Christopher Hitchens has never done a greater service to mankind than when he coined the phrase sinister piffle. He used it to describe the loathsome anti-Semitism of Cindy Sheehan back when the media gave her a platform for her “anti-war” protests but I have always thought that it was a turn of phrase that deserves to be added to the lexicon of punditry. Sheehan’s sinister piffle was nonsense that could have (and I would argue did) have serious consequences for millions of people when taken seriously. Her efforts to mainstream anti-Semitism (going so far as to have White nationalists involved in her protest, a fact the complicit media ignored) have helped foster the environment of Jew hatred we have today.
Similarly, the recent report released by what we could be excused to have assumed to be the freshman social studies class from Howard Zinn high school (located in central Berkeley between the John Philips father/daughter play center and the Jerry Garcia memorial medical marijuana dispensary) but was in actuality the product of a joint venture between what are believed to be professional researchers from Duke University and U.N.C. is sinister piffle. Anti-Terror Lessons of American Muslims is a poorly researched piece of Jihadist apologia which makes a number of spurious claims and concludes that the threat of terrorism is overblown. It implicitly recommends Americans simply stop worrying about Militant Islam, because Militant Islam is not a threat to Americans.
Piffle! And sinister piffle at that, because unless we believe that the authors of this dull and hamfisted regurgitation of the great Progressive Articles of Faith (The West is always wrong, the “other” is always right, violence is always a reaction to Western aggression) are simply so immersed in the raw post-modernist sewage of academic Marxism the only explanation for a report that so plainly distorts the facts about radicalization and the threat of terror by American Muslims is that it’s propaganda designed to cover for those same terrorists.
One of the most extraordinary claims made by the authors (David Schanzer, Charles Kurzman and Ebrahim Moosa) is that homegrown extremism is an exaggerated threat. They can make that claim because by their own admission they do not count fund-raising or Jihad enabling activities as terrorism and they don’t term any person or group radicalized until they’ve been proven to have participated in violence. They also seem to think the 13 dead and 30 wounded soldiers at Ft. Hood is no big deal.
Understand that this report is claiming that Muslims who call for the death of gays are not radicals until they actually kill one. Rifqa Berry’s parents are not radicals until she’s dead. Those that support the aims and efforts of Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah or any other militant Islamist group aren’t radicals even if they are financially supporting those groups’ murderous efforts. No one’s a radical until the blood flows and the bullets fly. No one is a threat until they have already made good on one.
The three authors’ agenda is as transparent as their attempts to rewrite history with their talk of all the efforts Muslims have been making to de-radicalize young men. This is radical politics disguised as shoddy academics and Duke and U.N.C. should be absolutely ashamed to have their names attached to such sinister piffle.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism has a in-depth debunking of the more outrageous claims, and points out that the paper credits known radical organizations as sources including the Islamic Circle of North America which is the group from which the American Muslims caught in Pakistan were spawned.
h/t Act of America – Raleigh chapter.