At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, on Tuesday, a Muslim named Inayat Lalani told a reporter:
We have a message: Muslim Americans are as American as apple pie. Ignoring us is the politics of exclusion and exclusion, I would suggest, is un-American.
While I have often referred to the “mountain of evidence” that has been accumulated—for example, at websites like Jihad Watch—about the injustice, the menace and the evil of Islam, it is arguable that one could similarly accumulate a mountain of evidence of “moderate Muslims”—or, at any rate, of apparently harmless Muslims. Indeed, a website could be created called Moderate Muslim Watch, which would feature such Muslims as Kareem Salama, born and raised in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and pursuing a successful career as a country music singer. How much more “apple pie” can you get than that? Or Superior Court Judge David Shaheed of Indianapolis, Indiana. A solid American citizen, whose daily job it is to uphold the American Constitution in judicial rulings, in a court building smack dab in the American heartland. Or perhaps even our featured Muslim, Inayat Lalani, a doctor at the “Country Day Clinic” in Fort Worth, Texas. I do not doubt that one could amass a mountain of evidence of thousands of such cases of American Muslims who seem to be utterly harmless, and as utterly American as all the other millions of immigrants that have contributed to this country’s melting pot.
Let us enumerate the problems with this:
1) While a mountain of evidence can serve to reveal a reality not usually noticed—another mountain of evidence can also serve to obscure a reality not usually noticed. The two mountains are not equal. They do not function in the same context. The context of the Jihad Watch mountain is a mainstream dominance in sociopolitical terms of the politically correct multi-culturalist (PC MC) paradigm, whereby all influential people and organizations of the mainstream—whether in academe, politics, entertainment or journalism—bend over backwards to present and reinforce the myth of the moderate Muslim. Whether Muslims such as Inayat Lalani who complain about a mainstream bias against Muslims are simply disconnected from reality, or are cleverly manipulating the PC MC paradigm by consistently portraying their community in the same terms as the non-white minorities privileged by that same paradigm—not in a spirit of fighting any actual bias, but in a spirit of constantly making sure to forestall any cracks that may be developing in the paradigm as more and more Infidels show signs of waking up—it doesn’t much matter. They are deploying their mountain of evidence in a context diametrically opposite of the context in which the Jihad Watch mountain has to operate. It is, in fact, the Jihad Watchers who are beleaguered by a dominant and mainstream bias all around them—a bias in favor of Muslims and hostile to those who criticize Islam.
2) The second problem with the “American as apple pie” claim is that it obscures the obvious and massively documented connections between the religion and culture of Islam, on the one hand, and terrorism, on the other. The “American as apple pie” claim proposes a logical fallacy, whose preposterousness can be exposed by rewording it:
Most American Muslims behave like ordinary Americans, therefore there is no problem of Islamic terrorism in America.
The Muslims proposing this claim, of course, would squirm out of any connections at all between Islam and all the various Muslims who have sought to kill Americans—the two Muslims, one in North Carolina, the other in San Francisco, who tried to run over Americans (and in the latter case succeeded in killing one man); the Muslim who plotted to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio; the Muslim who started shooting up a mall in Utah before he was gunned down by an off-duty policeman; the Muslim who shot and killed people in a Jewish center in Seattle, Washington; the Muslim who tried to decapitate a Jew in Houston, Texas; the Miami gang inspired by Islam who plotted to blow up Sears Tower in Chicago; the Beltway snipers inspired by Islam; the Muslims who plotted to attack a military fort in New Jersey; the Muslims who plotted to blow up gas pipelines in a suburb in New York near an airport; the American Muslim (Adam Gadahn) who has joined Al Qaeda, whose representatives have officially declared they want to kill approximately two million Americans: all these examples (and many more we could adduce) would be dismissed by the Inayat Lalanis of America as being merely criminals who were likely mentally ill and whose inspiration had nothing to do with Islam (even though there is evidence to the contrary). And our news media, intelligence agencies and academics would agree with them! Nevertheless, there is a problem of Islam inspiring a certain number of American Muslims (and non-American Muslims entering the U.S.A.) to kill Americans and destroy infrastructure. And this problem does not go away by simply claiming that American Muslims in general are “as American as apple pie”. [Update from the Future (June of 2013): I wrote the above paragraph in 2008. In the past five years, we all know the grim toll which Muslims have wrought in America, Canada, and the rest of the West -- not only in successful terror attacks, but also innumerable plots to mass-murder us, luckily stopped in time]
3) Indeed, the problem of #2 is not merely a problem of statistics with relation to an ideology inspiring a certain number of Muslims to kill us and destroy our infrastructure. There is another part of that very same ideology, Islam, that compounds the problem of #2 with two added features:
Most American Muslims behave like ordinary Americans, therefore there is no problem of Islamic terrorism in America.
The Muslims proposing this claim, of course, would squirm out of any connections at all between Islam and all the various Muslims who have sought to kill Americans—the two Muslims, one in North Carolina, the other in San Francisco, who tried to run over Americans (and in the latter case succeeded in killing one man); the Muslim who plotted to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio; the Muslim who started shooting up a mall in Utah before he was gunned down by an off-duty policeman; the Muslim who shot and killed people in a Jewish center in Seattle, Washington; the Muslim who tried to decapitate a Jew in Houston, Texas; the Miami gang inspired by Islam who plotted to blow up Sears Tower in Chicago; the Beltway snipers inspired by Islam; the Muslims who plotted to attack a military fort in New Jersey; the Muslims who plotted to blow up gas pipelines in a suburb in New York near an airport; the American Muslim (Adam Gadahn) who has joined Al Qaeda, whose representatives have officially declared they want to kill approximately two million Americans: all these examples (and many more we could adduce) would be dismissed by the Inayat Lalanis of America as being merely criminals who were likely mentally ill and whose inspiration had nothing to do with Islam (even though there is evidence to the contrary). And our news media, intelligence agencies and academics would agree with them! Nevertheless, there is a problem of Islam inspiring a certain number of American Muslims (and non-American Muslims entering the U.S.A.) to kill Americans and destroy infrastructure. And this problem does not go away by simply claiming that American Muslims in general are “as American as apple pie”. [Update from the Future (June of 2013): I wrote the above paragraph in 2008. In the past five years, we all know the grim toll which Muslims have wrought in America, Canada, and the rest of the West -- not only in successful terror attacks, but also innumerable plots to mass-murder us, luckily stopped in time]
3) Indeed, the problem of #2 is not merely a problem of statistics with relation to an ideology inspiring a certain number of Muslims to kill us and destroy our infrastructure. There is another part of that very same ideology, Islam, that compounds the problem of #2 with two added features:
a) Islamic deception: it has become well-known that Islamic culture inculcates, as part of its supremacist agenda of taking over the world, a tactic of deception, which includes lying and dissembling. This tactic of deception is a central part of Islam, enshrined in the Koran and in the Sunnah.
b) Islamic subterfuge: closely related to (a) is the tactic of underground subterfuge, which has become known to the Western mind in the concept of the “Jihadist cell” that works in secret to plot terrorist attacks. Such underground “cells” require various levels of cooperation from other Muslims—ranging from a generally passive enablement (lying to the police), to slightly more involvement (receiving packages in the mail and then passing them off unopened to somebody else), to even slighty deeper involvement (renting out a room or the back of a store for some “brothers” to hold their late-night “prayer” or “study” sessions), to more hands-on complicity. The obvious reason why Muslims have developed deception and subterfuge is because it is a sometimes necessary maneuver when Muslims are too weak to directly wage their offensive conquest of the world—as they are now.
These two additional features of the problem make it difficult to distinguish the genuinely “apple pie” Muslims from dangerous Muslims who are pretending to be “apple pie”, as well as from apparently “apple pie” Muslims who are involved in various levels of complicity with the terrorists.
These two additional features of the problem make it difficult to distinguish the genuinely “apple pie” Muslims from dangerous Muslims who are pretending to be “apple pie”, as well as from apparently “apple pie” Muslims who are involved in various levels of complicity with the terrorists.
One such level and style of complicity, in fact, is the kind of propaganda purveyed by the likes of Inayat Lalani. By advancing the notion that Muslims are harmless, in a context that reinforces the prevailing inhibitions against suspecting Muslims by pushing all the buttons of the PC MC paradigm—Muslim-Americans are a “minority” who are “suffering” from “discrimination” and “bigotry” and who, by virtue of the fact that the vast majority of them are brown, enjoy the added privilege of sharing in the general category of “ethnic minority”—this propaganda serves to marginalize and even demonize any substantive criticism that could be brought to bear upon the ideology and culture that Muslims follow and support, insofar as that ideology and culture tends to nourish the hostile mentality that would inspire terrorist attacks, and furthermore even tends to facilitate the concrete deployment of terrorist plots.
Closely related to this, let us hark back directly to #1 above: The PC MC paradigm that is dominant and mainstream in American sociopolitical culture (as it is throughout the West) tends to reinforce the propaganda of the myth of the moderate Muslim. Not only do we swallow that propaganda, hook, line and sinker; but we also actively help the Muslim apologists in their mission of advancing that propaganda—through our institutions and subcultures of academe, politics, entertainment, journalism, and even among the vast majority of our anti-terrorist analysts themselves!
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
The “apple pie” claim is a journalistically sexy way to reiterate the myth of the moderate Muslim, and by doing so, it helps to obscure the metastasizing danger of a revival of Islamic supremacism and the terrorism that is an intrinsic and essential component of that revival. By helping to obscure that danger, the “apple pie” is colluding (whether consciously or not) with the specific tactic of Islamic jihad—the tactic, namely, of deception and subterfuge. American Muslims are not plain old apple pie: as a sociopolitical movement, their protested innocence conceals a sinister variation on that theme, the unique mode of Allah.
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