The liberal lie about Muslims in India, served up in the classic Time manner

Evan H. sent an article from Time magazine, “Behind the Mumbai Massacre: India’s Muslims in Crisis,” along with this note:

The answer to India’s woes is waiting for you at the end of this incredibly mendacious article, if you can make it through the whole thing.

LA replied:

A typical, evil, article from Time. Throughout the article, the author, Aryn Baker, claims that “discrimination” against India’s Muslims is the cause of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. The truth of course is that “discrimination” or “oppression” is the way Muslims ALWAYS see the world so long as they are not in charge, because, as said over and over in the Koran, any failure by any people anywhere to submit themselves to Allah and his prophet is a perversely sinful act and an unbearable insult to Allah that must be avenged by eternal tortures. But then in the last two paragraphs of the article, Baker suddenly changes tack and speaks the basic truth about Islam I just referred to, that what Muslims want is not an end of some supposed discrimination against them, what they want is to rule. She writes:

Still, many South Asian Muslims insist Islam is the one and only force that can bring the subcontinent together and return it to preeminence as a single whole. “We [Muslims] were the legal rulers of India, and in 1857 the British took that away from us,” says Tarik Jan, a gentle-mannered scholar at Islamabad’s Institute of Policy Studies. “In 1947 they should have given that back to the Muslims.” Jan is no militant, but he pines for the golden era of the Mughal period in the 1700s, and has a fervent desire to see India, Pakistan and Bangladesh reunited under Islamic rule.

That sense of injustice [emphasis added; she’s admitting that “injustice” to the Muslims is not a condition in which Muslims are discriminated against, but a condition in which Muslims are not ruling] is at the root of Muslim identity today. It [meaning Muslims’ anger at the fact that Islam does not rule India] has permeated every aspect of society, and forms the basis of rising Islamic radicalism on the subcontinent. “People are hungry for justice” [“justice” meaning Islamic rule], says Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of the new book Descent Into Chaos. “It is perceived to be the fundamental promise of the Koran.” These twin phenomena—the longing many Muslims have to see their religion restored as the subcontinent’s core, and the marks of both piety and extremism Islam bears—reflect the lack of strong political and civic institutions in the region for people to have faith in. If the subcontinent’s governments can’t provide those institutions, then terrorists such as the Trident’s mysterious caller, will continue asking questions. And providing their own answers.

So Baker admits at the end of this 2,500 word article that it’s not “discriminatory” treatment that bothers the Muslims, but the fact that Islam is not in charge. But having made that admission, she then segues, in the penultimate sentence, to the idea that the injustice consists of a “lack of strong political and civic institutions in the region for people to have faith in.” Injustice as the absence of Islamic rule has morphed into some generic lack of institutions people can believe in. Then she says that unless the subcontinent’s governments—but from the context it’s clear she really means India’s government—can provide those institutions, Islamic terrorism will continue. She thus has switched back to the theme that she had dishonestly pursued through the whole article up to her brief, honest admission in the article’s last two paragraphs that what Muslims want is Muslim rule. As long as India is withholding from its Muslim population “institutions they can believe in,” India is mistreating the Muslims, and Muslim terrorism will continue. However, though Baker has reverted to the liberal lie that what enrages Muslims is discrimination, she has not canceled out her admission of the non-liberal truth that what enrages Muslims is the absence of Islamic rule.

The liberal lie about Islam and the non-liberal truth about Islam thus co-exist in the last sentence of the article. The formal meaning of the last sentence—the politically correct, liberal meaning that the reader is intended to absorb—is: “As long as India continues mistreating Muslims, there will be Muslim terrorism, therefore India must stop mistreating Muslims or get what it deserves.” But the real meaning of the last sentence—the meaning the author has admitted and is now covering up—is: “As long as non-Muslim institutions rather than Muslim institutions rule India, there will be Muslim terrorism.”

At the end of the article, the average reader will go on believing the liberal lie, skillfully implanted in him or her by Aryn Baker, that there’s something that India can do and is morally obligated to do that will be “fair” to the Muslims, and that as long as India withholds that fair treatment from the Muslims, the resulting Muslim terrorism is India’s fault. But the non-liberal truth that has actually been admitted and is now being concealed is that Islamic terrorism against India will continue so long as India refuses to submit itself to Islam.

LA to Evan H.:

Thanks much for sending, and, very helpful, for your note that gave me a clue of what to look for.

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Stephen Hopewell writes:

As well as being a piece of Muslim propaganda (note the Muslim co-authorship), the article represents the liberal template applied to ANY minority aggression directed at the majority society. As a game, I tried rewriting some of the sentences in the article for another minority group. I seriously think the main purpose of modern education is to train people to think and write this way.

Of course, this style of analysis developed in response to minority problems that were not existential threats in the way Islam is.

• The roots of African-American rage run deep in the United States, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many African Americans believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country’s largest minority group.

• The disparities between African-Americans, which make up 12.2 percent of the population, and the white population, which hovers at around 65 percent, are striking. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking African-Americans have shorter life spans, worse health, lower literacy levels, and lower-paying jobs.

• “The promise of the Civil Rights Movement was never fulfilled,” says Toni Morrison. “Is it any wonder resistance to white society continues to this day?”

• From this period of introspection two rival movements emerged—Afro-centric groups blamed the condition of African-Americans on the loss of black culture and solidarity. Others embraced the ways of white society, seeking advancement through the pursuit of education, organization, and activism. . These twin phenomena—the longing many African-Americans have to live in a black-majority society with its own, non-Western, cultural identity, and the violence and disorder of large segments of African-American society—reflect the lack of strong political and civic institutions in the nation for people to have faith in.

Doesn’t it show the hell of the liberal mind? What elaborate structures must be built to compensate for the missing truth—that racial, religious, and cultural differences are real and that they matter.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 28, 2008 03:00 PM | Send