is not to defend his views. Rather, I’d like to compare the dismissal of Friend (and the accompanying media coverage) with the inaction and complete media disinterest that greeted the revelation that Southern California Edison (the largest subsidiary of Edison International) hired an advocate of suicide bombings as its in-house counsel. And if this is news to you, if you’ve never heard the name Fadia Rafeedie Khoury, it’s because no one in the media would cover the story.

Rafeedie Khoury used to edit the online newsletter “Free Arab Voice” (FAV), the mouthpiece of Jordanian terrorism supporter Ibrahim Alloush. As editor, Rafeedie Khoury promoted the use of “human bombs” (suicide bombs) against Jewish civilians. Again and again, FAV advocated the murder of Jews via “human bomb.” And Rafeedie Khoury was not shy about trumpeting her role with the site. When she was chosen valedictorian of her graduating class at UC Berkeley, she proudly mentioned FAV in her official profile. UC Berkeley even sent out a special press release in which her association with FAV was highlighted. And her work with FAV is only one of many instances in which she championed “human bombs” and praised al-Qaeda (which she describes as an organization with “a desire to relieve human suffering”). Currently, Rafeedie Khoury is a policy adviser for Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank with its own controversial ties.

When Rafeedie Khoury was hired as in-house counsel by Edison in 2010, I was editor of a site called YesButHowever.com, founded by Breitbart writer John Romano. I ran the story myself, but I couldn’t find anyone in the mainstream media willing to pick it up. “Okay, so she called for the death of Jews…but has she actually killed anyone herself?” was the response I got from the L.A. Times, The San Diego Union Tribune, and every other paper I contacted. On the other hand, the story of John Friend (the Escondido clerk and anti-Jewish blogger) was carried all over Southern Cal, even though he, also, has never physically killed anyone. A white man’s words of hate make headlines, whereas those of a Muslim are met with a “meh.” Does Fadia Rafeedie Khoury still support suicide bombings? Is she still okay with killing Jews? Is she still keen on al-Qaeda? Who knows; no reporter will ask her (and she steadfastly refused my numerous requests for comment). And as for Edison, it continues to show unwavering support for Rafeedie Khoury. This year, the power giant awarded her its highest employee honor, the 2015 Chairman’s Award, for “embodying Edison International’s values.”

“Islamophobia,” my ass. There is a double standard, but Muslims come out on the winning side of it. They are given the kind of free pass normally reserved for the mentally retarded: “Just let it go…they don’t know any better.” You would think that Muslims would find this condescending attitude offensive, but don’t expect to hear any complaints. Far from being America’s “Rain Men,” most Muslims are perceptive enough to know a good thing when they see it, and canny enough to use it as much as possible to their advantage.

September 24, 2015 | 30 Comments »

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  1. @ Ted Belman: There was a real former Nazi and associate of the late Irv Rubin named Mike Canely (sp). He told the Irv Rubin z’l that publicly the Nazis deny the holocaust happened, but privately today’s neo Nazis think the holocaust is a groovy event and they want it to happen again. I don’t know what research techniques David Cole uses, but to come to the holocaust denial conclusion he came to, they must be some very illogical and poor investigative techniques.

  3. @ honeybee:
    I’ll be out of town for a few days. Returns next week. I hope you are having a great Sukkot. Jewish Holidays are most of them about celebration. In one way or another a celebration of life. After Repentance of course.
    I won’t be home for the Sukkot Hop.

  4. @ honeybee:
    Thank you. His sister also had been suspended. What a family of morons. Can you imagine the world must be laughing at us for promoting the moronic attitude of the entire family.

  7. @ Ted Belman:I read Front Page Magazine religiously and the “American Thinker” quite often and I have never seen an article by David Cole or the name he went by as David Stein anywhere in those internet magazines. I gave hyperlink to David Cole’s unbelievably sick activities as I do not wish to waste bandwith on such a creature. Incidentally, Taki’ Magazine is run or named in honor of Taki Theodoracopulos — a person who brags he is a soi dissant antisemite and jailed coke dealer/smuggler. Taki is one of the dregs of humanity who finances the antisemtic, “The American Conservative” magazine. An internet rag that was created to whine about the Jews who took Buchanan & company’s jobs in the Reagan administration. If you want to know more about David Cole, read a skeptic’s book on “Why People Believe Strange Things (holocaust denial is regarded as one of those strange things).” I guess as Ted Belman is a Jew who made aliyah, it must give David Cole, David Stein…whatever, a real kick to trick him. Just as his Nazi pals tried o trick people with holocaust denial.

  8. Southern California Edison (the largest subsidiary of Edison International) hired an advocate of suicide bombings as its in-house counsel. And if this is news to you, if you’ve never heard the name Fadia Rafeedie Khoury, it’s because no one in the media would cover the story.

    if this is true it is unacceptable for Jews that a major energy company can hire such a person as in house counsel. It sounds like she has a friend there. If true, she should be hounded out of her position

  9. DAvid Cole writes to me

    Dear Ted,

    I want to thank you for reposting my latest Taki’s Magazine piece. I read the exchange between you and a commenter yesterday (https://www.israpundit.org/archives/63609608), and I want to let you know that I am not a Holocaust denier. Some of the work I did in the early 1990s was, indeed, highly controversial. But as a political writer my work has appeared on FrontPageMag, American Thinker, Breitbart, Fox News, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, The L.A. Jewish Journal, The Blaze, Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism, Moonbattery, The Larry Elder Show, and Creeping Sharia. I am Jewish on both sides of my family, and I have many relatives in Tel Aviv. I am neither a denier nor a “self-hating Jew.”

    I am sorry to read that other people have told you not to post my stuff.

    But regardless of that, thank you for posting the piece about the jihadist hired by Southern California Edison. Sadly, because of the “others” who try to make sure that my work is never reposted, the story will not likely lead to Edison having to answer for its actions. But at least I tried!

  12. What is going on? Three times I have tried to paste a YouTube link and it does not post. Why?
    it is about a 12 or 13 years old named CJ Pearson. Find him Pamela Geller.

  17. honeybee Said:

    Geller’s blog was the first to call in a hoax

    http://pamelageller.com/2015/09/clock-confession-ahmed-put-clock-hoax-in-a-box-so-it-didnt-look-suspicious-or-like-a-threat.html/
    credit where due, but I did not see mention of the possible white house partnership in the hoax to set it up to defuse the nations growing disillusionment with the gov promoted lie of the “religion of peace” and trumps rise based on immigration and the muslim issue. americans are clear that they are dangerous and only the gov and congress persist in perpetuating the fraud. It appears that the admin has been involved with other illegal hoaxes on the US public. I wager that if a thorough investigation is done it will unveil connections between the WH and the clock boy hoaxer’s father indirectly through muslim orgs like cair.

  18. bernard ross Said:

    but will the brain dead dunces who elected a guy named hussein to be their president after 911 get

    if they are Texans. Geller’s blog was the first to call in a hoax.

  20. honeybee Said:

    @ bernard ross:

    It was all a set up Sugar, even this “dumb ass” Texas gal can tell.

    but will the brain dead dunces who elected a guy named hussein to be their president after 911 get it? 🙁

    the real set up and hoax is, just like fast and furious, that the gov created this to deflect americans attention away from muslim atrocities and danger and render them into a european nightmare. Notice how the gov is always ready to promote gun control and the religion of peace at every “coincidence”. Someone should look for prior connections between the clock boy family and the WH.
    Its also reminiscent of the benghazi video hoax the gov tried to sell the US public.

  22. clock boy fraud make MIT, zuckerberg, Gates, clinton and obama look like fools……… MIT laud his talent and all he did was take a clock out of its plastic case and put it in a metal framed case…… MIT cant tell the difference??????? Microsoft gave him 10000 dollars.

  27. There is a double standard at work here, but it’s hardly “Islamophobic.” If anything, it’s Islamoprotective.

    not a double standard… an organized, well funded network designed intentionally to undermine western values, promote anti semitism, incite murder of Jews and infidels….. the leadership is bought with the same money that funds the network. the funds come from muslims, muslim nations, muslim ngo’s and muslim funded leftist NGO.s.
    DUH?????
    this is the same money which funded a guy named hussein to be elected as president after 911……. DUH (again)?????

  28. By all accounts, young Ahmed Mohamed’s jerry-rigged clock was just that, and nothing more.

    not by all accounts… some accounts infer an intenional plan to create an incident and even that Obama acknowledged it before the Info was published and known by others indicating a possible WH involvement is a plan which would paint muslims as victims of islamaphobia rather than the troublemakers they appear to be.
    https://www.israpundit.org/archives/63609582/comment-page-1#comment-63356000161160