What Do You Call a Racist Muslim?

Congressional hearings on the threat of radical Muslims have renewed accusations of racism and Islamophobia. A doubt about Muslims anywhere is an attack on Islam everywhere. At least in the eyes of our xenophile Progressives and Democrats.

One thing I find interesting about the multiculturalists is that the liberals and leftists who are most likely to be grounded in the actual realities of countries like Egypt and Turkey are those who are giving advice about them to travelers. They cannot adopt the “West bad, everyone else good” attitude that most leftists seem to have, because it can be dangerous. They need to give advice that is based on the realities of the country they are giving advice about.

That’s John Pepple, who runs a blog called I Want a New Left. He has spent significant time in Cairo, and was vacationing in Turkey a few weeks ago when the Arab world was on fire.

Perhaps it is true that only a small minority of Muslims in the United States seek jihad. But also very many of the Muslims in the U.S.A. are recent immigrants or children of recent immigrants. Their culture is something other than American. And despite all the bashing it receives from lefties, American culture is uniquely tolerant of diversity.

The Arab and Muslim world, so staunchly defended by those who see it only across an ocean, is not kind to those who are not their kind:

In Egypt I was given a briefing by Westerners at the little school I went to, and one thing that struck me was their claim that in Egypt people don’t understand atheism and in fact only acknowledge three religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. No Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Wicca, etc. In Turkey, the Lonely Planet’s Istanbul City Guide says that “Turkey is not ethnically diverse. This means that travelers who are Asian or black stand out as being different and can be treated unacceptably as a consequence” (p. 228). In both cases, liberals and leftists would be angry about how reactionary the people were in both these countries, if their guilt about Western imperialism weren’t distorting their vision so much.

[emphasis in the original]

The Religion of Peace breeds cultures of intolerance. What do you call a racist Muslim?

Faithful.