<\/p>\n<\/em>In subtle fashion, Graham calls me a \u201cmosque basher\u201d (notice the demagoguery \u2014 by opposing the choice of location for a particular mosque one becomes a mosque basher) and criticizes me for calling Mr. Rauf a \u201cself-described Sufi.\u201d Set aside the fact that we were told the Ground Zero mosque was not to be a mosque but a sort of Islamic complex (in politically correct calumny, therefore, I suppose I should be called a \u201ccomplex basher\u201d). One has good cause to wonder about Mr. Rauf\u2019s credentials as a tolerant healer in the genuine Sufi tradition. I used the adjective \u201cself-described\u201d in the context of Rauf\u2019s disturbing and contradictory proclamations. His public persona, for example, keeps morphing as he reinvents his message to better market his wares \u2014 so his book was reissued in paperback as\u00a0What\u2019s Right with Islam Is Right with America<\/em>\u00a0rather than the original\u00a0What\u2019s Right with Islam<\/em>. Cordoba House suddenly became Park51 when the public caught on that medieval Cordoba, despite the presidential myth-making of the Cairo Speech, was not quite Dubai and, disturbingly, seemed to resonate a little too much with the \u201cO al-Andalus\u201d crowd. The American Sufi Muslim Association is now the American Society for Muslim Advancement. And so on.<\/p>\n<\/em>And while Rauf the contemplative Sufi philosopher has a disturbing record of contextualizing 9\/11, bin Laden, and Hamas, he has no need of nuance when it comes to America. He can be quite forthright in criticizing the United States for its perceived and apparently singular global transgressions \u2014 though he is quiet about far greater Russian and Chinese anti-Muslim violence. He claims he is for free expression, even when it so obviously offends tens of millions of Americans; but he has no problem criticizing the Danish cartoonists for their supposedly unnecessary and gratuitously offensive drawings. In a variety of ways, he has praised the Iranian Revolution, whose end result is horrific violence against women, homosexuals, democrats, and dissidents of any stripe, whether novelists abroad or reformers at home. Others have pointed out that there is no reason to believe the ecumenical Ground Zero Islamic complex will introduce gender or sexual parity into its protocols in the American tradition that Rauf keeps invoking.<\/p>\n<\/em>In short, Imam Rauf remains what he always strove to be, a brilliant marketeer (in the American therapeutic Tony Robbins\/Deepak Chopra tradition) who is able to adopt personas, symbols, and phraseology that cover his flank in the radical Islamic world while offering \u201cbridge building\u201d rhetoric to captivate self-righteous na\u00effs like Graham \u2014 in the process creating quite a lot of publicity for himself, and perhaps a multimillion-dollar base of operations. One can foresee the hype to come as the tour buses tack onto their routes the Park51 Islamic complex. I\u2019m sure copies of\u00a0What\u2019s Right with Islam Is Right with America<\/em>\u00a0will be on sale in the lobby.<\/p>\n\n
\u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner One might understand why Newsweek recently sold for a dollar and apparently went the way of\u00a0Harper\u2019s\u00a0from David A. Graham\u2019s \u201cThe Islam Idiots.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[565],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-m8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1402,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ground-zero-mosque\/","url_meta":{"origin":1372,"position":0},"title":"Ground Zero Mosque","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Why it is counterproductive to the Islamist cause. by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media While vexing to many, the\u00a0mega mosque\u00a0set to be built two blocks from Ground Zero has produced one interesting but unintended consequence: like the 9\/11 strikes a decade before it, the \"9\/11 mosque\" is also creating a stir,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1279,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-teachable-mosque-moment\/","url_meta":{"origin":1372,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Teachable Mosque Moment","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Interview by Jamie Glazov FrontPage Magazine Frontpage Interview\u2019s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of\u00a0The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. FP:\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview. I would like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Jamie Glazov"","block_context":{"text":"Jamie Glazov","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/jamie-glazov\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1370,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/top-muslims-condemn-ground-zero-mosque-as-a-zionist-conspiracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1372,"position":2},"title":"Top Muslims Condemn Ground Zero Mosque as a ‘Zionist Conspiracy’","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 28, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media In a recent\u00a0article, I argued that the Ground Zero mosque is counterproductive to Islam. The following day, on August 5th, the Egyptian newspaper\u00a0Al Masry Al Youm\u00a0reported that none other than Al Azhar \u2014 one of Sunni Islam's most authoritative institutions \u2014 agrees. My translation of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1397,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ground-zero-for-mosque-resistance\/","url_meta":{"origin":1372,"position":3},"title":"Ground Zero for Mosque Resistance","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Karen Lugo Redcounty.com There is still time \u2014 and there are many reasons \u2014 to stop the Ground Zero Mosque. The location of a mega-mosque so close to Ground Zero has focused critical attention on the issue of mosque placements all across the United States. The fact that we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2010"","block_context":{"text":"August 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/august-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1399,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dershowitz-vs-hanson-on-the-anti-defamation-league-and-the-ground-zero-mosque\/","url_meta":{"origin":1372,"position":4},"title":"Dershowitz vs. Hanson: On the Anti-Defamation League and the Ground Zero Mosque","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Frontpagemag.com [Editor\u2019s note: Alan Dershowitz submitted an article to Frontpagemag.com criticizing the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s opposition to the plans for a mosque to be built at Ground Zero. We decided to run the piece with a rebuttal by Victor Davis Hanson. An extra round between the two follows.] Anti-Defamation League Should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2010"","block_context":{"text":"August 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/august-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1480,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-two-faces-of-the-ground-zero-mosque\/","url_meta":{"origin":1372,"position":5},"title":"The Two Faces of the Ground Zero Mosque","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media Depending on whether Islamists address Americans or fellow Muslims, the same exact words they use often relay diametrically opposed meanings. One example: when Americans hear Muslims evoke \"justice,\" the former envision Western-style justice, whereas Muslims naturally have Sharia law justice in mind. Islamists obviously use\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1373,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/1373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}