OK, I'm not one of the Times-bashers, but what kind of messed up question is, "Are you an agent of the US government?"

rozenson, are you kidding? This is standard Times comentary. They sometimes include details about how the interviewee is fat or has dirty nails - if the journalist doesn't agree with them. That is, put irrelevant negative details so as to disparage the person.

This is the paper that never calls a suicide bomber a terrorist. No no no, he or she is a militant. And they always find "symmetry" between the victim and the executioner. You see, the victim didn't like the Palestinian suicide bomber either.

There's no end to excusing Islamic terrorism, just as in another age there was no end to excusing Communism or hiding what Nazis were doing.

I am a liberal because I think liberal ideas are best for governing the society - resources, economy, helath care - you name it, I always like liberal or left-winger programs. That means, I am not a liberal because we liberals are better than conservatives. Among us there are just as many bastards and dictator-loving fellows as among right-wingers. Morally we are not superior, we are just as shitty as they are. Times journalism is a good example of such bastardry - in each generation. Whether it's 1942 or 2008, it doesn't matter.

The comments of this "lady" are at a lowest level than Palin's.

And since they are blessed by an idiot "intelligentsia", no wonder Republicans propaganda ends up having so much weight. When the cultural resistances have been dismantled by one-sided histericals, everything becomes possible.

Islam is antithetical to liberalism, democracy, and the Enlightenment. Islamic scriptures (Koran, Hadith, etc) repeatedly call for the annihilation or completion subjugation of non-believers. This violent, aggressive, totalitarian religion is still very much alive today as it was in the 1,000 years of conquest of the Middle East, North Africa, southeastern Europe, and the Indian subcontinent, vide the testimonials of Brigette Gabriel and other native non-Muslims. Too many of my fellow liberals refuse to see what is in front of them.

Gee Peretz, how could you write this post and take this woman's words as exemplary?

The only remaining thing to be said (and we get almost there, by her comments on the Lebanese as French inheritors) is that Muslims are dirty and smell. It sounds that low.

You know? There are many Muslims trying today to understand their religion in moderate terms and accomodate it to Western humanistic values (for instance trying to find an islamic foundation for human rights). One can mention for example (and I'm only mentioning examples) Bani Sadr (Le Coran et le Pouvoir, Imago, 1993), Kahled Sabou El Fadl (Islam and the Challenge of Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2003), Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im (Toward an Islamic Reformation, Syracuse University Press, 1996) or Ali Abderraziq (L'Islam et les Fondements du Pouvoir, La Découverte, Paris, 1994).

I don't know if that can be a successful theological/philosophical effort. And I am surely not going to discuss that here.

But one thing is for sure: The position of all those moderate good-willing people will be extraordinarily damaged by comments such as the ones made by Brigitte Gabriel and Martin Peretz. For, when hearing them, one is surely not going to become more open to new ways of understanding one's religious tradition. One is going to become resentfully radicalized. If that is the goal Brigitte Gabriel is trying to achieve (other than saying that she is "feminine and sensual" since she got it from the French, very different from the Muslims she grew up with), then she will certainly achieve it...

Marty, Gabriel has been on the campus tour for a number of years now, and I must be very frank: She's a radical Islamophobe. As president of the Penn Israel Coalition I made sure to keep her far away from any pro-Israel organization on campus. I saw the destruction that she caused elsewhere.

"I am a liberal because I think liberal ideas are best for governing the society - resources, economy, helath care - you name it, I always like liberal or left-winger programs. That means, I am not a liberal because we liberals are better than conservatives. Among us there are just as many bastards and dictator-loving fellows as among right-wingers. Morally we are not superior, we are just as shitty as they are. Times journalism is a good example of such bastardry - in each generation. Whether it's 1942 or 2008, it doesn't matter."

Very well said, sleepy.

luispc save us your reading lists, they don't prove a thing, either way.

Sleepy, loved it.  

Hello achester99,

What was the "destruction that she caused elsewhere"?

sleepyavl said:

"I am a liberal because I think liberal ideas are best for governing the society - resources, economy, helath care - you name it, I always like liberal or left-winger programs. That means, I am not a liberal because we liberals are better than conservatives. Among us there are just as many bastards and dictator-loving fellows as among right-wingers. Morally we are not superior, we are just as shitty as they are. Times journalism is a good example of such bastardry - in each generation. Whether it's 1942 or 2008, it doesn't matter."

Speaking as a moderate Republican (one of the few left in the world), and someone who usually does not support most liberal programs, you sound like a very smart liberal and somebody I could get behind.  I will gladly admit there are many sh*tty conservatives like Limbaugh, Coulter and Cheney (among many others).  It's just refreshing to find a liberal that recognizes there are some sh*tty liberals running around too.

A few years ago, I considered TNR a left-of-center publication, which is why I have subscribed for a few years.  (Even though I'd prefer a right-of-center publication, but I haven't been able to find any - just far right nonsense).  More recently, I consider it a left-wing front for Obamamania.  So it is not likely I will be renewing my subscription when the time comes, although anything is possible, I suppose.

achester99 said:  " I made sure to keep her far away from any pro-Israel organization on campus. I saw the destruction that she caused elsewhere."

Meaning what?  How can you "keep her away from pro Israel organizations" on campus?

Someone way back when once sagely defined a conservative (or maybe now they would say a neocon) as a liberal who has been mugged.  Anyone knowing anything about the history of Lebanon should understand that many, if not not most, Lebanese Christians feel that they have been mugged and then some, first by the Sunnis (especially the Palestinians) and increasingly now by the Shi'ites.  Ergo, it should not be surprising that Gabriel buried here parents in Israel.  Another reason:  She can safely visit here parents' graves here whenever she wants to, something that cannot be assumed in Lebanon.

Deborah Solomon's comments are classical NY Times-ese; indeed she seems like a worthy successor to Times reporter Walter Duranty who won a Pulitzer for his glowing reports about the Stalin & the USSR's successful conversion to a socialist economy back in the late '20's - early '30's.  Needless to say, his reports were all fabricated, and constitute one of the earliest demonstrations of a fundamental law of nature that political correctness is inversely proportional to factual correctness.

Solomon clearly is an adherent of political correcticism.  Maybe even a high priestess.

BTW, to the best of my knowledge the NY Times never publicly repudiated Duranty and reportedly it was only recently that they removed his Pulitzer from the display case of journalistic awards in the NY Times building.  Intellectual honesty clearly is not a strong point at the Times.

Hershel Ginsburg

Jerusalem / Efrata

I didn't let her come to campus with any of the organizations that I had control of. I didn't want her to represent the pro-Israel community on my campus because she is a radical bigot who feeds into what the anti-Israel people want to portray our entire community as being. Of course we are not, but she is. So why would we allow her to come?

achester99 it's a free speech issue and not a Chester issue.

Ginzy

You are correct. Duranty's dispatches were invented at the offices of the COMINTERN and the Times has never repudiated either Duranty or his stories. Nor has the Times ever apologized to its readers or in any way publicly acknowledged that anything so scurrilous had ever occurred.

Also, some clarification of the University of Michigan footbaths is in order. The incident occurred at the Dearborn campus of the U-M, where there is a significant Muslim student population, not at the main campus in Ann Arbor. The Dearborn administrators were faced with a problem; namely, the unsightly and unhygienic messes Muslim students were creating in the restrooms.

Consider their options: Ban the "free exercise of religion" and place guards in every rest room, risking the political fallout, not to mention student protests (or threats of violence), or build the damn footbaths and salvage the cleanliness of the restrooms at the cost of the countervailing fallout their decision provoked.