OMG, it's a Scary Muslim!

A new article in Foreign Policy magazine caught my eye, and aroused my ire.

Hiding in Plain Sight, is the title, with a subtitle of, "You don't need to get your hands on secret cables to learn that Turkey's foreign minister has a radically different view of the world than American diplomats. Just read his dissertation."

Oh, really? So another nation's Foreign Minister has different ideas from those of our own State Department? News Flash, sweetheart, at least half the population of our own country has very different views from those of the US State Department.

Predictably enough, the article goes downhill from there, offering a breathless expose of the dissertation written by Turkey's FM back in 1990, as though this had somehow been hidden away to conceal sinister intent. Bullshit, the damn thing was written in English and it's been sitting in the library for the last 20 years, available to any fool who cared to read it.

So, what's so sinister in this dissertation? It says that Muslim Society and Western Society have fundamentally different views of the world. It says that Western institutions do not work well when forcibly imposed upon Muslim societies.

Rudyard Kipling, dear reader, told us that over a century ago.

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!


This was written by Kipling in 1887. In this, the author tells us bluntly that we are different, but we are equal, and we can live together in mutual respect.

But no, we can't have that, that would interfere with Israel's agenda.

And so the author embarks upon a long series of slanders, innuendos, and exaggerations, all designed to portray Davutoglu (the Turkish Foreign Minister who wrote the dissertation) as a sinister Islamist with a dark agenda that inevitably leads to a nuclear Jihad, if they don't just murder us all in our beds and carry off our virgin cheerleader daughters to the harem of some swarthy Arab sheikh.

(and yes, one could question whether the phrase "virgin cheerleader" isn't an oxymoron, but let's stick to the main issue, shall we?)

And so this article becomes one more shell in an ongoing bombardment of propaganda, all designed to turn Western public opinion against Turkey, by appealing to the worst fears of that Western audience, by pandering to the lowest common denominator in society, by invoking the hidden leverage of racism and religious prejudice.

And this has been the agenda since Turkey chose to take a hard stance in the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara massacre, what is sometimes called the Gaza Flotilla massacre.

And yet, now that Israel is hard-pressed by huge wildfires, Turkey has sent firefighters to help.

Islam is not our enemy. Muslims are not our enemies. Our enemies are those who would seek to profit through manipulating us into fighting their wars.