Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Spiking Islamic Democracy

When's the last time you sent in your donation to PBS? Hint for US Citizens: if you haven't filed your tax return, you have until midnight tonight (unless you live in the Northeast).

Update: April 18th How National Public Radio led the charge in the 1990's in dismissing the threat of jihad.

Radical Islamists do not support democracy. From his newest book, The War of Ideas, Walid Phares writes:

Salafists, Wahabis, Takfiris, Tablighis, and other Sunni Islamists reject the concept of pluralism, and radically oppose the rule of the people. Only Allah and his teachings...are the basis for governance. [Shias] installed an Islamic Republic in Iran, but its mandate is believed to be divinely inspired and not subject to the approval of civil society. (p. XVIII)


It appears that Radical Liberalists in the United States want you to think that all Muslims share this sentiment. This is not true. But PBS is doing its best to keep you from knowing that.

Due to pressure from Islamist groups, PBS, who unfortunately owns the rights to the film entitled "Islam vs. Islamists", has shelved it, claiming that the reasoning for the shelving is because "it needs work", and that it might still be shown in the future. Did you just see that pig fly by?

Even more bizarre is the claim that the film would "demonize Islam" when in reality the result is the exact opposite. Many Muslims prefer democracy to the "7th Century" drivel that God makes all the rules and the radical lunatics are to enforce them. How PBS finds this demonizing is beyond me.

"I am incredulous that PBS would invest so much of our tax money into contracting professionals for a documentary on a subject -- the struggle for the soul of Islam -- which is one of the most vital debates of the 21st century and then censor its release," said Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the Arizona-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy who is featured in the documentary.


Mr. Jasser visited with Greg Allen on The Right Balance this morning, expressing his dismay that a tax-funded organization would act this way.

I agree. As surprised as I am by the liberal reaction to the attempt to foster democracy in the Middle East, this has to be one of the worst instances of spiking relevant insight into the process. I have come to the conclusion that American liberals think that Muslims are incapable of democracy. What a shallow, self-serving viewpoint.

Please contact the PBS Ombudsman
, and let him know you want to see a documentary that shows that many Muslims prefer democracy. What's demonic or divisive about that?

Update April 18th: From his book Future Jihad, Walid Phares explains to us that we haven't been getting our tax money's worth for quite some time now.

More worrisome [than the lack of coverage of jihad strategy by private news networks] would be PBS, C-SPAN, and NPR. Funded by US taxpayers, these gigantic networks have dedicated less than 0.1 percent of content to what would become the main threat to the nation over the years. NPR would outdo every other medium: It actually aired more programs endorsing the apologists--those who denied a jihadi threat--than all other U.S. media combined. The pounding by NPR and the public networks over ten years further disguised the intensity of the Wahabi penetration [into American government and society]. (p. 177)
Here's some more information on the controversy from the CNS News service.

3 comments:

Anne Rettenberg LCSW said...

Frank, can't you find a better source for your arguments than an opportunistic whore for the neocons like Walid Phares?

I don't listen to NPR or watch PBS that much. But frankly the "attention" given to the Middle East by CNN and the major networks doesn't really inform people with any substance so perhaps less is more. If people really want to understand the Middle East they need to read books by reputable historians and political scientists at major universities.

Anne Rettenberg LCSW said...

By the way what is "radical liberalism"? That seems like an oxymoron.

Frank Staheli said...

Oxymoron? Radicalism is often in the eye of the beholder. I'm reading "Talking Back" by NBC's Andrea Mitchell right now, and what she sees as perfectly normal, I see as prejudice.

By the way, I agree generally with your statement about reading good books to learn about the Middle East. I don't have much love for CNN, Fox, or any of the other US news outlets. BBC seems to do a lot better as far as getting to the depth of the issues.