The Rightosphere is Overgeneralizing About Muslims
Dean Esmay, whose blog I like and whose writings I respect, made a post that opened like this:
I’m publicly calling out Michelle Malkin, someone whom I often disagree with but usually respect. I hope she will think about it and respond thoughtfully and not angrily or flippantly.
… I’m making an open appeal to your conscience, Michelle Malkin, and to the conscience of conservatives everywhere: shouldn’t you start making a distinction between Muslims who hate us and want to kill us, and Muslims who believe in freedom, democracy, and religious tolerance?
Of all of the bloggers that I read on the internet, Dean makes the most effort to maintain a sense of reasoned tolerance toward Muslims. Tolerance here means that he “makes a distinction between Muslims who hate us and want to kill us, and Muslims who believe in freedom, democracy, and religious tolerance”. I had picked up on this some time ago and respected his point of view. Someone needs to be making this point.
One reason that I have respected his point of view is that I have noticed a trend more and more in conservative blogs to make comments in posts about Muslims that tend to generalize about Muslims. If I spent some time, I could give you many, many examples. One thing you see quite often are sarcastic remarks about how “Islam is the religion of peace”. Yes, hearing this said (non-sarcastically) over and over can get annoying when people are trying to speak positively about Islam. None the less, it is very unfair to repeat it sarcastically suggesting that the Muslims as a whole are against peace.
One problem that I see is that few Americans have any Muslims as personal friends. They are just too thin in the population. So it is easy to refer to them as a group as being somehow defective. I know, we all sometime have a tendency to lash out at other groups and make generalizations. But if it gets out of hand, and I agree with Dean that it has started to, before long we become much less tolerant as a nation than we claim to be.
Regarding Michelle Malian’s posts over the last few months, I have often noticed where I think she crossed the line making generalizations about Islam, just like Dean has noticed too. While it is usually pretty subtle, she none the less goes too far.
Too bad, because I respect Michelle Malkin - she is often downright brave. She was the first major blogger to post the banned Muslim cartoons (that were published in Europe). I say she is brave because I bet that she has received many death threats over this. If she lived in Europe, at this point she would need police protection.
Sadly, Michelle’s reaction to Dean’s challenge was quite harsh. The response certainly wasn’t like Dean requested (”I hope she will think about it and respond thoughtfully and not angrily or flippantly.”). First, she did what I hate that the left so often does. She declares that she knows his selfish motives:
This post by Dean Esmay, “calling out Michelle Malkin,” is what is known in the business as traffic bait. So go ahead and click it and give Esmay more of the traffic he wants.
Then she gets nasty:
I highly recommend you read his post as the classic blogospheric example of how not to argue about Islam. Or anything else, for that matter.
Right off, Michelle Malkin owes Dean Esmay an apology, in my view.
Then she says this: “Notice the absence of a single link or a specific quotation of anything I’ve ever written.” However, Dean was making a general appeal to her, not a take down of a list of specific quotes. Malkin is taking this all as a journalistic exercise, rather than an appeal for her to think about whether she has been overgeneralizing about Muslims.
Again, the things that she has written are not that extreme - it is not like she is acting like someone from the KKK. None the less, she often crosses the line in my book.
Sadly, Michelle catches Dean in a way to make him look bad to those not familiar with his writings. She quotes him from a scathing response that he gaive to one of the commenters on his blog. I have not followed what prompted this outburst, I don’t doubt that the guy was some fool. Unfortunately Dean made a mistake in responding in a way that makes him look bad; he should have just banned the commenter. (There is an old Texas saying: Don’t roll in the mud with a pig, cause people won’t know which one of you is the pig.)
Those that aren’t familiar with Dean’s writings may think that he is some out of control righty - which is very wrong. He is quite broad-minded. And it was really wrong of Michelle Malkin to use this quote against him, to paint him as some kind of lunatic.
Dean is now not responding to her, and I don’t blame him. At this point Michelle needs to apologize. She should save her energy for slapping down the numerous vicious nuts on the left, not turning on someone that she should clearly respect.
September 28th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
I think all Americans will seperate the muslems from the terrorists muslems when the muslems seperate themselves from the terrorist muslems. Ain’t happened yet and probably never will which indicates they are one and the same. Now ask the muslem leaders the question, when are you going to publically condemn the islamofascists among you? That won’t happen either for the same reason above.
I don’t read Esmay and now I know the reason. He’s a fool.
September 28th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Okay, what was I thinking, Dean is a fool and all Muslims are terrorists.
And the American soldiers who happen to be Muslim that are fighting in Iraq on our side are somehow terrorists too, but that gets confusing.
Scrapiron, do you have a tolerant bone in your body?
September 29th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Both sides are acting like children in this instance. I’m not defending MM, but I’m positive that the bikini-gate thing isn’t exactly helping her mood. As for DE, I’m sure that being on the island of defending Muslims is wearing on him as well. They both have reasons for their respective meltdowns… not that it makes things OK or anything like that.
I recently got back from Greece, where I spent a little over 6 weeks. I worked alongside two Muslims on the fishing boat, and we got along just fine as long as we didn’t talk about politics or the Israel-Hezbollah War. They were nice enough guys, but I could see a fire in their eyes whenever Israel or Bush was mentioned. I’m not saying that all Muslims are like that, but the only ones I had any dealings with there seemed to really dislike the western world.
Being over in Greece was pretty much like being in the middle of the Muslim world. On the satellite I got to see plenty of Al-Jazeera, as well as networks from Dubai, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Iran, etc. I only got some of the Dubai and Egyptian channels in English occasionally, so I can’t say that I know what was being said. I can only say that the images and how they were presented seemed an awful lot like there wasn’t much love for the west and Israel.
Scrapiron did bring up a good point (amazingly enough) about how there is no public condemnation coming from the friendly Muslims. It would sure go a LONG way to hear someone speaking out on a large stage against terrorism. I know that it’s beginning to happen on a much smaller scale than is needed, and for that reason it falls under the radar of most people.
I’ll admit that I’m far from tolerant when it comes to Islam, but I am a lot more tolerant now than I was five years ago, and it gets better with each peaceful Muslim I meet (not that Wisconsin is a haven for Muslims). It’s just that those violent ones are really hard to ignore, as is the history of Muslims. Anyone who has studied history understands how the past often shows what’s to come in the present…
… in this case I SINCERELY hope that it’s not an accurate predictor, for everyone’s sake. Honor killings, the overall poor treatment of women, religious intolerance, and execution for not being Muslim have no place in a civilized world. I think we can all agree on that.
September 30th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
““makes a distinction between Muslims who hate us and want to kill us, and Muslims who believe in freedom, democracy, and religious tolerance”.
But don’t most Muslims fall into a third category? They don’t believe in the same things we believe in, but they don’t particularly want to kill us.
October 3rd, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Steve,
Yes, I agree and had not thought of it quite like that. I guess that is why we should be severely limiting Muslim immigration to the US. Better to not let in too many people in the third category because no one knows how many (or their children) will migrate over time to the first category (those that want to kill us or don’t care much for freedom).
October 4th, 2006 at 4:36 am
I agree with Steve and Dan here 100%. But I don’t have much respect for Dean Esmay’s position on Islam. I think mainstream Islamic theology is horrible. The earlier peaceful Mecca verses are abrogated by the later belligerent Medina period verses. That makes any pious Muslim either a heretic (which is a win-win situation for him/her and all non-Muslims) or a potential terrorist/fifth columnist. For some, envoking the earlier tolerant Mecca verses is only a smokescreen.
But Islam and Muslims are two different things. Islam is an idea and Muslims are people. Observance among Muslims varies between 0 and 100%. Some nominal Muslims are in fact completely non-observant atheists. Many observe religious festivals and traditions (like I observe Christmas despite fact that I don’t believe in any kind of god) but are not religious themselves. Nevertheless, it’s a very bad idea to let large numbers of any kind of Muslims immigrate into Western countries as it is impossible to separate the good ones from the bad ones and because there is no telling what kind of Muslims their children will grow up to be.