I've never been able to explain Halloween to the kids, with its odd thematic confluence of pumpkins, candy, and death. But Halloween is a piece of pumpkin cake compared to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which commences today. In this special week, organized by conservative pundit David Horowitz, we have a veritable witches' brew of Cheney-style anti-jihadism mixed in with old-fashioned rightwing anti-feminism and a sour dash of anti-Semitism.
A major purpose of this week is to wake up academic women to the threat posed by militant jihadism. According to the Week's website, feminists, and particularly the women's studies professors among them, have developed a masochistic fondness for Islamic fundamentalist. Hence, as anti-Islamo-Fascist speakers fan out to the nation's campuses this week, students are urged to stage "sit-ins in Women's Studies Departments and campus Women's Centers to protest their silence about the oppression of women in Islam."
Leaving aside the obvious quibbles about feminist pro-jihadism and the term "Islamo-Fascism," which seems largely designed to give jihadism a nice familiar World War II ring, the klaxons didn't go off for me until I skimmed down the list of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week speakers and found, incredibly enough, Ann Coulter, whom I last caught on TV pining for the repeal of women's suffrage. "If we took away women's right to vote," she said wistfully, "We'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream; it's a personal fantasy of mine."
Coulter is not the only speaker on the list who may have a credibility problem when it comes to opposing oppression of women in Islam or anywhere else. Another participant in the week's events is former senator Rick Santorum, whose book It Takes a Family blamed "radical feminism" for pushing women into the workforce and thus destroying the American family. A 2005 column on that book in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, began with: "Women of America, I hope you look good in a burqa. If Senator Rick Santorum, R-PA, has his way, we will all be wearing the burqas discarded by our recently liberated sisters in Afghanistan..." (This was the before the Taliban re-emerged.)
Not quite in the burqa-promoting league, but close, is another official speaker for the week, Christina Hoff Sommers, who has made her name attacking feminism for exaggerating the problem of domestic violence and eliminating opportunities for boys. These are the people who are going to save us from purdah?
Another disagreeable feature of jihadism -- anti-Semitism -- is also represented on the list of speakers for Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, again by the multi-faceted Coulter. Just last week on CNBC, she referred to America as a "Christian nation." Asked where this left the Jews (not to mention the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans and atheists), she said they could be "perfected" by converting to Christianity.
You might imagine that this view of Jews as "imperfect" would bother Horowitz, who is famously alert to any hint of anti-Semitism on the left. But no, he defends Coulter, writing that "If you don't accompany this belief by burning Jews who refuse to become perfected at the stake why would any Jew have a problem?" Sure, David, and if that's the threshold for intolerance, Osama bin Laden could probably win an award for humanitarianism.
Maybe none of this should be surprising. When Mel Gibson, who is not known to be a member of the Hollywood left, unleashed a drunken anti-Semitic tirade on his arresting officers, Horowitz also rose to his defense, arguing that ensuing outrage reflected a "hatred" -- not of anti-Semites -- but of Christians.
As for the anti-feminism of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week: This fits in neatly with the thesis of Susan Faludi's brilliant new book, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America. She shows that, in the wake of an attack by the ultra-misogynist Al Qaeda, Americans perversely engaged in an anti-feminist campaign of their own, calling for an immediate restoration of traditional gender roles. Coulter was part of that backlash, opining in 2002 that "feminists hate guns because guns remind them of men."
Before you put on your costumes to celebrate Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, let me set the record straight. American feminists do not condone, defend, or ignore jihadist misogyny. In fact, we were warning about it well before Washington turned against the Taliban and have been consistently appalled by the gender dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
But if the facts don't fit in with Islamo-Fascist Awareness, they have to go. For example, in a May '07 column in The Weekly Standard Christina Hoff Sommers listed me as one of the "feckless" feminists who refuse "to pass judgment on non-Western cultures." What? If Sommers had even done 10 minutes of research she would have noticed, among other things, a column I wrote in the New York Times in '04 stating that Islamic fundamentalism aims to push one-half of the Muslim world -- the female half -- "down to a status only slightly above that of domestic animals."
Yes, feminists tend to hate war and sometimes even guns, and this may be why Horowitz and company hate us. They should know, though, that we especially hate a war that seems calculated to inflame Islamic fundamentalism world wide. If many Muslim women around the world willingly don head scarves today, it's in part because our war in Iraq has, tragically, pushed them to value religious solidarity above their feminist instincts.
Or maybe I'm missing the point of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week. Maybe it's really an effort to show that our own American anti-feminists (and anti-Semites) are just as nasty as the ones on the other side. If so, good job, guys! No need to continue with the trick-or-treating, you've already made your point.
They give it a great name, then say and do the opposite in hopes people will fall for the great name.
1//to distract from israel's racist apartheid jewish theocracy and its sixty year occupation of all of historic Palestine and the fact that it never ever implemented one single UN resolution since 1947;
2// Nothing would please Horrorwitz more than a manufactured conflict between America and Muslims:its the stupid zero sum theory that any harm to Muslims-such as one million dead Iraqi,foru million iraqi refugees-hald of the them are women-would be good forone other than israel. For scholarly and informative background on israel's attrocities in the last sixty years, pls visit WWW.PALNDS.ORG
On Islamic treatment of women:see Karen Armstrong's recent book: Muhammad, A Prophet for our Time.
Islamic nations were the first to elect Muslim Women as heads of state or prime ministers-certainly before the US:Turkey,Pakistan,Bengaladish and Indonisia.
Horrorwitz's are crocodile tears when it comes to Muslim women:why does not he speak up against Bush,AIPAC and israel who promoted the war on Iraq whic resulted in half a million dead IRaqi women and over two million as refugees;there are now seven million Palestinian refugess outside Palestine-ethnically celansed by jewish terrorist gangs:Hagana,Stern, Irgun and Palmach as detailed by revisionst israeli historians such as Illan Babe,Beni Morrisn and others-half of them,3.5 million palestinian women are refugees for the past sixty years-but Horrowitz is no where to be seen or heared when it comes to his racist apartheid jewish theocracy.
There cannot, absolutely cannot, be IslamoFascism. Talk about oxymorons!! The two philosophies are so diametrically opposed I can't believe anyone could be stupid as to put the two together. But, as we have seen, there are people that stupid: DrugRush Slimebaugh, Bill O'Liarlly, Sean NoMannity, etc.
What we are dealing here is a group of cowardly, scared, self-centered, immature little white people who are deathly afraid of losing their self-perceived (albeit mythical) power.
They claim to be Christian. THEY'RE NOT! The reality is they're pagans, attacking anyone different from themselves because they don't have to courage to understand that differences are strengths. After all, the God they claim to believe in, created all the differences. Do these scared little people think they are wiser and more knowledgable than God? They are not. This sorry crowd - which includes most far right conservatives - is so afraid they cannot even realize they live their lives with none of the tolerance, compassion, kindness, respect, or love of other humans that their God said they should strive to possess.
Basically, we're dealing with a bunch of sniveling, cowardly little white people who are scared to death they might lose their self-perceived (albeit completely illusionary) power. They're also overly concerned about their money, most of which was gained by cheating someone else out of their money!
People like Ann Coulter (Ann Coward would be more appropriate), are the way they are because they're ignorant and they're scared - a terrible combination which generally results in hatred, bigotry, and prejudice. You almost have to feel sorry for them, because they're wasting their lives quivering under the covers and peeing their pants every time they think of someone who's not exactly like they are.
They claim to be Christians - THEY'RE NOT! They're pagans, raging war against all outsiders without ever finding out if those outsiders mean them harm. It's enough for these pagans that the "others" don't look or act like they do. They are such pathetic, cowardly little people they can't handle even the slightest differences.
They have NONE of God's tolerance, compassion, or love for humanity. They have only fear and ignorance.
Barbara, yours is a truly thankless task in that you have to try to bring some kind of rationale understanding of the paranoid world of Christo-fascism through the process of exposing their previous insane statements and positions.
I find that it is next to impossible to debate the merits of ideas with insane sociopaths like Coulter, Horowitz and the rest of the shills on the payroll of the equally insane wealthy fascist like Richard Mellon Scaife.
But, I do appreciate your effort. It's a lousy job and someone's got to do it.
The GOP apparently wants their 'families' back. They want their mommies, is my take.
Not only do they not want to allow women control over their bodies, or have any concern for 'right to life' after birth, they also want everyone to be married, and all fathers in place with mothers.
I am picturing shotgun (by blackwater) weddings between pregnant women and the a**holes they accidentally slept with to get that way.
Oh-- and a huge rise (ha) in alternative sexual behavior, not involving impregnable parts.
Of course, that will soon thereafter be made illegal, and robot sex will become rampant, until that too becomes illegal. Ad infinitum until even 'suspiciously shaped' vegetables are available only to men.
We often forget that the Holocaust was perpetrated by people who genuinely believed that Jews were a source of imminent danger to humankind and that they were doing the world a favor by exterminating them. We seem to be equally clueless in our justifications for slaughtering untold numbers of Muslims.
Her manipulation of the lesser and weaker is always a vulgar display. It is her defining characteristic.
http://www.light-to-dark.com/ann_coulter_republican.html
How about a Christo-Fascist Awareness Week, where replicas of Coulter's crucifix can be sold to those fascinated with violence, payback, and end times?
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"
--Ann Coulter, right after the Sept. 11 attacks (The National Review subsequently dropped her and virtually pronounced her unbalanced)
When demagogue Ann Cloulter says that Jews need to be perfected (read, saved) she is expressing the deep, dumb want of all Christians who allow scripture to affect their lives.
Religion is inherently divisive, and the demogogue Coulter is aggravating the condition.
Further, saying Jews need to be perfected is NOT an anti-Semitic statement. No other Semites other than Jews take offense. Her statement was a religious driven Jew-hating statement, and it springs from the real yet unspoken resentment that the aboriginal Hebrews invented a flawed god.
You are using too broad a brush when you say "Religion is inherently divisive. . . ."In our community we are having a religious art show "A Celebration of the Creative Spirit" sponsored all the congregations (Baptist, Community, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic) in the community. We hope that through the variety of art work will will build bridges by bringing our dissimilar and diverse religious and spiritual communities together.
Incidentally check out your understanding of anti-semitic.
The last sentence in your post reflects a gross misunderstanding of the faith of many Christians.
Well, frankly, yes you are. The point of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week is to make money - lots and lots of money.
Also on the free speech issue. I say let 'em talk. In fact, keep that mic on 24 hours a day and let 'em keep digging that pathetic hole deeper. Those bastards will always show their true colors.
Bad doggie! Bad!
http://thefireside.wordpress.com/2007/10/09/terrorism-disguised-as-intelligence/