Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Is TIME Magazine Kafirophobic?

Phyllis Chesler ponders the question in light of the TIME cover story arguing that Americans are--stop me if you've heard this one before--"Islamophobic":
...The article portrays Muslims as innocent victims and American non-Muslims as prejudiced racists who, historically, once banned Catholicism, tried to limit immigration, burned African-American churches, passed anti-Chinese legislation, criminalized certain Native-American rituals (polygamy, rejection of modern medicine), spawned the Ku Klux Klan, failed to elect a Catholic President until 1960, allowed Father Coughlin’s anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi rants to appear over the airwaves, and interned 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War Two. This is all contained in TIME’s “Brief History of Intolerance in America.”
This article could easily appear in an Egyptian or Syrian magazine; however it would be Israel that would be blamed for various alleged atrocities, and Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, even al-Qaeda, who would be seen as the innocent victims.
Muslim leaders, in the name of Islam, killed and forcibly converted Hindus in India for 800 years—and are still persecuting them; they have also destroyed the Christian Church in the Middle East and Central Asia—it is no more; in its place are only mosques and minarets where once only churches stood. Muslims vanquished Zorastrianism and Buddhism, and both exiled and genocidally exterminated Jews, Armenians, and Greeks. According to Israeli historian, Benny Morris, the Arab 1948 war against Israel must now also be understood as a religious holy war, a jihad, one that is still ongoing (“The 1948 War Was an Islamic Holy War,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2010).
TIME magazine fails to note all this—and gives little credence to more recent historical events...
In other words, TIME gives the piece that old Zinn spineroo--America inherently, iredeemably bad; "underdog" "victimized" by American imperialist agressor innately good. One might be a tad concerned about this P.O.V. showing up here were it not for the fact that, as a commenter over at Newsreal blog points out, no one actually reads this rag anymore.

Update: Jonah Goldberg asks:

When, pray tell, will Time magazine devote an issue to its, and this administration’s, intolerance of the American people?
When Hell freezes over? When piggies learn to fly?

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