The Council on American-Islamic Relations first attacked me in July 1999, angered by an article I wrote in the Los Angeles Times in which I differentiated between two sorts of U.S. Muslims, those who "have no problem being simultaneously patriotic Americans and committed Muslims" and those who "aspire to make the United States a Muslim country." To explain the mentality of the latter, I noted that, "Believing that Islamic civilization is superior to anything American, they promote Islam as the solution to all of the country's ills."
In light of the campaign of vilification that these remarks prompted from CAIR, I read with wry amusement an article in today's Orlando Sentinel by Parvez Ahmed, chairman of CAIR's Florida board, in which he counsels readers not to fear the application of Islamic law in Iraq. He argues that Islamic ways are more democratic and more virtuous than American ones. For example, Ahmed would have us look at the recent making of the Afghan constitution:
The new Afghan constitution shows that the constitution of a Muslim nation can be democratic and yet not contradict the essence of Islam. During my meeting with a high-ranking Afghan delegation during their recent visit to the United states, I was told that the Afghan constitutional convention included Hindu delegates despite Hindus accounting for only 1 percent of the population. Contrast this with our own constitutional convention that excluded women and blacks.
Beyond the ludicrous notion that the (U.S.-sponsored, by the way) loya jirga is somehow superior to Philadelphia 1787, this passage rather neatly exemplifies precisely the belief "that Islamic civilization is superior to anything American," mention of which so irritated CAIR five years ago. (February 23, 2004)
