It would appear that the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof read our column Thursday on "Islamic affirmative action," thought the concept might be unclear to some people, and decided to offer himself up as an example. If we had wanted to satirize the attitude, we could hardly have done better than his column in yesterday's Times titled "Message to Muslims: I'm Sorry."
Here's how it begins:
Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.
That's reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I'm going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.
Kristof's central example of "the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness" is the wave of reader complaints against the Portland (Maine) Press Herald over a Sept. 11 human-interest story on local Muslims celebrating Eid, the end of Ramadan, which led to a groveling apology from the paper's editor-publisher.
As we noted Thursday, there is no reason to think that the complaining readers were bigots or nuts. The worst that can be said about them is that they were a bit ignorant: They mistook a coincidence of timing for Islamic affirmative action. (This misunderstanding might have been avoided if the Press Herald's Eid story had explained the workings of the Islamic calendar and this coincidence with Sept. 11.)
Kristof draws a false and offensive equivalence between Islamic extremists and American "extremists." The latter, when something in the newspaper offends them, complain in a "courteous and polite" fashion, according to the Portland editor. The former, as in the case of cartoonist Molly Norris, issue religious edicts threatening death. (President Obama, champion of the First Amendment for Muslims, remains conspicuously silent about Norris's plight.)
We agree with Kristof that the Portland publisher's apology was a pathetic overreaction. But no one is in hiding as a result of the complaining Mainers--not the publisher, not the reporter who wrote the story, not the Muslim leader who was profiled in the Sept. 11 piece and "said that as an American Muslim, he has a sense of belonging that eclipses the hostility of the Rev. Terry Jones, the pastor in Florida who threatened to burn copies of the Quran," according to the Press Herald.
The important thing to understand here is that Islamic affirmative action only incidentally concerns Islam or Muslims. It is really about the moral exhibitionism of liberal elitists like Kristof, who love trumpeting their enlightenment and open-mindedness and sneering at the sensibilities of ordinary Americans. It never occurs to them that in doing so, it is they who are acting like bigots.
Like moral idiots, too. Consider this passage from Kristof's column:
Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger. Many Americans believe that Osama bin Laden is representative of Muslims, and many Afghans believe that the Rev. Terry Jones (who talked about burning Korans) is representative of Christians.
How balanced, how even-handed. Kristof condemns extremists on both sides! Except that "their" extremist is a mass murderer, while "ours" merely talked about engaging in offensive symbolic speech. Kristof doesn't note that Jones's Koran-burning plan was condemned by almost all Americans, or that whatever harm it did could have been ameliorated had the media--including Kristof's paper--refrained from publicizing it.
In another attempt at balance, Kristof acknowledges a string of Islamic outrages: "theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God's bidding." He does not list any comparable actions by American "extremists," because there aren't any.
Kristof concludes:
But I've also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.
I'm sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.
Fair enough. But what about gentle American souls--the kind of people who take offense at the idea of building a fancy "Islamic center" adjacent to the site of an Islamic supremacist atrocity, or who complain politely to a newspaper that offends their sensitivities? In slandering them as bigots, nuts and extremists, Kristof lumps themin with al Qaeda. He owes Americans, not Muslims, an apology.
