This post by Pamela Geller on her Atlas Shrugs blog must be read by anyone considering support for Rick Perry's candidacy. Here are a few excerpts...
It was interesting to see the beclowned Red State, Ace (pronounced ass, I am sure), and the increasingly irrelevant Commentary jump all over me because I exposed Rick Perry's dawah curriculum served up to our young children in the public schools of Texas. It's telling that the "leading lights" of the rightwing blogosphere were so eager to rip me, to the point of journalistic malpractice, without so much as a cursory look at the evidence. Commentary is soft, we know, but did they throw research out along with integrity.
So imagine my surprise when these big blogs went postal when I exposed Rick Perry's dangerous dawah in the Texas public schools. Not only did they shoot first; they didn't ask questions later.
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Someone, somewhere has decided that Perry is the candidate. I have blogged on the strengths and weaknesses of the GOP on the subject of jihad for years. No one so much as yawned. I have pounded Romney on his clueless pandering, when he went so far as to say, "Jihadism Is Not Part of Islam." I criticized Herman Cain for caving to the Muslim Brotherhood. And I applauded Bachmann on her anti-sharia pledge. Nothing. But my exposing of Perry's dangerous pandering unleashed a venomous, rabid rat pack.
Pamela quotes Robert Spencer at length:
Pamela Geller and I are catching hell all over for criticizing the Perry/Aga Khan curriculum about Islam in Texas schools, but here's the thing: the material that David Stein and the Ace of Spades blog are quoting as the Perry/Aga Khan curriculum is not actually part of the curriculum at all.
Ace of Spades is one of those juvenile, leering fratboy blogs that has never appealed to me. The first time this was sent to me, I took a look, saw how inaccurate, fact-free, and contemptuous (to say nothing of contemptible) the presentation was, and hadn't intended to reply. Ace can't even spell Pamela Geller's name right. But as the strange attempt to shut down all skepticism about Rick Perry continues, and people keep sending Ace's post to me, and pointing out that it is being picked up all over, so here goes. And Pamela Geller smacks down Ace here. "So.... Yeah... The New Smear Is That Rick Perry Is a Dhimmi, Huh?," from Ace of Spades, August 26
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One very odd thing about the Aga Khan/Perry curriculum: since this whole brouhaha started, it has been taken offline. It is now available only in cached form here. Why was it taken down? Was the Perry camp embarrassed by the material that Pamela Geller published here ( http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/08/perryaga-curriculum-shocking-example-of-islamic-propaganda-forced-upon-unsuspecting-students-attendi.html ), showing it to be a whitewash of Islamic teaching and history? Or was it taken down because it really is, as Ace says, so "biased against Muslims it will reinforce perceptions [Perry] is some kind of rootin'-tootin' six-gun shooting cowboy yahoo"?
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Ace clearly doesn't know the first, foggiest thing about Islam; after all, it's not the name of a porn mag or a brand of beer. If he did, he would recognize that the claim that "Islamic enmity toward Israel is complicated, but hatred of Jews and Israel can be traced at least to the success of Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda starting in 1933" is itself a whitewash. Islamic antisemitism didn't begin in 1933 or come from the Nazis; it's as old as Islam itself, going back to the Qur'an's designation of the Jews as the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82) and Muhammad's exiles and massacres of the Jews of Arabia. See a full discussion of this question here ( http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/07/muslim-cleric-hitler-was-right-todo-what-he-did-to-the-jews.html ).
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This supposedly tough part of the Perry/Aga Khan curriculum, which you can find in full at this cached link here, is actually not at all the Islamorealistic presentation that Ace and Stein claim it to be. It does contain the material that they quote, but note that in all that, and in all the rest of it, there is absolutely nothing about the Qur'an's or Muhammad's exhortations to violence.
Again, why does that matter? Because if you don't identify the root of the problem correctly, you will continually apply the wrong remedies. The idea that Islam is a Religion of Peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists has led the U.S. to all sorts of policy errors, foreign and domestic: pouring billions in Pakistan, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, treating stateside Islamic supremacist groups with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood as neutral civil rights organizations, etc. If the exhortations to violence and subjugation of unbelievers under Sharia that are contained in Islamic texts and teachings were acknowledged in the public sphere, Muslim groups in the U.S. could be challenged to show what they're doing to teach against such things, and investigated for sedition where appropriate. Instead, law enforcement and government officials constantly trust individuals and groups that are untrustworthy, because they don't understand the smooth ways in which they're being deceived.
Gotta read all of this!
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/08/perry-mafia-punked.html
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