Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Oh! I nearly forgot! We have five copies of Andy's broadside to give to you. They go to the authors of the best five comments, as measured by the "like" button, and you're on the honor system--one vote, one member, and not for yourself.
In response to my posts about the Muslim Brotherhood, his new broadside, and the Ricochet Book Club, Andy McCarthy has kindly offered to join us for a discussion. You have all done the reading, I presume? I warned you the test was coming.
Let me start by saying that in response to my post--in which I agreed broadly with much of what Andy said in the broadside, but faulted him for not drawing a sufficiently clear distinction between Islam and Islamism--Andy asked Encounter Books to send me a copy of The Grand Jihad, for which I thank him and thank Encounter Books.
Whether or not you agree with his arguments, it's a surprisingly great book--great, in the sense that Andy's a natural writer: It's gripping, it's dramatic, and in places very funny (where it is not absolutely horrifying). It was a bestseller and now I see why. It deserved to be.
I must say that Andy in fact takes pains in his book to draw at quite some length exactly the distinction I faulted him for not drawing clearly enough in his broadside. He devotes an entire chapter to it. I'll leave it to him to explain why this important distinction--the case for which he makes extremely well--was elided in the broadside.
By the way, the reception to The Grand Jihad is an object lesson in the importance of reading a book before criticizing it. Conor Friedersdorf, you know I like you, but you got suckered on this one. You should have read it before writing this; you'd see that you're missing his point.
Also by the way, Andy, while I was all too aware of much of what you discuss, the chapter on Kenya was new to me, and very disturbing. That should be better known.
Anyway, to the broadside. The first meeting of the Ricochet Book Club is convened. Questions for Andy? He's right here. I have quite some number, but I'll let you all start first.
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Comments:
Sep '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Mr. McCarthy, a diplomatic cable (dated April 17, 2009) that was released by Wikileaks shows that the Obama administration tried to halt the prosecution of six top Bush officials in Spain (and apparently succeeded). Doesn't that disprove your claim that the Obama administration would tolerate foreign prosecution?
Edited on December 16, 2010 at 1:05amDec '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Conor Friedersdorf.
Wait, "benign indifference" and "embrace" are themselves very different descriptions.
And yet, as history has shown, "benign indifference" often has results indistinguishable from "embrace." Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men stand by and do nothing." In Obama's case, he's not even a disinterested bystander with respect to the intentions of Islamicists -- that is, he's not even opposed to their acheving a good part of their goals.
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Stuart Creque
In Obama's case, he's not even a disinterested bystander with respect to the intentions of Islamicists -- that is, he's not even opposed to their acheving a good part of their goals. · Dec 15 at 3:32pm
I agree that he is not a disinterested bystander, though my assertion is informed by the fact that he is waging an ongoing war against Al Qaeda that spans much of the globe.
Dec '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Conor Friedersdorf
Stuart Creque
In Obama's case, he's not even a disinterested bystander with respect to the intentions of Islamicists -- that is, he's not even opposed to their acheving a good part of their goals. · Dec 15 at 3:32pm
I agree that he is not a disinterested bystander, though my assertion is informed by the fact that he is waging an ongoing war against Al Qaeda that spans much of the globe. · Dec 15 at 3:59pm
Don't you mean that he's reneged on his pledge to cease the ongoing war against Al-Qaeda that his predecessor was forced to wage? And that he's also reneged on his pledge to shut down America's best offshore detention center for enemy combatants caputured in that war? And that he's also tried but failed to shift the trials of unlawful enemy combatants from military tribunals to civilian courts? And that he's largely dispensed with the effort to apprehend members of the Al-Qaeda network in favor of killing them with missile strikes, thus throwing away the intelligence they might have provided to the fight against Al-Qaeda?
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Stuart Creque
Don't you mean that he's reneged on his pledge to cease the ongoing war against Al-Qaeda that his predecessor was forced to wage? And that he's also reneged on his pledge to shut down America's best offshore detention center for enemy combatants caputured in that war? And that he's also tried but failed to shift the trials of unlawful enemy combatants from military tribunals to civilian courts? And that he's largely dispensed with the effort to apprehend members of the Al-Qaeda network in favor of killing them with missile strikes, thus throwing away the intelligence they might have provided to the fight against Al-Qaeda? · Dec 15 at 4:12pm
I don't recall Obama promising to cease the ongoing war against Al Qaeda. Could you link to that speech? I'd wager it doesn't exist. You're right that he's broken his pledges on Gitmo, and shifted toward missile strikes rather than capturing and illegally torturing suspected terrorists.
Whatever you think of all this, it pretty clearly isn't embracing (or being disinterested in) our Islamist enemies.
Nov '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Conor Friedersdorf
I know a lot fewer Muslims, but I do know two who practice the religion but don't think that the Koran is Allah inspired. · Dec 15 at 2:19pm
Technically there are only five essentials in Islam:
1) "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet."
2) The five daily prayers
3) The Ramadan fast
4) The giving of alms
5) The pilgrimage to Makkah
If a person follows all of those then he is a Muslim. Just as all that's required to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the son of Yahweh and the Messiah foreseen by the Jewish prophets. There is no mention of sharia, jihad, or even the Qur'an. Most people would probably say that it's hard to acknowledge Muhammad without accepting the Qur'an, but, as you say, religion is an inherently personal issue.
Jun '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Andrew,
I wanted to thank you for your dogged pursuit of the truth as indicated in your work for the past several months in National Review. I believe you are one of the few investigative journalists active in America which I offer as a compliment given the sorry state that journalism and the fact that this was not your chosen profession.
I am curious if you feel that there is any hope that Sue Meyers or anyone else on Capitol Hill can make any headway, investigating such groups as CAIR and ISNA and have any of their leadership incarcerated and/or deported for their activities or will we have to wait for a Republican President and Senate in 2013?
Edited on December 16, 2010 at 1:26amDec '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Conor Friedersdorf
I don't recall Obama promising to cease the ongoing war against Al Qaeda. Could you link to that speech? I'd wager it doesn't exist. You're right that he's broken his pledges on Gitmo, and shifted toward missile strikes rather than capturing and illegally torturing suspected terrorists.
Whatever you think of all this, it pretty clearly isn't embracing (or being disinterested in) our Islamist enemies. · Dec 15 at 4:19pm
Organizing for America still has Candidate Obama's positions up: "Barack Obama opposed George Bush on the [Iraq] war, and instead advocated focusing on the al Qaeda forces that attacked us."
He advocated abandoning a central front in the war against Al-Qaeda by cleverly declaring that Al-Qaeda had no presence or interest in Iraq. You can infer what the result of following through on that promise would have been by noting that even as America fights in Afghanistan and uses missile strikes in Pakistan, Al-Qaeda maintains its operations in Pakistan. And now Obama is playing whack-a-mole in Yemen.
And relying on luck to defeat Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in New York, Oregon, Maryland, Texas (oops - unlucky there)....
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Brian Watt: Andrew,
I wanted to thank you for your dogged pursuit of the truth as indicated in your work for the past several months in National Review. I believe you are one of the few investigative journalists active in America which I offer as a compliment given the sorry state that journalism and the fact that this was not your chosen profession.
I am curious if you feel that there is any hope that Sue Meyers or anyone else on Capitol Hill can make any headway, investigating such groups as CAIR and ISNA and have any of their leadership incarcerated and/or deported for their activities or will we have to wait for a Republican President and Senate in 2013? · Dec 15 at 4:24pm
Edited on Dec 15 at 04:26 pm
Brian,
Given the last Republican president's attitude toward CAIR from 2000 to 2008 why do you imagine that a failure to incarcerate its leadership is a Democratic thing, and that a Republican president and Senate would do differently? Also, is there some specific crime for which you want to imprison the people who lead CAIR, and evidence that they committed it?
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Claire is right to point out that I struggled at length in my book, and not nearly as much in the Broadside, with the distinction between Islam and Islamism. But the distinction was not “elided in the broadside," the underlying premise of which is that we should focus on sharia in sorting out Islamists from real moderates.Conceding that there is a moderate Islam and that Islamism is different from other varieties of Islam follows directly from the distinction.
The difference in treatment owes to word limitations and the scope of each project. The Broadside has a strict word limit of a pamphlet. It takes Islamism's distinction from Islam as a given and deals primarily with what the Islamist agenda is and how it is helped along by the Obama administration. In the book, I had the liberty and the need explain fully what I meant by the "Islam" that I argue is "sabotaging" America. That required dealing in depth with the nature of Islam and the possibilities of moderate Islam. I nearly scrapped the relevant chapter because it read like I was having an argument with myself. I decided to leave it that way because I am.
Jun '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Conor Friedersdorf
Brian Watt: Andrew,
Brian,
Given the last Republican president's attitude toward CAIR from 2000 to 2008 why do you imagine that a failure to incarcerate its leadership is a Democratic thing, and that a Republican president and Senate would do differently? Also, is there some specific crime for which you want to imprison the people who lead CAIR, and evidence that they committed it? · Dec 15 at 4:40pm
Since the last Republican administration we have learned quite a bit more about these groups, their methods and their goals. Read Muslim Mafia by Sperry and Gaubatz. Both groups were already named unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terror-funding trial for their efforts to support Hamas, an organization recognized by the United States as a terrorist organization. That alone should be enough to investigate their activities. Many in the leadership are not American citizens and their activities should be brought into question especially if it shown that they are foreign agents aiding and abetting America's enemies and seeking the eventual overthrow of the United States.
Aug '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Thank you for all the work you do exposing this menace, Mr McCarthy.
It seems to me that the onus to differentiate Islam from Islamists falls upon Islam.
It's not something that we should have to figure out. It should be obvious and unequivocal. The fact that it is not speaks volumes. In fact, I find the silence quite deafening.
Until that changes, I'm not inclined to have any warm feelings for Islam. To be honest, the more of its history I read, the colder I get.
Sep '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Conor Friedersdorf
Catholicism has a core set of teachings and explicit rules to which followers adhere... . · Dec 15 at 2:19pm
Catholicism has a well developed teaching magisterium and has also taken the trouble to publish a Catechism -- available on line -- and has a well developed code of canon law which (look up Harold Berman) formed the basis of the beginnings of Western Law. They also have an extensive philosophical engagement (Aquinas versus Averroes) on issues with which its clearly evident what their position is.
As well the diocesan system is directly modelled on the Roman Empire and their parish baptismal records are excellent historical source documents. They also have a well developed view on biblical exegesis (the four senses of scripture) that differs from Protestant views. Also, quite easy to look up.
Jul '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Conor,
I'm interested in this from your review:
Mr. McCarthy objects to the strategic renaming of what President Bush called The War on Terrorism, but rather than make a straightforward argument against a change in how we refer to that struggle inside the federal bureaucracy, he dishonestly asserts that President Obama has a radical, ideological opposition to the word war itself, something that would indeed be troubling were it true.
It troubles me that the Pres would make that "strategic decision."
Why? Did he think that support for the War would grow if it was labeled a contingency op? Which political bloc was he targeting?
Certainly not the serious left. Committed Marxists & Multiculturalists aren't jumping on board.
Certainly not the serious right. Neither isolationists, nor interventionist cultural chauvinists would be pleased with the euphemism.
The great, independent, middle perhaps? Well, this group tends to alternate between adolescent skepticism and the childish desire for simple problems with obvious solutions. (today's third gross oversimplification)
In either mood, indies aren't going to dig such a ham-handed, phony, cumbersome account. To them it's grounds for ridicule, at best.
So who exactly is the man pitching?
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Sorry for the delay.Still getting the hang of how this works -- I should have asked for a tutorial. On Islam -v- Islamism, the problem is that many of Islam's most authoritative institutions (e.g., al-Azhar), scholars (e.g., Qaradawi), and political figures (e.g., Erdogan) will tell you that there is no difference between Islam and what we (or, at least, I) hopefullycall "Islamism." By contrast, I don't see "moderate Islam" as a coherent doctrine. It is better understood either as an aspiration that reformers are trying to bring to realityor as an approach to Islam that reinterprets, marginalizes, softens, or ignores Islam's (or Islamism's) more troubling scriptural commands. The fear is that the Islamists may have the better of the argument even though it is very much in our interests that the moderates succeed. The threat to us lies in the fact that we tend to equate Islamism with terrorism when, in fact, the vast majority of Islamists are not terrorists. That they are not willing to commit massacres to achieve their goals does not make their goals moderate.
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
I don't want to debate Conor Friedersdorf's review of my book -- or, I guess, excerpt of my book. When it came out, and I remember thinking that what Conor called "manifold inaccuracies" were strawmen (I don't, for example, think Pres. Obama is afraid to say the word "war" just because his bureaucracies have been discouraged to use the word), and I think Conor read too much into the fact that Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin liked the book (in fact, he inferred that Rush's blurb meant Rush and I had "collaborated" on the book, or the title, or ... something). A lot of people liked the book, some didn't, but it stands or falls on its own merit. We're mainly talking about the Broadside here, and Conor has raised a number of good points about it. I'll try to focus on those.
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
Bereket Kelile makes a couple of great points. For some Islamists, our very existence is offensive, so it's pointless to worry about what we can do to convince them we are not a threat. I do think, though, that we could do a better job of understanding what many Muslims find threatening. It is a mainstream Islamic view that the sowing of Western ideas and institutions in Islamic countries is a hostile act. I doubt most Americans know that. Consequently, while we do what we regard as the humanitarian work of nation-building and democracy-building, many Muslims find this sinful, provocative and threatening -- or at least their leaders say they do.
I've never seen the case made that democratizing country A makes country B safer from terrorism. So I think, while well-meaning, our engagement policies often cause us more problems while not increasing (or even degrading) our security. I would rethink our relations with Islamic countries. We ought to be as little involved as is practical but make them understand that we will take decisive action if they allow their territory to be used as a platform for terrorist operations.
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
On the question of how to resist the encroachment of sharia in a constitutional way, I am predisposed to frown on legal remedies to block elements of sharia -- e.g., the French burqa ban. We're a political community, not a legal one, and it sows unnecessary discord when the law gets out in front of where the public is and tries to pull it kicking and screaming into enlightenment.
The best thing we can do about sharia is learn about it, understand why it is antithetical to our fundamental principles, and make people who want us to embrace it defend it. We should understand that a person is not a moderate just because he's not looking to blow up a building to impose his agenda -- the substance of his agenda matters just as much as his methods. That will marginalize sharia and its proponents in our society.We should avoid importing sharia into our law (more on Oklahoma in another post), but I'd avoid legal crackdowns on Islamic practices that don't violate our laws. Our society can deal with Islamism in America as long as political correctness doesn't stifle critical thinking.
Jul '10
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
It would help if we didn't continue to import 90,000 people from Muslim nations each year.
Re: Welcome, Andy McCarthy
On legal approaches to Islamism, Stuart Creque highlights its seditious nature and asks whether that makes Islamists enemies of the Constitution. The law sharply distinguishes between calling for the violent overthrow of the government and calling for supplanting the government by non-violent means. And even on violence, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence over the last half century has distinguished between inciting violence, advocating violence, and teaching violence -- with prosecution a more remote possibility the further words get from inviting the imminent occurrence of violence.
Some Islamists are proud to be thought of as enemies of the Constitution. Others take the different tack that their aspirations are perfectly consistent with the Constitution. The latter is a clever argument since the Constitution does, after all, prescribe a process for radically changing its terms.