Remember when we went from anti-communism to anti anti-communism? Well the author makes the point that what we have now is anti anti-Islamism. Witness the fact that a reactionary, terror supporter named Yusuf Islam (fka Cat Stevens) who supported murdering Salman Rushdie and is a Hamas supporter who was put on a “no fly” list by the Bush administration, was allowed to perform at Jon Stewart’s “Rally for Sanity” – there is nothing sane about Cat Stevens or any Islamist. Sadly we have seen this all before. There were scores of pseudo intellectuals who throughout the Cold War or even during the Stalinist Terror of the 1930’s, claimed that the stories of Communist atrocities were outright lies or over blown – and that the real threat was capitalism and/or the United States. They formed “Peace Groups” which were for “peace” only if it assured a Soviet victory.
by Lee Smith
When Cat Stevens was introduced at Jon Stewart’s recent “Rally to Restore Sanity,” the musician also known by his Muslim name Yusuf Islam was greeted with warm applause and howls of approval. It was a strange reception coming from a culturally savvy, mostly twentysomething audience, for while Stevens’s songs are a staple in the 1970s schlock-folk canon, he is best known these days for having supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa demanding the execution of novelist Salman Rushdie.
Stevens has tried to whitewash his record over the years, without ever acknowledging or apologizing for his comments, including his response to a British interviewer’s question as to whether he would attend a demonstration to burn an effigy of the writer; Stevens answered glibly that he “hoped that it’d be the real thing.”
“I don’t know why no one in that crowd booed Stevens, or heckled him when he was introduced,” says the British author Nick Cohen, who was in contact with Rushdie after the rally. “Rushdie phoned Stewart, who said he was sorry if it upset him, but it was clear Stewart didn’t really care.”
Presumably what mattered to Stewart and the rally’s cosponsor Stephen Colbert was less Stevens’s willingness to join in the bloodlust of the Islamic Republic of Iran (the fatwa has been reaffirmed by Iran’s current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei) than the fact that Stevens/Islam had been put on a no-fly list by the Bush administration. Never mind that the folk singer had been identified as having donated to a Muslim charity with ties to Hamas; anyone considered unfriendly by Bush is an ally.
Stewart may be just a comedian, as he himself habitually justifies his excesses, but that gives even more reason for concern. It means the rehabilitation of a terrorist sympathizer has now hit the mainstream. What we’re seeing is something akin to the Cold War-era phenomenon of anti-anti-Communism. The anti-anti-Communist left, comprising large sections of the press, academy, and even federal bureaucracies, was simply incapable of understanding that the defense of American civil liberties did not depend on the uncritical defense of the rights of Communists. Call this latest manifestation of liberal illogic anti-anti-Islamism.
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Read the rest here: Anti-Anti-Islamism
Tags: Lee Smith
