How an Academic Clown Defends Muslim Bigots from the Truth

Juan Cole epitomizes a whole school of professors and instructors of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Arabic studies who constantly seek to whitewash Arab/Muslim sins of commission or omission in word or deed. This school of academics who favor and cover up for Arab nationalism and its various specific causes, no matter what, has its counterparts in Western and Soviet foreign ministries and in the West's corps of journalists, who often operate in tandem with their diplomatic corps. Prof Martin Kramer caught Cole in a crude and sloppy cover up which ought to embarass Cole if he were susceptible to feeling embarassed over his mistakes and frauds.

Cole recently defended the Muslim Brotherhood from the truth about its genocidal plans for the Jews, not just Israelis, but Jews. An Israeli reporter who knows Arabic reported that two speakers at a Muslim Brotherhood rally held in Cairo quoted the medieval hadith that foretold that at Judgment Day the Muslims would kill the Jews. According to this Muslim fable, some Jews would hide behind rocks and trees that would in turn cry out: O Muslim, O slave of Allah. A Jew is hiding behind me. Come kill him. [see here]. Cole read a translation of the Israeli's report and promptly jumped to a conclusion [not very scholarly that]. He denied that his pets of the Religion of Peace [so designated by Pres. George Bush II] could speak in such unkind terms, while using as proof a short Arabic press report of the rally which did not mention recital of a quote from Muslim literature calling for killing the Jews. But an argument from silence is never conclusive. Rather than pursue the truth of the matter, Cole failed to search for the video of the proceedings --held at the al-Azhar Islamic university in Cairo-- which was available online and was found by Martin Kramer. Kramer has the videos [here]. By the way, Hamas --now rulers of Gaza-- tucked this notorious genocidal hadith into Article 7 of the Hamas charter more than 20 years ago. So it's quite appropriate that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyyah has announced that Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood. [See photos of Haniyyah hugging MB leaders.]

Now, as indicated above, it is not only journalists and professors who belong to the whitewash-the-Arabs school. Diplomats too fall into that troublesome class. The blogger Challah Hu Akbar contrasts the behavior of the chief diplomat of the US State Dept, Madame Hilary Clinton, towards Muslim Brotherhood leaders as compared with her attitude toward Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Here's the story:

Israeli media recently reported that US officials are offering numerous excuses as to why they do not wish to meet with Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during his upcoming visit. The most outrageous claim was that “we [US officials] do not want to be photographed with him.”

While US officials say they do not wish to be photographed with Lieberman, the foreign minister of the only stable country in the Middle East that’s still a reliable US ally, they seem to have no qualms being seen with Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

Below is a photo of Anne Patterson, US ambassador to Egypt, meeting with Mohammad Badie, General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, on January 18. On January 11, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met with Mohammed Morsi, head of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. On January 12, former president Jimmy Carter also met with Badie. [see several affectionate photos here]

Carter of course never met a Judeophobe whom he didn't like. But the current problem is the Obama White House and the Clinton State Dept who decided to have the US ambassador to Egypt meet and be photographed with MB leaders but who not meet or be photographed with FM Lieberman. Now, the MB leader who shook hands with the US ambassador is an undeniably charming fellow. Here are a few quotes from him:

. . . the improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life. . .

Resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny, and all we need is for the Arab and Muslim peoples to stand behind it and support it. [here]

Funny, isn't it, that the General Guide [or Supreme Guide] of the Muslim Brotherhood can say these hateful things, including expressions of hostility to America, and then smile and shake the hands of the American ambassador [actually, an ambassadress] to Egypt? Funny, isn't it, that the Obama administration has no qualms about dealing with this hate-ridden bigot and fanatic maniac?

All the same, it ought not be forgotten that Cole is not the first prof of ME and Arabic studies to defend or cover up for repulsive and reprehensible Arab/Muslim actions. Prof William Polk was whitewashing the Arabs fifty years ago as an academic and also practiced the same policy as a high State Dept official.

Should We View Rashid al-Khalidi, Walid al-Khalidi, and Edward Sa`id as Colonialists --or Imperialists?

Yaacov Lazowick reports the following claim by Prof Juan Cole who would disqualify children from certain activities on account of the deeds of their fathers:

About a year ago Juan Cole made an unfair statement about Tzipi Livni, whereby since her father had been a terrorist in the Irgun, she had no moral standing to be requiring a cessation of Arab terror; since she's Israel's Foreign Minister, he effectively was rejecting her right to negotiate. Her father's identity was more important than her own actions, you see. At the time I responded, and he responded to me, and you can see my summary of the exchange here.

Actually, we could take the principle that Cole enunciated and go farther with it. Rashid al-Khalidi is Obama's friend and has a well-paying post at Columbia U. The Khalidi family long were part of the Arab-Muslim upper crust in Jerusalem and indeed belonged to the governing class of the Ottoman Empire. Consider Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi.

Now, my query to Juan Cole: Should Rashid be considered an imperialist because his family were favored by the Ottoman Empire with high, prestigious positions?? Moreover, Walid Khalidi worked with prestigious American and British institutions, such as American U of Beirut, Harvard, etc. If AUB is an imperialist or colonialist institution, as a strict theorist of neo-colonialism should agree, then should Walid [and Rashid too who also held a post at AUB] be considered imperialists or colonialists?

Edward Said's father was an American citizen who fought in WW One for the USA. After WW One, he "settled" in Egypt and became prosperous. He was not a native Egyptian nor was his family ancestry Egyptian. He was a citizen of a Western state, an imperialist state by Lenin's definition. So William Said [Edward's father] was a settler in Egypt while the country was under British hegemony. That is he was a colonist, or maybe even a colonialist. Can anything that Said be taken as genuine, by Edward Said's own standards, since his father was a colonialist and he himself was raised in upper-middle class prosperity in a country where the overwhelming majority of people were very poor??

[based on a comment to Yaakov Lazowick’s blog of 11-5-08]
For more data on the family background of Rashid and Walid Khalidi, see:

Yaacov Shimoni, Political Dictionary of the Arab World [in Hebrew only: יעקוב שמעוני, לקסיקון פוליטי של העולם הערבי (ירושלים , כתר 1988 ) ע'113

Yaacov Shimoni and Evyatar Levine, eds., Political Dictionary of the Middle East in the 20th Century (New York: Quadrangle 1974), p 222

On Edward Said's father, see:
Justus Reid Weiner, "My Beautiful Old House," Commentary September 1999. Also see the footnotes to this article which were once available on line, and the letters in response to Weiner's article which were published in Commentary in January 2000. In particular, see the letters of Jerold Auerbach and Marlin Moshe Levin, as well as the rejoinder to the letters by Justus Weiner himself.

One more point in response to Juan Cole. Arab terrorism throughout the decades since 1920 has been aimed at murdering as many Jewish civilians as possible. Perhaps piece-meal genocide would be a better term for what is usually called Arab or "palestinian" terrorism. On the other hand, the terrorism of the Irgun [ אצ''ל ] and other Jewish armed groups was mainly aimed at the British, although there were occasional acts of retaliation for Arab genocidal actions. Looming above all other Arab acts was the Arab collaboration in the Holocaust, particularly in the person of Haj Amin el-Husseini [Husayni], the British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem.
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Coming: More on Zbig Brzezinski as Obama's Evil Genius, more on Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, the Land of Israel, propaganda analysis, etc.