Andrew Bostom responds to Tarek Fatah's identity dance

If you have missed the little brouhaha here in Canada caused by "moderate Muslim" Tarek Fatah's attack on ex-Muslim, Dr. Wafa Sultan, you might pick up the story here.

I would then invite you to listen to Fatah in a couple of clips from the Michael Coren show where he responded to the critics of his attack on Sultan. I am particularly miffed by comments he makes at 5.16-6.00 of the following video, which strike me as dissimulating. I believe him when he says the Saudi Korans that are widely distributed in the West liberally use the word "Jew" as the English translation for less specific epithets in the original Arabic. But he says this with the apparent desire to avoid the question of whether there are not passages in the Arabic Koran that are explicitly anti-Jewish. And this is what Andrew Bostom is calling Fatah to account for, as quoted below.


Also see Fatah's vague interpretation of why the prophet Mohammed's wife Aisha was not a little girl upon marriage, here (this is actually the first of the two videos):

And here is Andrew Bostom's rebuttal: Pajamas Media » Silencing the Jews. Let me quote a little of it:

A front-page New York Times story published on January 10, 2009, included extracts from the Friday sermon (of the day before) at Al-Azhar mosque pronounced by Egyptian-government appointed cleric Sheik Eid Abdel Hamid Youssef. Referencing well-established anti-Semitic motifs from the Koran, Sheikh Youssef intoned:

Muslim brothers, God has inflicted the Muslim nation with a people whom God has become angry at [Koran 1:7] and whom he cursed [Koran 5:78] so he made monkeys and pigs [Koran 5:60] out of them. They killed prophets and messengers [Koran 2:61 / 3:112] and sowed corruption on Earth. [Koran 5:33 / 5:64] They are the most evil on Earth. [5:62 /63]

At present, the continual, monotonous invocation by Al-Azhar clerics of anti-Semitic motifs from the Koran (and other foundational Muslim texts) is entirely consistent with the published writings and statements of Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi — Grand Imam of this preeminent Islamic religious institution from 1996 until his recent passing. Tantawi’s academic magnum opus, Jews in the Koran and the Traditions, a 700-page treatise, elucidates the classical, mainstream theology of Islamic Jew-hatred:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness … only a minority of the Jews keep their word. … [A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.

Tarek Fatah, other so-called Muslim moderates of his ilk, and their non-Muslim promoters must be compelled to answer the following question: is it "Islamophobia” to quote such statements — rife with Koranic Jew-hatred, and made by authoritative Muslim clerics representing the Vatican of Sunni Islam — or are Mr. Fatah’s reactions, ignoring the existence of these commonplace, normative Islamic proclamations, and vilifying those who bring them to public attention, especially pernicious forms of taqiyya (religiously sanctioned Islamic dissimulation) and Islamic Jew-hatred?

Elaborating on the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews in his era, Maimonides (in ~ 1172 C.E.) made this profound observation regarding the Jewish predilection for denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction:

We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation. … All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.

The Jews and their communal leaders like Maimonides living under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages — vanquished by jihad, isolated, and well-nigh defenseless under the repressive system of dhimmitude — can be excused for their silent, submissive denial. There is no such excuse in our era for silently submitting to the threats of disingenuous, hateful Muslim bullies like Tarek Fatah, given the existence of an autonomous Jewish state of Israel and a thriving Western Jewish diaspora, particularly here in the United States, living under the blanket of hard-won protections for their religious freedom, physical security, and dignity.

Hugh Fitzgerald also took some shots at Fatah's recent comments, here.

But I think the most cutting recent remarks directed at Fatah were penned by David Solway, in the midst of a paean to Geert Wilders:

For what you [Wilders] are really saying is that moderate Muslims cannot be devout Muslims or, in truth, cannot be Muslims at all. What sort of Muslim remains after you have factored out shariah law, effectively compared Muhammed to Hitler, and contended that the Koran should be outlawed, or at least designated as a species of hate literature, as you proposed in your letter to the newspaper De Volkskrant on August 8, 2007?

You now find yourself uncomfortably situated, so to speak, between the devil and the deep Red Sea. Not being a Muslim yourself, you don’t have the option of polemical emphasis that derives from rejecting the faith, becoming an apostate-on-principle or converting to another faith, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish, among others—all of whom took the second part of your logic to its inevitable terminus. They understood that one cannot honestly profess Islam without abiding by the decrees of the religion and its holy book, including the oft-repeated summons to kill or enslave the infidel, the structure of gender apartheid, the imposition of shariah, and a host of other draconian laws.

In other words, a “moderate Muslim” would have to live in a state of contradiction, and perhaps many do—as does, for example, freedom loving Tarek Fatah, Canadian author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, who calls himself a “hardened secular Muslim.” What exactly is a secular Muslim, whether hardened or soft? Similarly, what could a “secular Christian” conceivably be other than some sort of mythical chimera? (It is different for Jews, of course; a “secular Jew” remains a Jew because the world persists in regarding him as such. But that is another matter.) Fatah is a good man and an important voice in the ongoing debate concerning Islam, but he cannot extricate himself from a legendary infatuation or acknowledge disagreeable historical and theological facts. One cannot cherry pick the Koran or romanticize Islamic history, as so-called “moderate Muslims” are obliged to do, without falling into incoherence. As a character in Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album says, “our religion isn’t something you can test out, like trying out a suit to see if it fit! You gotta buy the whole outfit!” There is, to put it another way, no such beverage as Islam Lite. One drinks in the real thing or nothing; there is no substitute.

Bangladeshi author and former Muslim Abul Kasem, in a FrontPage Magazine interview, defines the majority of Muslims as believers “in name only.” Kasem is shockingly direct: the existence of a “moderate Muslim” is contingent upon a moderate Koran “since the life force of Islam is the Qu’ran.” But the Koran happens to be an extreme and violent document, and even if it is selectively ignored by practitioners of the faith, its fissile core can be activated at any time. For Kasem, as for the dissidents mentioned above, the term “moderate Muslim” or “secular Muslim” is an oxymoron. The use of the term “moderate Muslim,” he argues, is “truly misplaced” and muddles Western thinking in the attempt to defeat Islamic terror. I’m presuming this is an argument you too would candidly advance if the sociopolitical context were not so precarious, and if your place in Dutch society and as leader of a respectable political party permitted you to do so.

While I don't see great value in arguing that it is impossible to be a "moderate Muslim", as if one cannot be in many respects a Muslim without knowing or wishing to dwell on the violent wording of the Koran (many Muslims don't read the Koran in translation and don't know Arabic), or as if one cannot consciously choose to interpret the Koran and Hadith as documents that must be read in historical context (however heretical that sounds to some), it is obvious today that many Muslims take the Koran all too literally when it comes to the book's frequent cursing of non-believers; and so Solway has much reason to suggest Western thinking is hopelessly muddled by the liberal insistence that (moderate) Islam, in general, not be viewed as a problem.

But I disagree with Solway that a "secular Christian" cannot exist. I won't rehash my arguments now, but I see Western secularism as quite distinctively an outgrowth of Christianity. A Christian might well see many of the secular political religions as heretical; a Christian might well see many secular values as antithetical to the model of Jesus. Still, as thinkers like Rene Girard argue - a sincere Christian himself - the motivating drives of modern secularism are in many respects characteristically Christian, most notably in their rebellions against the established order that are conducted in the name of one or another sacred victim, or in the name of transcending our culture's need for victims once and for all.

So, long story short, to my mind, a secular Jew is someone who has adapted to the modern world by becoming somewhat more Christian, and somewhat less Jewish, in character. Still, a secular Jew, as long as he is aware of his Jewishness, carries with him many habits and ways of seeing that are characteristically Jewish.

But like Solway, I have asked in the past, in regards to Tarek Fatah, whether one can make any sense of the concept of "secular Muslim". A secular Jew at least remains part of a distinctive national and familial identity that is Jewish. Fatah, on the other hand, is a Pakistani-Canadian. In Fatah's secular identity, just what is residually Islamic, and what Pakistani, and what Western? I don't have a ready answer but it strikes me as a more interesting question that whether he is a "moderate Muslim". That "moderate" debate is overly fixated on the worship of mere words.

Sundry notes from competing narratives on "human rights"

Amnesty International Mainstreams the Jihad :: Islamist Watch

Amnesty International famously advocates on behalf of people persecuted just for expressing an opinion. However, last month the group suspended Gita Sahgal, the head of its gender unit, after she expressed an opinion of her own: that by working with Taliban supporter Moazzam Begg, Amnesty has betrayed its mission to advance human rights. Here is a look at the scandal that the American media — once known for championing whistleblowers — have all but ignored.

Begg, a British citizen, moved to Kabul in 2001, was captured in 2002 on suspicion of al-Qaeda links, and ended up at Guantanamo Bay after admitting that he had attended terror camps and was prepared to fight for the Taliban. Released without charge in 2005, he became the face of Cageprisoners, which implores that Gitmo be closed and displays a disturbing level of sympathy for terrorists, even convicted ones. Begg himself has called the Taliban "better than anything Afghanistan has had" in decades and cited positively jihad theorist Abdullah Azzam.

Begg's troubling past did nothing to dampen Amnesty's eagerness to team up with him; the two collaborated on a recent visit to Downing Street and a European tour urging countries to grant detainees "safe haven." But while Sahgal endorses his views of Guantanamo, she thinks that the partnership is severely misguided, writing to her organization's leaders in a January 30 email:

I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International's integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights. … To be appearing on platforms with Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.

Hours after she made the contents of the email public on February 7, Amnesty suspended Sahgal. She fired back by slamming the organization for having "created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights." Care must be taken, she says, in "maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights." A leaked memo from a senior Amnesty executive reveals that Sahgal is not alone in such fears.

Barbara Kay on David Solway

Pajamas Media has published Barbara Kay's review of David Solway's new book, Hear, O Israel!.

It sounds like a great book, but how many Jews will hear the call? Perhaps anyone who retains respect for national identity and high cultures as the particular achievements of Western history are the book's potential audience:

He is fiercely critical of intellectuals who permit ideology to trump scholarly integrity, coming down particularly hard on corrupted Jewish and Israeli academics. To illustrate the insanely convoluted lengths to which post-Zionist Israeli ideologues will go to vilify their country, for example, he contemptuously cites a thesis (accepted, even lauded) by Israeli sociologue Tal Nitzan, claiming that “the absence of military rape of Palestinian women is no different from military rape itself, since it ‘strengthens the ethnic boundaries … just as military rape would have done’ — Palestinian women are obviously humiliated and relegated to inferior status in being so loftily shunned by Israeli soldiers.” That this self-loathing perversion of reason — “non”-rape by Israelis equals racism! — today passes for scholarship is a damning indicator of leftist academic culture.

Solway’s high-octane writing snaps, crackles, and pops with savage but disciplined indignation. He’s been criticized for his habit (far more prevalent in The Big Lie than here) of using $50 words where $10 ones would do, but I usually find his more recondite vocabulary has been chosen for precision, not pretension: I found “proprioceptive hatred” a deliciously original and evocative description of an English Jewish academic’s revulsion for Israel.

Solway brings a staggering litany of supportive data and citations to his argumentation, at once a strength and a weakness. It can be argued that because the anti-Zionist juggernaut — academic unions, Israel Apartheid Week apparatchiks — depends so heavily on a seductive cocktail of lies, distortions, and emotive “narrative,” the world needs the strong antidote. On the other hand, his mountains of evidence swathed in fulminatory prose will intimidate sensitive peaceniks, political fence-sitters, and cultural relativists — which is to say, the kind of people who think Obama is The One. Which explains why Solway’s most respectful readers are hawkish Americans who cluster for comfort and motivation around U.S. conservative websites such as Pajamas Media and FrontPage Magazine, where Solway has found a congenial niche.

But what kind of hawks cluster for comfort?

On saving the modern university

AlanABQ writes:

Any dissent will [be] tolerated with all the restraint of a Taliban troop coming across a girl wearing a bikini & makeup while eating a pork chop.

...but, when you think about it, a pretty, fertile, not readily shared or kept girl might have as much of a powerfully sacred charge among some randy Taliban as a "right-wing dissenter" in intra-lefty faculty politics. Who gets to be the chief denouncer? What disappointed lesser denouncer might accuse his rival of being herself just a little too McCarthyite, once all the potential thought crimes are professorially parsed... of course, if the dissenter is a pretty girl, which is something one could never quite say, amidst the false irony and feminized sacrality of the contemporary quadrangle, the silence might just become interesting... how shall our universities ever know who should be head Talib? Quarreling over one's Mohammedan lineage is maybe like asking whether you can go full bore in expelling a black woman who just happens to be a notable Bushbot.

The impossibility of any or all Taliban ever being long satisfied with any answer to this question - by what right is she head? - opens the door to those who will remember why the human world has evolved covenants whose peace is the deferral of impossible solutions, a deferral that ultimately require real intellectual freedom, and ethical innovation, and not just "LitCrit jargon" (as one PJ commenter puts it: “Jane Austin and the Deterritorialized Gaze: Possession, Feminism, and the Other in 19th Century England”). I refer to the freedom which the covenant exists to guarantee as the only alternative to the full-scale Talibanization of the universities. As much as I'd like to see the ninja sociologists and the Haida anthropologists going after each other in the ivy halls when the easy cultural blackmail money really dries up, I expect a starving Talib can learn to love a pork chop. Some can't, mind you, their minds too far gone; but reality ultimately masters most, to some degree, i hope. Freedom's job is to constantly ask how to bring human reality on without it being easy prey for the periodically unrestrained.

Pajamas Media » A Huge Serving of Academia Nuts

David Solway and Franz Kafka: takes on Jewish faith

From whence comes the patience to recognize hard human realities and prepare to live with them, without having recourse to fantasies of a final victory? Clearly such patience is not found among those taking to the streets of Canada in hate-the-jew fests.

The ideal spirit for those defending Israel and Jews everywhere, it would seem to me, would be to be eternally vigilant but never despairing. Somehow, I don't think David Solway quite expresses the need for Israel to be open, for centuries and millennia to come, to the unexpected, responsible, responses to its ever necessary, evolving, deterrence. Solway:

Under existing conditions, the best the Middle East can hope for is a long cold peace and even this is probably an Arcadian notion. We must learn to live with the situation as best we can, just as people who are afflicted with serious illness must take the proper measures in order to survive, stick to their medications, expect relapses and seek treatment no matter how stopgap. There's no point wondering what might have been had they not contracted their infirmity by having acted differently in the past or expecting that somehow the disease will be pacified and magically disappear by some sort of “talking cure.” The Middle East is sick with an incurable disease; all it can strive for is occasional remission and approximate recovery after yet another malign episode. This is what Reality is telling us; pious hopes only make things worse, as the last sixty years should have made clear by this time.

In the real world there are some “problems” for which there are no satisfactory solutions.

Yes, this is true of every genuine problem, not just Israel's.

To believe otherwise, to assume that negotiation, dialogue and diplomacy can eventually resolve even the most intractable predicament or standoff, that it is only a matter of time until belligerents of whatever stamp or provenance can be made to see the light, and that all peoples desperately want nothing more than peace, prosperity and equitable arrangements between them, is a utopian delusion of the first magnitude. Its effect can be catastrophic and frequently is.

Perhaps, but then I think it wrong to suggest that our belief in negotiation always stems from the fantasy of some great peace just out of grasp. Perhaps we need to discover a faith in negotiation (starting with deterrence) as a process of eternal deferral of the problem, and not ever of its final resolution.

The Middle East has been ailing for 3000 years and will not be healed tomorrow, next year, or even next century, if we get that far.

Yes, but then what are the medications you speak of, as an alternative to this dream of complete healing?

One thinks of Irving Kristol’s insightful remark that “Whom the gods would destroy they first tempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Some mistakes have to be abided—and controlled, if necessary, by aggressive countermeans, just as a chronic ailment requires constant supervision and appropriate remedies. As for Israel, it's only hope for survival is to bring about an armed truce from a position of deterrent power. Whether or not Israel is a “mistake,” as long as it continues to exist it will have to remain on a war footing.

Yes... but there must be more than one road to our only hope... what about those members of the Other who can learn from our "aggressive countermeans"? Can they help us keep the truce? Can they be rewarded? Can some even one day want to be us?

I, for one, do not believe that Israel is a mistake—its millennial hereditament alone renders it a legitimate nation. But even if Israel is regarded as a mistake by its critics and revilers, it would be no more of a mistake than some of its most intransigent enemies. As I replied to my correspondent, let us be honest for a change.

At times like this, a few Kafka aphorisms might be of interest:

There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgment by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. That is not the sort of belief that indicates real faith.

Expulsion from Paradise is in its main aspect eternal: that is to say, although expulsion from Paradise is final, and life in the world unavoidable, the eternity of the process (or, expressed in temporal terms, the eternal repetition of the process) nevertheless makes it possible not only that we might remain in Paradise permanently, but that we may in fact be there permanently, no matter whether we know it here or not.

Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing other than a motivation of man’s wish to rest for a moment — an attempt to falsify the fact of knowledge, to try to turn the knowledge into the goal.

Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.

There can be knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabolical than there is does not exist.

Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man, and this immediately, though, of course, only in the case of complete and permanent humility. It can do this because it is the true language of prayer, at once adoration and the firmest of unions. The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself.

The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last day

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

David Solway: Recommended Reading

There are a lot of interesting interviews at Front Page Magazine. I just came across one, from February, which features an unusually skilled writer, David Solway:

If we are to have any chance of surviving this “war of the worlds,” we must also learn to know ourselves. While Islam is and will continue to be a major problem for the West—to put it mildly—far more dangerous than our misunderstanding of Islam is the pervasive ignorance and misprision of our own civilization, which I fear may be undergoing its precipitous denouement as it prepares for terminal breakup.

And let us not deceive ourselves, the peril is great indeed. In a time of moral inversion, one might say, if I can put it this way, that a vacuum abhors nature, and the vacuum of the Western intellect in the reductive era in which we live refuses to be filled by facts, by the logic of events, by palpable realities, by common sense or by the obvious nature of things.

On the contrary, the spiritual vacancy which has become our home is replete with phantoms and delusions that substitute for the genuine values that have sustained the best part of our civilization: for pragmatic and laborious national progress, the chimera of transnational supremacy which implies a new kind of statist imperium; for negotiating the Hobbesian world in which we must somehow find our way, Martha Nussbaum’s utopian fantasy of the “community of human beings in the entire world”; for the inalienable rights of man, a multicultural solicitude for barbaric ideas and backward practices; for the concept of truth, the acid of postmodern relativity; for authentic faith, crude ideologies; for meaningful civil arbitration, an activist judiciary which strives to supersede the legislative branch of government; for the belief in institutional probity, the corrupt United Nations and the politically-motivated International Court of Justice in the Hague; for the free marketplace of ideas, the decadent, agenda-driven modern university; for an impartial press, a largely bigoted media network with a distinct political mission; for candid and scrupulous language, the lip-salve of political correctness; for the manly virtues of heroism and steadfastness, cowardice masking as reasonable accommodation; for schooled thought, febrile emotionalism, and for stoic maturity, indulgent sentimentality; for entrepreneurial innovation, the dead hand of bureaucratic stagnation; for the patient study of history, the figments of received opinion; for men and women of real substance and courage, a jaundiced and appeasement-prone crowd of politicians, artists and intellectuals; and for the ideal of tolerance, a rampant and never-dying antisemitism.
[...]
FP: The title of your political work-in-progress Living in the Valley of Shmoon prompts the obvious question about what "shmoon" could possibly signify. And this is central to our understanding of the terror war. Please explain.

Solway: Reflecting on our post-Enlightenment condition, I recalled the cartoonist Al Capp, creator of the L’il Abner comic strip and inventor of a species of roly-poly, pure-minded, eleemosynary critters called shmoos, denizens of the Valley of Shmoon, who were able and willing to transform themselves into chicken dinners and other delectables to satisfy the appetites of the hungry folk around them. Shmoos, unfortunately, do not constitute a finite resource set, but proliferate in such numbers as to undermine the welfare of society, rendering hard work unnecessary and the reality principle obsolete. They are not, strictly speaking, bad, but as one of the comic strip’s characters, Ol’ Man Mose, warned, they are bad for humanity “because they are so good.”

They recognize no enemies and, even as they are about to be exterminated, offer no resistance. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” as Edmund Burke is reputed to have said. One recalls, too, C. S. Lewis’ remark in Mere Christianity: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep…but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” So much for the Nanny state! But the current situation has been infernally compounded, for the ideological shmoos of the day seem determined to feed a hungry and insatiable enemy. When “good men” actively conspire with those who would undo them, when the missionaries eagerly jump into the bubbling pot, the end is surely in the offing.

According to our contemporary shmoos, there are two cognate approaches for dealing with the Islamic terrorists at the door. The first is to run down our culture and assume the blame for what has been inflicted on us—maybe the killers will forgive us. The second is to talk to our assailants, to respect their motives, to understand their resentments and to improve their economic prospects: fine words, empathy and a flow of dollars will do the trick. Although this strategy has failed miserably with Western-style dictatorships and terror regimes, and although many of the terrorists and their supporters hail from backgrounds of affluence and privilege, the Left insists against all the evidence that its policies and recommendations will succeed with the jihadis and their host governments, who must be relishing the free pass they have been given. Be nice, the theory goes, and they will be nice back.

Show understanding, and they will respond, not with violence but with gratitude. One remembers Einstein’s definition of insanity as repeating the same experiments and expecting different results. And, of course, as we extend the hand of supplication, we must not forget to keep inveighing against the moral cretinism and venality of the West, in the hope of gaining the respect of our adversaries while fumigating our own history. We must enrol our students in Peace Studies programs and teach them the subtleties of the “deep culture” approach, enabling them to see that our “enemies” are only expressing the fundamental traditions and postulates of their cultures, which are generally understood to be benign or at least neutral. For the professional temporizers of the Left, it is our own culture which is warped and depraved and therefore a licit object of the rest of the world’s hatred. Terrorism is not terrorism but justified vengeance. Plainly, this is not a good time for sense and substance as the rhetoric of vacancy gusts to windy velocities.

And that is where we find ourselves today. Not in the Valley of Kidron where idols are burned, but in the Valley of Shmoon where they are worshipped. Not in the Valley of Salt where King David won great victories, but in the Valley of Shmoon where we will suffer great losses.

The whole thing is a worth a read.

Who is David Solway. According to the editorial review, of his recent book, at Amazon:

On the morning of September 12, 2001, David Solway was enjoying breakfast in a café on the idyllic Greek island of Tilos. At first believing that the mayhem flickering on the TV screen was a rerun of a B war movie, he soon realized he was viewing the opening stages of the next world war. "From that moment on," he writes, "nothing was the same."

In the coming weeks, Solway relentlessly scrutinized the values and beliefs he accepted as gospel. As a member of the approved Left, educated in the roiling universities of the Student Revolution in the utopian Sixties, Solway was duly anti-colonialist, anti-corporatist, anti-Zionist, and postmodern. But his stance, he admits, was founded in "ignorance and laziness" and was no longer tenable. A fresh point of view was necessary.

The "fresh point of view" evolved into this book. Using Michel Houellebecq’s novel Platform and his own long-neglected Jewish roots as his starting points, Solway’s investigation leads him to today’s central predicament: the onslaught of theologically inspired terrorist movements that thrive parasitically on the left-liberal belief system that dominates the sensibility of the West.

We must recognize, Solway insists, that terror and antisemitism are intimately related; that our very civilization is under prolonged attack; and that, for too many years, we have evaded the truth, craving asylum in conciliation, sophistry, and equivocation....David Solway is the award-winning author of over twenty-five books of poetry, criticism, educational theory, and travel. He is a contributor to magazines as varied as the Atlantic, the Sewanee Review, Books in Canada, and the Partisan Review. David Solway lives in Montreal.