Knock It Off, Kristoff!

What's with the grovelling apologies to Muslims lately? First there was Martin Peretz's pre-Yom Kippur abject plea for forgiveness. Now, NYT columnist Nicholas Kristoff  is expressing similar regrets. Kristoff is most upset that Americans seem to be slowly waking up to the truth about jihad/sharia, a core Islamic teaching, have become "extreme" and "intolerant," lumping in the masses of good Muslims with the miniscule portion of bad ones. Mr. Kristoff, being ever so much more cultured and refined (though perhaps more than a soupçon more delusional) that the rest of us, wants "to defend Muslims from intolerance." To that end he issues an abject apology for our "bad behaviour":

Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.

In my travels, I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.

But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.

I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.

Yeah, sorry about trying to haul "jihad is the way; sharia is the goal; shut yo' blasphemous mouth, uppity kafir" out of the shadows like that. What were we thinking? Memo to Kristoff: There were tons of "good" Germans during the Weimar era, but that didn't prevent a minority of radical baddies from getting on with their gradiose scheme for global dominance/Jew-extermination. Oddly enough, "gentle souls" don't seem to hold much sway with ideologically-driven totalitarian megalomaniacs. In fact, in case you hadn't noticed, the gentle tend to be first in their line of fire.

As a corrective to the Kristovian squish, I highly recommend watching this.