COPENHAGEN — When a would-be assassin disguised as a postman shot at — and just missed — the head of Lars Hedegaard, an anti-Islam polemicist and former newspaper editor, this month, a cloud of suspicion immediately fell on Denmark’s Muslim minority.I had just finished reading Andrew Higgins' article (lede above) in my morning's edition of the International New York Times (as the International Herald Tribune is soon to be known), and was going to comment here, on the moral equivalence therein. To wit: the moral equivalence of saying that the person who resists violent extremism and the violent extremist are two sides of the same coin, as the article explicitly suggests. That's complete nonsense of course.
Then I find that Robert Spencer has done the job for me, and much better, in his skewering of Andrew Higgins' own "odious" article on Lars Hedegaard, the Danish journalist who was nearly murdered last month by a gun-toting Danish muslim.
Harris' last para:
“There is no such thing as ‘moderate’ Islam, and there never has been,” Mr. Hedegaard said. “There may be shades of opinion among Muslims, but as a totalitarian system of thought, Islam has remained unchanged for at least 1,200 years.”To this we're no doubt supposed to react with horror: Hedegaard is clearly "Islamophobic"! Problem is, it's true. In 2007, Turkish PM, Erdogen made the same point:
"These descriptions are very ugly; it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate [sic] Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it." ( Milliyet, Turkey). [Ref]"Islam is Islam".... And what it is, is in the "Trinity" of Islam's core documents. It hasn't changed, as Hedergaard notes, and it can't, on pain of death for being a blasphemer.
So either the Turkish PM is an "Islamophobe" himself, or both he and Hedergaard are right. (hint: They're both right....)
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LATER (2 March '13): The reliable Bostom on the above: "The New York Times Demonizes Hedegaard" and "Spot the 'Xenophobic Butcher'"LATER (8 March '13): Diana West's evisceration of the Higgins article, here. Via here.
