{"id":2395,"date":"2011-09-02T18:45:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T18:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=2395"},"modified":"2013-03-19T18:47:58","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T18:47:58","slug":"reading-between-the-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/reading-between-the-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Between the Lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n

Jihad Watch<\/em><\/p>\n

When reading Western reports dealing with Islam, one must learn to read between the lines. Many of these reports do state the actual facts; but without providing proper context, Western readers are often left to interpret the information according to their own understandings.<\/p>\n

One example: the ubiquitous term “sectarian strife” to describe Muslim-Christian clashes in the Middle East is factually correct; yet “sectarian strife” connotes comparable forces fighting one another, when in reality it is often nothing less than a vastly outnumbered Christian minority being grossly oppressed by Muslim majorities, as has happened for centuries.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it is easy to fathom the true significance of a report (usually non-MSM). For example, a recent\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0titled “CAIR Wants Muslim-Turned-Christian Minister to Stop Training Immigration Officials” provides all the necessary data to reach an objective conclusion:<\/p>\n

CAIR claims “We believe training by a person with such obvious bias against Islam and Muslims would only serve to heighten concerns American Muslims have about allegations of mistreatment at our nation’s borders.” Conversely, the apostate minister’s supporters argue that “they’re [CAIR] discriminating against him. They’re saying only our kind of Muslim, only someone who has not converted from Islam … only people we approve can work for the US government in the immigration service. That’s not the way it works in the US.”<\/p>\n

Accordingly, only a bit of contextualizing is necessary to understand what this is all about: CAIR does not want an ex-Muslim \u2014 someone well acquainted with Islam \u2014 to impart his knowledge to US officials.<\/p>\n

At other times, reading a report requires more cogitation to get to its ultimate significance. For insistence,\u00a0MEMRI<\/a>\u00a0recently reported that<\/p>\n

The Coptic Church in Egypt has expressed its objection to the US Congress’s appointment of a special envoy for minority affairs in the Middle East and Asia, who would be dealing with the Coptic minority in Egypt. They called on foreign Copts, who supported the appointment, to refrain from dealing with this subject. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the Al-Nahda Party also objected to the appointment, claiming that it constitutes interference in Egypt’s internal affairs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This seems natural enough: Egypt’s religious leadership rejects foreign interference. However, when one realizes\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0a special envoy was created in the first place \u2014 because of the nonstop, documented incidences of persecution of Copts in Egypt \u2014 one is left asking: why would the Coptic Church, which knows better than anyone else the persecution of its flock, reject help? Knowledge of the dynamics of Islam and\u00a0dhimmitude<\/em>\u00a0leads to the conclusion that the Church is being pressured to say that all is well for Christians in Egypt \u2014 or else.<\/p>\n

Finally, when dealing with the MSM, the significance of an Islam-related story must usually be dug out. Consider the following excerpt from a recent\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0piece titled “Behold the Mighty Beard, a Badge of Piety and Religious Belonging”:<\/p>\n

[A]ll over the Muslim world, the full beard has come to connote piety and spiritual fervor. It is such a powerful cultural signifier, in fact, that it inspires non-Muslims, too\u2026. Of course, the beard is only a sign of righteousness. It is no guarantor, as Mr. Zulfiqar [a Muslim interviewee] reminds us: “I recall one gentleman who came back from a trip to Pakistan and remarked to me, ‘I learned one thing: the longer the beard, the bigger the crook.’ His anticipation was people with big beards would be really honest, but he kept meeting people lying to him<\/em>” [italics mine].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This comports especially well for Western readers who naturally agree that outer signs of piety certainly do not signify inner piety. Yet they overlook the inadvertent significance of this quote: in Islam, outer signs of piety on the one hand, and corruption and deceit on the other, are perfectly compatible.\u00a0 After all, the same source \u2014 Muhammad as recorded in the hadith \u2014 that commands Muslims to grow a beard also advocates deception and all sorts of other things hardly associated with Western notions of piety.<\/p>\n

Readers must therefore become sensitive to the gradations of clarity in Western reports on Islam.\u00a0 Whereas many of those produced by the non-MSM make an effort to spell things out, the true significance of MSM reports \u2014 which are consumed by the majority \u2014 must be read between the lines.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92011 Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch When reading Western reports dealing with Islam, one must learn to read between the lines. Many of these reports do state the actual facts; but without providing proper context, Western readers are often left to interpret the information according to their own understandings.<\/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":[29,227,145],"tags":[664,192,1031,1017,1044,30,1016,58],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-CD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2521,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/christian-girls-kidnapped-and-sold\/","url_meta":{"origin":2395,"position":0},"title":"Christian Girls Kidnapped and ‘Sold’","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPageMagazine.com Two teenage Coptic girls, cousins, were recently kidnapped and then \"sold\" in Minya, Egypt \u2014 the same region where a Coptic church was recentlyattacked and desecrated. 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Afterwards, throngs of Muslims gathered around the scorched building and pounded its walls down with sledge hammers \u2014 to cries of \"Allahu Akbar!\" Adding insult to injury, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3441,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/mosques-flourish-while-churches-perish\/","url_meta":{"origin":2395,"position":4},"title":"Mosques Flourish While Churches Perish","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Western tolerance had no mirror in the Islamic world. by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media As Muslims prepare to erect a mega-mosque near the site of the 9\/11 atrocities, it is well to reflect that the sort of tolerance, or indifference, that allows them to do so, is far from reciprocated\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/religion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1964,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-egyptian-militarys-crimes-against-humanity\/","url_meta":{"origin":2395,"position":5},"title":"The Egyptian Military’s Crimes Against Humanity","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Hudson New York Sunday, the\u00a0Egyptian military opened fire on thousands of Christiansprotesting in Maspero, Cairo. In the words of one Christian eyewitness, armored vehicles \"came at great speed and drove into the crowds, going backwards and forwards, mowing people under their wheels. 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