RUTHFULLY YOURS

Take the Jewel of Medina, a novel romanticizing Mohammed’s sexual abuse of a nine year old girl, canceled after Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Middle-Eastern studies sent an email to Random House calling the book a “declaration of war” and warning them that publishing it would expose its employees to terrorist attacks. Random House complied out of concern for “the safety and security of the Random House building and employees.”

Denise Spellberg’s book Jihad was an example of the outsourcing of terrorist threats and hit lists to the Western enablers of Islamic terrorism. Who needs Osama bin Laden or one of his successors to film a video six months too late, when a University of Texas professor can fire off an email easing the workload of busy terrorists.

Ward Churchill called those who were murdered on September 11, “little Eichmanns”, a term later picked up by radical leftist, Chris Hedges. But Denise Spellberg and her ilk are “little Bin Ladens.” And there are plenty of “little Bin Ladens” hard at work.

The Center for American Progress’ “Fear Inc.” report had its “little Bin Ladens” who assembled a list of terrorism researchers and critics of Islam, with the aid of at least one author affiliated with a Muslim Brotherhood front group– and then passed the buck to the Muslim world.

Iran’s PressTV picked up the report focusing on the individual names. Frank Gaffney, David Horowitz, David Yerushalmi, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Steve Emerson and many others are given their own paragraph by the press agency of a regime where blaspheming against Islam is a crime that leads to imprisonment or even death.

What followed was predictable.

“We know exactely who they are,” wrote ‘Muslim Waffen SS’. “Still is a blessing until some one eliminate them,” wrote another commenter.

“I’m sure these people would not be given any sort of punishment for spreading hate and lies to people. I think something should be done about this,” Salma wrote.

Will someone “do something” about this? It’s quite possible. The Muslim world has a long history of doing things about people who offend them in any way. From Salman Rushdie to Molly Norris, once the hit list is assembled, it’s only a matter of time until the target has to go into hiding.

The publisher of the Jewel of Medina had his home firebombed and the author received numerous death threats, and the man who helped set off the furor was connected to the most radical of the authors of the “Fear Inc.” report.

Wajahat Ali’s hateful rhetoric often appeared at AltMuslim.com, a site created by Shahed Amanullah, who distributed a report to Muslims on Denise Spellberg’s book Jihad. His report was picked up by a Shiite site that dubbed it: “A new attempt to slander the Prophet of Islam.”

The attempted murder and the death threats couldn’t be blamed on the “little Bin Ladens” of the book jihad; just like the death threats received by terrorism researchers like Robert Spencer can’t be blamed on the “little Bin Ladens” busily toiling away at the Center for American Progress.

But if Iran gets its ideas from the Center for American Progress, where does the Center gets its ideas from? Curiously enough the answer may be Iran.

Iran’s PressTV is an arm of IRIB, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, which had attributed all tensions between Muslims and Westerners to a Zionist conspiracy. During the Rushdie affair, the Iranian official statement breaking diplomatic ties with the UK blamed the publication of the book on the “Agents of International Zionism.”

The Center for American Progress report follows the same line, blaming the negative view that Americans have of Islam on a handful of Jews, and the Iranian coverage of the report has highlighted the Jewish aspect of it, even beyond the already troubling notes in the CAP report.

This idea is so appealing because it allows Muslims to shift the blame for the anger caused by their own actions to a convenient scapegoat– the Jews. And for those who accept the CAP and IRIB view that the negative view of Islam is caused by a handful of Jews, then it naturally follows from there that getting rid of those Jews will improve relations with America.

That is how the Center for American Progress list so very easily becomes a hit list. Its seductive reasoning selects a group of people for Muslims to blame, and if some of the readers of the report or the Iranian coverage of it decide that “something needs to be done about this”, then there will be plausible deniability on the part of the little Bin Ladens.

The CAP report began by blaming Breivik’s actions on the “Islamophobes”, but if they really believe that then what do its authors think they are doing by supplying bigoted propaganda to a regime whose scapegoating and calls for genocide have become too loud for even most on the left to ignore?

Ahmadinejad could hardly ask for better propaganda than a report from a major American think-tank that supports what he and the Mullahs have been claiming all along– that all their problems with the West are caused by a Jewish conspiracy.

Breivik was only one man, but Iran sits at a global nexus of terrorist organizations whose reach stretches from Asia to South America and across the Middle East. Its nuclear weapons program means that it will soon have the ability to kill millions at the push of a button. What then do the “little Bin Ladens” think they are doing?

There are two possible answers. One, they don’t actually believe anything they said about what motivated Breivik. Two, they do believe it and the little Bin Ladens are making sure that the billion Breiviks of Islam pick the right target.