You ought to feel flattered

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Jul 24, 2011 at 20:41

Dr. Pipes, you ought to feel flattered rather than apologetic. Your work seems to becoming "must read" material for everyone interested in Middle Eastern affairs, whether Left or Right, Muslim or Kufr, insane or sane. It is not your fault that bad people read your material. Most intelligent people (and I do not assume people who disagree with me to be stupid) are going to be drawn to material that is well-researched, insightful, and based on someone's doing his homework.

The thing that disturbs me is not whom these various people have read--heck, do the gentle academic Marxists of America feel any shame or embarrassment that they share the study of Marx with the likes of Mao Zedong, Kang Sheng, and Saloth Sar? What bothers me most about the Norwegian bombings is that within minutes, Jihadist websites were crowing about the attack, and did not stop crowing until it became clear that a non-Muslim culprit was apprehended.

But another equally disturbing phenomenon was how, in the wake of the identification of Anders Breivik, the Left blogosphere cheered that a non-Muslim terrorist was nabbed, and immediately began associating him with various critics of their Islamicist clients. To my way of thinking, Anders Behring Breivik isn't the only person with a loose screw who has come to the fore during the past few days.

Dr. Pipes, keep on informing us.

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