Mr William S. Morris IVPresident & CEOMorris Publishing Group Dear Mr Morris:
This letter must be read in Rich Text (HTML) in order to utilize the imbedded links.
The recent Parvez Ahmed OpEd in the Florida Times-Union begins as an essay on US-India economic affairs, but wastes no time injecting make-believe Muslim grievances.
This is to be expected, since Mr Ahmed is an Islamic missionary. However, the Times-Union should know better – by now you know that Hamas-linked Ahmed is fulfilling the Muslim Brotherhood’s goal of “strengthening [Hamas’] influence . . . by infiltrating the American media outlets, universities and research centers” (transcribed from the FBI wiretaps); he is doing well on all counts, and, with your conscious assistance, is using the Times-Union as his propaganda tool.
Mr Ahmed begins his article on-topic, but then descends into Islamic grievance – the constant torment of the unhappy Muslim psyche. Grievance, real or imagined, is a compulsory element of all Ahmed articles. Here are examples:
· “Obama did not visit the [Sikh] Temple . . . fear[ing] that a head covering would further fuel . . . persistent rumors that he is a Muslim. Caving into fear-mongers only emboldens them.”
Reply. Mr Ahmed claims that this conjecture is fact. However, we have no idea why Obama skipped the Sikh temple (just as the cost of the Obama excursion is unknown, as Ahmed points out). And, Team Obama certainly would never offer the reason Mr Ahmed claims. This is merely an opportunity to fabricate a Muslim grievance.
Ahmed could have addressed a real affront: Obama shunned the Jewish Chabad House whose inhabitants were among the few Americans butchered by Muslims during the 2008 Mumbai attack. And, Mr Ahmed could have mentioned that, in India and in Pakistan, his Sunni Muslim sect persecutes the Ahmadiyya (Ahmadi) Muslim sect – that is factual, and a true grievance.
· “Sikhs . . . have been targets of anti-Muslim discrimination in the U.S. A few days after Sept. 11, 2001, a Sikh-American was killed in Arizona by a man who mistook him for a Muslim.”
Reply. The events surrounding Mr Balbir Singh Sodhi’s death are described correctly. Nevertheless, in this nation of 350 million people, such occasions are rare. According to the latest FBI hate crime statistics, there were 1,732 offenses motivated by religious bias in 2008. Of those, 66.1 percent targeted Jews; 8.7 percent targeted Christians, and 7.5 percent targeted Muslims.
American Jews were 9 times more likely to be victims of hate crimes than Muslims. Yet, no Jewish economist would ever commandeer a professional Times-Union forum to denounce grievances against his ethnic group (as Mr Ahmed does).
In addition, crimes against Muslims have declined dramatically since 911. A 2008 survey by Human Rights First, entitled “Violence Against Muslims”, found only two assaults based on anti-Muslim sentiment in 2007 and 2008. Nearly all "backlash" against Muslims, following acts of domestic Islamic terrorism, has consisted of unkind blog postings, added scrutiny of mosques and enhanced airport security.
Even the Sikh Coalition, which encourages the reporting of anti-Sikh “hate crimes”, cites relatively few violent events since 1975 – most acts are perceived harassment. The Sikh Coalition records can be searched at http://www.sikhcoalition.org/ListReports.asp. Mr Ahmed is, of course, a Muslim missionary, and Islamic grievance is his bread and butter.
In Europe, most attacks against Jews are perpetrated by Muslims. Entire Jewish communities are fleeing Muslim-caused assaults, depopulating whole Jewish neighborhoods. And, often the news agencies censor the Islamic ethnicity of the perpetrators. The European pattern will occur here. The new anti-Semitism is transported to Europe by means of the new wave of Middle East immigration, which is coming this way.
· “Many Muslims took refuge during their arduous migration to Pakistan.”
Reply. Of course, this is a biased Muslim perspective. A similar number of non-Muslims suffered during the migration. And, the cause of the Partition and subsequent migration can be placed squarely upon the shoulders of Muslims, who opposed the leadership of the India independence movement. Gandhi and his adherents struggled to avoid Partition, and, in the process, enraging both Hindu Nationalists and Indian Muslim nationalists. Gandhi was assassinated soon after Partition by a Hindu nationalist, who believed that Gandhi had appeased Muslims at the cost of Hindus.
· “Prior to colonial rule, India was the world's economic superpower.”
I have a small point to make regarding this Angus Maddison theorem. Please refer to the Post Script.
Former CAIR chairman Parvez Ahmed LIED to your editorial board (an Islamic mandate called “taqiyya”) during your staff’s three-hour meeting with him – the meeting which endorsed his appointment to the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission.
Your related editorial reports Mr Ahmed’s deceit: “Ahmed denies he has supported terrorism or advocated violence in any way, either before, during or after his involvement with CAIR” (emphasis added). On the contrary, Mr Ahmed, a CAIR leader since the mid-1990’s, and national chairman of CAIR (a Muslim Brotherhood organization), has defended terrorists with zeal.
During the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trials, in 2007 and 2008, he defended the criminals (who were later convicted on all 108 counts), stating: "The case against HLF was a political witch-hunt that had nothing to do with America's security”. According to Ahmed, the HLF trial was a "classic case of guilt by association [a false argument he uses in his own local defense] and a political vendetta against American [Muslim] citizens to carry out the agenda of a special interest group, the Israel Lobby." CAIR, which Parvez Ahmed led as Chairman during the two trials, was a co-conspirator in the Hamas-funding conspiracy, which, according to the Court, was an “ unlawful conspiracy . . . from which CAIR never withdrew”.
Further, Parvez Ahmed sought to defend the conspirators by means of his Hungry for Justice organization, which he co-founded and for which he served as media contact. Mr Ahmed was not a novice to CAIR and its operations. He joined in the early 1990’s, knew of CAIR’s origins, and knew well its founders: Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, both of whom were present at CAIR’s 1993 founding meeting with Hamas leaders (in fact, Ahmed replaced Omar Ahmad as the organization’s second national chairman). The 25-member gathering, including both Ahmad and Awad, represented, according to the FBI, “a meeting . . . among senior members of Hamas, the HLFDR and IAP [Islamic Association for Palestine]”. A FBI analysis noted: “all attendees of this [1993 Philadelphia] meeting are Hamas members”.
CAIR founder Nihad Awad in a 2000 AMEU article (who collaborated with Parvez Ahmed) admits to the IAP (and thus Hamas) origins of CAIR. Awad describes how he “worked closely with IAP president Omar Ahmad”; how “Ibrahim Hooper . . . join[ed] the project”, and how together they “open[ed] the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) . . . in June 1994.” More on CAIR’s Hamas origins at the Investigative Project on Terrorism and at CAIR Observatory, a division of the prestigious Center of Security Policy.
According to retired FBI special agent John Vincent, “There is no question CAIR funds Hamas”. A new report maintains that CAIR's national organization in late 1995 contributed at least $40,000 to a Holy Land Foundation (HLF) subsidiary, InfoCom Corp, just months before HLF wired exactly $40,000 to the Islamic Relief Committee, a conduit to Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
Only the Times-Union and the ultra-liberal Huffington Post regularly run Mr Ahmed’s essays. Mr Ahmed is a charming fellow, and he likely has had many meetings and direct conversations with your staff, to gain its trust. He is charming, because that is his job as an Islamic missionary.
It is clear that Mr Ahmed has become an informal member of the editorial staff. And, the Times-Union staff assists Mr Ahmed in “infiltrating the American media outlets” by sanitized his background – hiding his enormously significant CAIR and Hamas connections, and the fact that he is a Muslim missionary. This furtiveness is unprofessional, subversive journalism, and it needs a full evaluation within the local and parent Morris staffs. There is just so much of this Leftist activism and deception that your readers will tolerate before they cancel their subscriptions.
Best Regards,
Post Script. A point of clarification. Ahmed condemns colonialism (and the West, of course) by stating: “Prior to colonial rule, India was the world's economic superpower”. No doubt, colonialism of itself was not a good thing. However, bad institutions sometimes produce significant worthwhile results for the subject peoples, as in the case of Rome’s subjugation of Gaul which benefited from the Pax Romana which followed (and enjoys those benefits till the present time).
Colonialism was the unexpected vehicle which brought to India the blessings of Western civilization, among them the language of freedom – and the tools by which Indians were encouraged to rebel against the British, and eventually gained independence. The Indian leaders were products of Western Civilization. Gandhi studied in England and South Africa; Nehru, India’s first prime minister, was a product of Harrow and Cambridge. By exposing Indians to the ideas of the West, British colonialism prepared India for the global economy and the freedoms of the 21st century.
A common language, roads, shipping docks, railroads, irrigation systems, and government buildings were all British legacies, as well as the British legal system, with all its procedural novelties, like "innocent until proven guilty".
The colonialists brought things to India that have immeasurably enriched the lives of the descendants of colonialism. It is doubtful that India would have acquired those good things by themselves or as quickly. It was the British who, applying a universal notion of human rights, in the early 19th century abolished the ancient Indian institution of suttee – the custom of tossing widows on their husbands' funeral pyres.
Most of the British (and thus Indian) social thought was derived from Christian values. In contrast to the Hindu caste system, Christianity's precept of "universal brotherhood" altered the Indian psyche.
In contrast, Islam adopted Western thought for only a brief 90-year period, during the Mu’tazilah episode of the 9th century, when books of Western philosophy were captured during Islamic conquest, and their ideas adopted. Then, after this short time, Islam banned Mu’tazilah philosophy upon pain of death, and abandoned Western thought forever (as did Pakistan a millennium later).
Contrast India with Pakistan (or Israel with the remainder of the Middle East), and there you have a revealing laboratory experiment: Peoples of the same or similar origins, but different religions. The Outcome: The backwardness of Islamic nations versus the freedom, progress and prosperity of the West.
Of course, missionaries like Parvez Ahmed will complain that this backwardness is caused by a West determined to undermine Islam – with foreign occupations, neglect, affronts to Islamic ideology, personages and literature, and Islamophobia – the never-ending train of grievances from an unhappy people (and unhappy people are predisposed to evil and violence).
A sampling of the West vs Islam disparity (upon request I will send all source links):
· Despite their oil wealth the gross domestic product (GDP) of the 22 Arab nations combined is little more than that of Spain (the smallest economy in Europe), and less than half that of Italy. Italy has 55 million people, whereas Arabs number 300 million.
· The illiteracy rate in the Arab world is higher than that of the backward developing world, and more than three times higher than that of Latin America and the Caribbean. And, illiteracy in the Arab world is increasing.
· In the entire Arab world approximately 330 books are translated into Arabic each year, whereas little Greece translates over 1,500 books into Greek, and Spain translates 100,000 books into Spanish, each year.
· Scientific research and technical developments in the Arab world are less than one percent of the world’s total. Between 1980 and 2000, a total of 370 technology patents were granted to the entire Arab world, while South Korea alone was awarded over 16,000 patents during the same period.
· Although Muslims represent 25 percent of earth’s population, Muslims have won only two Nobel Prizes for science. Jews, which represent 0.2 percent of the world’s population, have been awarded one-fourth of all Nobel science prizes. The entire Muslim world contributes barely 1,000 research articles out of a total 2,000,000 research articles published each year.
· What of Islam’s “historic contribution to science . . . math and engineering”, claimed by the Obama administration? NASA Administrator was instructed by the president to help Muslims “feel good” about their historic contributions to technical.
But, the evidence suggests a minuscule contribution. Toby E. Huff, chancellor professor of policy studies at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and author of studies in the rise of science, writes: “Islamic science was almost totally dependent upon translations, frequently made by non-Muslims of the achievements of pre-Islamic cultures, Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, etc. Moreover, a striking number of Muslim thinkers were Persians who owed more of their pre-Islamic heritage than they did to Islam.”
Professor Stanley L. Jaki, author of many books on science, observes that Islamic additions to the Greek body of scientific knowledge were “never substantial.” David Storobik, editor of Global Politician, the journal of international politics, has stated: “[It is] an historical fact that the scientific revolution happened in Europe, not India, China, or the Middle East. There was also nothing quite like the medieval university in the Roman Empire. Whatever existed of real science in Roman times was almost entirely of Greek origin. The medieval [European] University then represented a real innovation.”
· Take away their oil exports (which the West discovered and developed), and what does the Arab world export other than terrorism, suicide bombers and grief – and the celebrations of the deaths of Americans and Jews. While the West pursues labor-saving technology, cures for dreadful diseases and the rescue of earthquake and tsunami victims, oil-rich Saudi sheikhs, instead of alleviating suffering, spend millions on self-aggrandizing mosques, Islamic schools and higher education centers which promote a radical ideology which threatens to cause vast destruction in the Western world.
Education centers? Arab museums, such as the Palestinian Museum at al-Najah University in Nablus, display pictures of savagely mutilated bodies and severed heads in pools of blood, and show videos that glamorize booby traps, spilled blood, and martyrs enjoying the bliss of heaven. The Middle East is lagging behind, not because Arabs are created unequal in God’s eyes. It is lagging because of social and religious values.
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