"Islam...is not moderate:" Islam must modernize [or else be marginalized]!

You're probably right, but this is a very hard time for law-abiding American Muslims. Even before 9/11, one of my friends--who had come to this country from Egypt--was considering going back home because he wasn't really sure he felt welcome in this culture. We lost touch; I don't know where he is now.

Every time I see a conservative columnist suggest that we should ship all American Muslims "back home," I think of German rhetoric from the 1930s about a "Jew-free Europe." When I go back to the speeches from the period, the sentiment is frighteningly similar.

Things are looking up, but this is clearly going to be a long-term problem. I'm pretty much helpless to stop it; the only thing I can do to help is reliably bark every time anti-Islamic bigotry is expressed within earshot.


Cheers,

 

I have a better idea. Why don't all organized religions sit down and shut-up, so we agnostics can have a little peace and quiet for a change.

 

Tom:

I think you are wrong about CAIR. My own scattered reading on them puts them in a very negative light. I do not claim to be an expert on them, but CAIR representatives have made too many threats against journalists to be considered a reputable civil-rights organization.

You cite parallels to the Nazis. If Muslim bigots did not routinely quote Nazi screeds against the Jews and use the language of biological antisemitism, non-bigoted Muslims might have a smaller mountain to get over in terms of public acceptance. It is not "nazi" to object to the promulgation of Nazi views.

You're right about Farid Esack. He is an eloquent apologist (and another fine Souf Efrican product!) for a version of Islam able to function in a pluralistic society.

The best thing that those who wish to see Islam as workable within the context of Western freedom could do, would be to promote or fund translation of Bosnian and Albanian Muslim writings into English. Of course, Islamo-Fascists see my fellow Balkanoids as tainted because they're European. Wahhabist cash poured into both countries in order to subvert their versions of Islam. Didn't work (surprise, surprise). Because of the blind eye of political correctness, it did work to a disturbing degree here. Irreversibly? I hope not.

 

Now, this is odd--I've never seen them make a threat against a journalist (except for lawsuit threats, of course, but that's par for the course for civil rights organizations). Do you have more specific information?

I don't recall supporting or defending biological antisemitism, or claiming that there is no such thing as a Muslim bigot--and I would take issue with anyone who supports either view. What I object to (and what I'm sure you also object to) is the demonization of a rich and diverse religious culture made up of over one billion people based on the actions of a few of its least pleasant apologists.

This is something I've never heard before, but it certainly makes sense. Do you know of any English translations of Bosnian or Albanian Muslim writings that have already been put into press? I'd be interested in reading some of this.

I certainly don't identify Islam with Wahhabism, but I'm afraid you're right. Americans tend to more often than not now, and I think that's probably a major factor in contemporary American anti-Muslim sentiment. History has shown that radical theocrats tend to be pretty scary folks regardless of where they hang their prayer beads. But none of the Muslims I've ever associated with could be accurately described as radical theocrats, and they don't deserve to be lumped together with the Torquemadas of their faith. This is why I'm inclined to support CAIR; they're the only organization that really attacks this problem on a serious, persistent basis.


Cheers,

 

I agree.

I've noticed an interesting parallel to that on atheist discussion groups.

Atheists tend to paint Christians with the most extreme of fundamentalist brushes. Despite being a religious agnostic, I have too much respect for the subtlety of the Christian tradition to accept caricatures, so I objected.

And what happened? The atheists all started arguing for Biblical inerrancy and literalism. They informed me that whoever it was, from Paul Tillich to John Scotus Erigena weren't really Christians at all. They wanted to hear nothing of higher Biblical criticism (conducted by Christians themselves). They had no time for the Christian mystics.

I faced the spectacle of atheists quoting Biblical passages at me as proof texts. If I didn't know their motivation, I would have thought that I was facing street corner fire-and-brimstone preachers.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

Perhaps many of the most militant atheists really are fundies, strugging with the loss of their own personal faith. People from more relaxed bakgrounds are probably more relaxed, and feel no need for atheist militancy.

Perhaps it's fear. If they fear Christianity, then they assume the worst. Christianity darkens and descends into being something that would rationally justify their fear. The problem is that the causality is reversed. The nature of the phenomenon doesn't cause the fear so much as the fear causes the phenomenon to be perceived as threatening.

And perhaps it's the desire to create straw men. The more indefensible Christianity seems to be to them, the easier it is for them to demolish it.

Well, perhaps there's an analogy with how Islam is perceived. After all, when confonted with Islam we are all de-facto atheists, whether or not we accept or reject Christianity. And perhaps we are acting much as my militant atheists acted. The Islam that we perceive becomes a caricature.

Nobody wants to hear about spiritually developed Sufis. They are unmoved by Islamic modernism of the sort one sees in places like Turkey. They truly seem to want fire-breathing mullahs and women in burqahs.

Just as the people on alt.atheism have wet dreams about Jerry Falwell and Biblical creationism.

I'm not denying that many Muslims have a scarily medieval worldview. I expect that the percentage that do is a lot higher with them than with us, for multiple reasons.

But it's probably a serious mistake to paint them with too broad a brush. We can't refuse to see the diversity and subtlety that exists within Muslim culture. They don't all think alike and they don't all agree with one another.

 

Tom:
CAIR reps threatened Daniel Pipes and some other Jewish journalists.

My point about Nazis was that as long as state-sponsored and other Arab Muslim media reprint and quote Nazi propaganda, reasonable Muslims have a gratuitous PR problem here which is not of their own making, and which is not helped by the PC blind eye turned to this vile stuff.

No, I do not know of much Balkan Muslim stuff in English; a few things by Izetbegovic, nothing, so far as I know, by Albanians. Maybe the Bektashi tekke in Taylor(?), Michigan or the Albanian mosque in Harper Woods, Michigan might be sources. The late Bektashi master Baba Rexhep was a great exemplar, as was the imam of the Albanian mosque when I was a kid, Vehbi Ismail (if he's alive he's well into his 90s).

Farid Esack, Fazlur Rahman, S.H. Nasr, and, for that matter, the Aga Khan are a few non-Balkan reps of what might be called civil-society Islam. When I was a kid, Jinnah and Ataturk [sorry, can't make umlauts] were heroes of mine.

The distinguisher is simple: which Muslim advocacy groups are Saudi (or other Islamo-Fascist) funded, and which aren't? An accurate delineation of that line would go far to solving the problem which you and I have, from rather different viewpoints, jointly lamented.

 

CAIR opposes the nomination of Daniel Pipes to the board of the United States Institute of Peace, as do I. Dr. Pipes is best known for Campus Watch, a controversial web site that had at one point posted an enemies list of American professors deemed unsympathetic towards Israel or overly sympathetic towards Palestinians. Since 9/11, he has consistently supported measures that would make the lives of American Muslims difficult, arguing that such measures are sometimes necessary (apparently using the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII as an example). Whatever one's opinion of his political views and unorthodox methods, it seems to me that he is a poor choice for the USIP.

While CAIR has opposed his nomination, I have seen no evidence that they've threatened him, nor have I seen any evidence that they've threatened any Jewish journalists. I'm serious about this, unc; show me any evidence that CAIR has done this sort of thing, and I will immediately remove myself from their mailing lists and find a new civil rights group to support.


Cheers,

 

(By "threatened" I mean, of course, violent or criminal threats--not the threats of lawsuits, boycotts, and letter-writing campaigns that civil rights groups ordinarily make, unless the threat is antisemitic in character.)

 

There was an extensive article in Commentary magazine on the threats by CAIR representatives--they were threats of physical harm and death threats, not threats of boycott, etc. This was a couple of years ago, if memory serves. Some will doubtless point out that Commentary is a neoconservative magazine, and others that it is (gasp) Jewish, and therefore dismiss whatever was said as Zionist-imperialist propaganda. I was startled by the article, since CAIR is a fixture in my home town. Having myself been the target of death threats many many years ago by some gentlemen in white sheets, the language quoted in the Commentary article was depressingly authentic-sounding.

I wish I could give you the exact reference, but I cannot. I am, however, quite clear on what I read and the culprits named.

I am also clear on the hatred that Daniel Pipes inspires. How to characterize that hatred I leave to others.

Tom, I know you are a person of good will and that you will research this. If you track down the reference to which I have alluded, please post it. I would like to have it again myself.

 

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/321

Hi Tom: I did not think I could find it, but here is (I hope) a working link to a full reprint of the article on Pipes' website.

 

Thanks for this, unc. I can see why this sounds distressing, but because Daniel Pipes and CAIR have a history, I'm going to try to surgically dissect the raw data from the conclusions:

"CAIR regularly sends out "action alerts" to instigate dozens or even hundreds of protests, many of them vulgar and aggressive . . ."

It doesn't surprise me that folks would write inappropriate antisemitic or violent letters to organizations in response to action alerts; this is a very difficult problem to avoid, as Worldnetdaily's folks would no doubt agree (see the earlier CAIR link about Worldnetdaily, where they mention receiving death threats from WND readers--but not, of course, from WND itself). Perhaps this is why CAIR concluded its most recent Pipes nomination alert with:

"IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUESTED: (As always, be POLITE and RESPECTFUL.) . . ."

If I remember correctly, Dr. Pipes included no such recommendation when he provided information on how to reach a significant number (some hundreds, if I recall) of American university professors who had been branded anti-Israel. Whether he should have gone out of his way to do this is a debatable point, but it's hard to see what CAIR has done in this respect that Worldnetdaily and Dr. Pipes have not also done from time to time.

Dr. Pipes is, incidentally, very careful in his article about CAIR to refer to vulgar emails and such within the context of "CAIR supporters," or "CAIR-inspired" movements, or "letter writing campaign." Although he cites many examples of these offensive letters and emails, he does not (as far as I can tell) state at any time that any violent or antisemitic messages ever came from CAIR at all; just from some of its supporters.

"As for its other goal - promoting Islamism in the United States - CAIR focuses on the single tactic of trying to silence those who have anything critical to say about Islam . . ."

A few of those points (I can't go through all of them in less than 3000 lines, but would be happy to further investigate any specific incidents that you find troubling):

* Dallas Morning News: CAIR's objection was not to "revealing the Hamas infrastructure in Texas"; it was to the controversial methods used to reveal said infrastructure. A (one-sided) web site criticizing the DMN (and explaining the situation in greater depth) can be found here:
http://www.dallasnotnews.com/

* Journal of the American Medical Association: CAIR's objection had to do with specific language and historical references found in the controversial article. The original action alert from CAIR can be found here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4vln1r%24mnn%40sjx-ixn3.ix.netcom.com&output=gplain

* The Simon Wiesenthal Center and Khomeini: The complaint was not particularly vitriolic, and focused as much on the Wiesenthal museum's decision not to mention Balkan Muslim victims of the Holocaust as it did on the alleged Hitler-Khomeini comparison. Judge for yourself; the original action alert from CAIR can be found here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6678rd%24mif%40usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu&output=gplain

Bottom line: CAIR has a problem with mischievous and embarrassing supporters, but then political groups often do. CAIR has a tendency to overreact to perceived bias, but then civil rights groups often do. The tone of the article suggests a major, fundamental scandal, but the behavior it actually credits to CAIR itself does not appear to be violent or antisemitic.


Cheers,

 

Bill, I think you're on to something. I think there's a zero-sum game there--it's a little bit of a downer to think "my worldview versus all others," so one way to make things easier is to act as if there are only really two worldviews, yours and the one you can't stand, and that everyone falls somewhere along that spectrum. And since it's hard to pretend that everything is a battle between Christianity and atheism when you have Thomas Merton and Albert Camus sitting there side by side with uncannily similar ways of looking at things, one way to preserve that tension is to redefine the terms in their most exclusionary sense. Maybe this is why I'll find folks on both sides saying things like "I can respect a real hard-core [conservative Christian/strong atheist] because those folks are honest, but don't give me any of that [liberal/agnostic] crap."


Cheers,

 

I haven't quite figured out what Zionist-imperialist propaganda is supposed to be yet (given that I'm an American studying Jewish philosophy, it could probably be accurately applied to me), but would be very interested in knowing more about this article (author? title?) if it wasn't the Pipes piece. I have access to InfoTrac, and can probably read it there. I suspect the McGuffin would be a very flexible definition of "representative," but I'd certainly be willing to give it a read anyway.


Cheers,

 

Tom: thanks for the thoughtful discussion. I believe we will have to disagree about CAIR. Frankly, if future history (is that a term?) proves you right and me wrong, I couldn't be happier.

As far as research goes, there is a useful organization called MEMRI, Middle East Media Research Institute or something like that, which diligently translates stuff we usually don't see from the Middle Eastern press. Having long since forgotten the little Arabic I once knew, it's a help.

While I'm at it, NYU Press has reissued Majid Fakhry's modern-English interpretation of the Quran in a very nice bilingual, hardback edition, with some sort of imprimatur from al-Azhar University in Egypt.

 

Thanks for this, unc; I'll keep you up to date if anything weird arises. I have such high hopes for CAIR because I feel there's an urgent need for a Muslim civil rights group in America right now, but if your gut tells you there's something not quite right about this particular organization, I can certainly respect that.

I once tried to learn Arabic via a correspondence course from the University of Wisconsin, but failed miserably; my calligraphy was terrible, I was unable to grasp pronunciation based on the tapes, and the learning style of the course was very linear and rote. I'd like to take a crack at it again one day, but there are so many other languages I need to learn that I don't know if I'll ever get around to it.

Thanks, unc; I will have to get my hands on that. Right now I'm using the Pickthall (Mentor Books) translation, which is very readable but (to put it mildly) a little dated.

I'll also check out the other authors you've suggested; I've unconsciously placed my research emphasis on Islam as it's represented in the Arab world, despite the fact that over 80% of Muslims live elsewhere. I really need to broaden my horizons when it comes to Islamic studies.


Cheers,

 

YOU PEOPLE DO NOT GET IT!

The issue is not, as Tom Head and Bill Dayson and others seem to believe, a question of biased sources: the text that heads this thread IS NOT from "Why I am Not a Muslim," but merely a thoughtful piece by the same author of that book. If you confise the two, you create a straw man, and go on to confuse straw with the point made.

Despite Tom's (and others) protestations to the contrary, Islam IS intolerant! Few Jews are left in the Arab world; most have been expelled from it since the creation of Israel, while Israel accords--what is it? a million or so Arabs full rights of citizenship to vote and be represented in the Knesset.

Islam practices dhimmitude--the legal subordination of "the people of the book." When those living at such sufferance in Turkey, the Christian Armenians, were seen to have violated it, reverting to a state of war between Infidel and non-Muslim in their minds, the 20th century's first genocide commenced (1915-17), becoming the model which Hitler sought to improve upon. Estimates range from 600,000 to 2 million deaths. Even today, Judaism cannot be legally practiced in such Arab nations as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. (And when a caller raised the issue with Noam Chomsky on C-SPAN last weekend, the "wise" man simply ignored it.)

The Koranic penalty for apostasy--leaving the religion--is death, which is why Warraq is anonymous. Those who consort with the infidel tend to be assassinated, such as Anwar Sadat in 1981, and Dr. Faraq Foda of Egypt in 1992. Foda was leaving the offices of a society called "Enlightenment" that promoted the right of Egyptians to disseny from conventional Islamic beliefs when he was gunned down. The Islamic terroist organisation, Gama Islamiyya, claimed credit for merely enforcing the word of the Koran against apostsasy, and "cited an opinion issued by the ulama [community of Believers] of Al-Azhar." M. Viorst, "In the Shadow of the Prophet," 32.) Many sects in Islam agree.

Consider totalitarian content of a manifesto issued on behalf of the authoritative Islamic Council of Europe:

"The religion of Islam embodies the final and most complete word of God....Departmentalization of life into different watertight compartments, religious and secular, sacred and profane, spiritual and material is ruled out....***Islam is not a religion in the western understanding of the word. It is a faith and a way of life, a religion and a social order, a doctrine and a code of conduct, a set of values and principles, and a social movement to realize them in history.***" [emphasis added.]
(Quoted in "Islam's War Against The West: Can It Abide The Secular State?" by philosopher Antony Flew--one of the few to predict 9/11 after the WTC was first terrorized--Free Inquiry, Spring 2002, 40)

And finally, looking past the hoary ad-hominem we started with, most of the world's conflicts today are still at the margins of Islamic contact with the rest of the world! (The figures 28 out of 30 confllicts has been mentioned in this regard, but I agree this overstates the case. But so what if it's "only" three-fourths of the world's conflicts?) Claim's about Islam, "the religion of peace," are simply contradicted by the facts. (Claims by the White House to the contrary are the convenient cant of politics.)

On the 3rd of June, The Pew Research survey--the largest and most authoritative of its kind--found in April and May of this year that “Solid majorities among Palestinians, Indonesians and Jordanians--and nearly half of Moroccans and Pakistanis--say they have confidence in Osama bin Laden to ``do the right thing regarding world affairs,''' the highest of any leader. (Source: AP story)

[Full report at Pew Research Center: www.people-press.org ]

The International Herald Tribune summed up the Muslim viewpoint of the Pew survey with the headline "Israel must cease to exist." (3 June 2003)

This puts the lie to both major claims of the about opponents of the War on Terror: (1) Support for terror in the Muslim Middle East is marginal, and (2) destroying Israel is not an Arab goal.

Commenting on the Pew report, Charles Johnson of the blog littlegreenfootballs.com writes: “The Arab obsession with—and unreasoning hatred of—Israel is a mass psychosis the likes of which the world has never seen.”

A friend, after much discussion, recently asked me "where are the Muslim's who dissociate themselves from terrorist groups?" Such groups do issue press releases, true--but look at historical precedents Muslim-Americans don't even try to equal: where is the Islamic equivalent of MLK, Jr. to the firebrands of the Black Panther Movement? They aren't there! Where is the Muslim equal to World War II's 100th Battalion’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team — almost entirely Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans, and the most decorated unit of its size in American military history? They're not there! Why not?

There is, as Mid-East historian Martin Kramer writes, no necessary difference between a radical Muslim and a "moderate" Muslim; the one today could be the other tomorrow--there is no hard or fast doctrinal difference between the two.

Why does anyone pretend that 9/11's attacks on the US were not profoundly religious acts when bin Laden himself insists they were?

The peacemakers cry "peace! peace!" But there is no peace! To
understand 'why?' we must face discomforting facts, instead of assuming that 'turning the other check' is respected by Muslims--when it is plainly not!

WAKE UP, people.

--Orson

 

PS A Bernard Lewis noted, in contradiction to the fashionably Ostrich-like PC mind-set, the term "Jihad" has consistently been interpreted to mean "war against the Infidel" by the classical Islamic jurists.

--Orson

 

Re: YOU PEOPLE DO NOT GET IT!

This would be relevant if the person were making verifiable statements of fact rather than relying on his own personal testimony.

And despite Orson's protestations to the contrary, Islam is a religion. It does nothing. Only its individual followers--1.1 billion of them, in this case--do things. (This is, incidentally, true of all abstract group labels--the Left, the Right, etc. etc. etc.)

Fewer than 20% of Muslims live in the Arab world, and even among that minority I'm certain that there is not a mindlessly antisemitic hive-mind. These are human beings, Orson. They disagree, just like we do.

Again, "Islam" does not. Some individual Muslims with political power do, and it's a deplorable practice--just as it's a deplorable practice when members of any other group, including Muslims, are discriminated against on the basis of their faith. Our founders believed in something called "freedom of conscience."

Because Lord knows nobody has ever converted from Islam before.

And some Christians agree that Eric Rudolph was justified in bombing an abortion clinic. What's your point? When people paint an entire religion with the same brush, they make it that much harder for reformers within the religion to do their jobs. If you want to say that many Muslims are theocrats who hate the West, you will find no disagreement here--that's a verifiable fact, as the Pew Research Institute demonstrated. But this bit about "Islam" believing this or "Islam" doing that is nothing more than jingoism, and accomplishes nothing of value. You might stir up one or two people to pick on one of their innocent, law-abiding Muslim neighbors, but that's about all you're going to accomplish with that sort of vague, disoriented rhetoric. You're a smart guy with a lot to contribute to political discussions--if you can bring yourself to ditch this lazy "taxonomy of hive-minds" approach to politics.


Cheers,

 

I once had hope for CAIR to be the orgnization needed at this time in America. I've since changed my mind.

Fox News analyst Mansoor Ijaz (originally of Pakistsan) wrote in the Christian Science Monitor about how CAIR distorts what Muslims need to know and learn--and equally, what Americans need to know about them.

"A 'good' American citizen: Citizenship vs. civil liberties."
The Christian Science Monitor ^ | 4/1/03 | Mansoor Ijaz

"One Muslim American's tough challenge to his community.

"NEW YORK – In the days leading up to the start of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," a Muslim American civil rights lobbying group, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) sent out a nine-page "Muslim Community Safety Kit" enunciating a series of largely ineffective steps for Arabs and Muslims living in the US to take if war backlash were to materialize against them. It wasn't the first time such knee-jerk civil rights lobbying had been done by a group purporting to represent America's Arabs and Muslims. But it should be the last.

The CAIR memo highlights the raging debate in US Arab and Muslim communities about whether protection of civil liberties should take precedence over the responsibilities of citizenship.

"The continuing anger shown by immigrant Arabs and Muslims, whether about racial profiling at airports, or about charities being shut down for sending money to terrorist groups, or the failure to stop what many believe is an unjust war against Iraq, is misplaced and irresponsible. It demonstrates an inability to put US national security interests ahead of doubtful claims that our civil rights are being violated, or to put loyalty to the state before religious and ethnic allegiances. The growing frustration also defines a critical leadership problem in our communities, that if not resolved soon, could doom another generation to the prejudices and venal hatred many of our parents brought when they made difficult choices to migrate to the US.

"The voice of America's 6 million-strong Arab and Muslim population is dominated by special-interest groups such as CAIR, the American Muslim Council, and others who have hijacked the community's larger interests by expertly learning lobbying techniques of more experienced immigrant communities. They use elaborately constructed schemes to bring foreign money in to fund their operations and then make boisterous claims that they represent the community in matters of national importance. They do not.

"They neither understand the value of the citizenship they so brazenly exploit, nor represent the growing but still silent majority of American-born and -educated Arabs and Muslims who are busy getting college degrees, decent jobs, and that first home. But not having the cash, or the time, to play Washington's power politics is no excuse for the next generation to forgo learning the central tenets of model citizenship that sometimes require personal sacrifice."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/883966/posts

The point is that the most basic fundamentals of US citizenship--just showing up at public meeting like the town council, the water board, or civic events like the Fourth of July--are neither taught nor excercised by the Muslim-American community.

If Muslim's would simply just show up in America's (admittedly) demanding public sphere as participants or even observers--not whiners--they will have many many friends among their fellow Americans (as places such as Wild Wyoming have already shown, reported in the New York Times, fall 2001). Participation shows that your unique community is not a threat--something needing dispelling when Muslims are killing your fellow citizen in the name of their religion. But do these Muslim civil rights orgs do this? NO!

[NOTE: this is a separate matter from the implications of my above posts, i.e., that Islam needs to reform itself to be considered accepted as the equal of any other of the world's great religions, e.g., no Jihadism, no forcibly imposed Shar'ia.]

Ijaz has several other pertinent citizenship lessons in mind, too, such as no preaching of hatred from the mosque, and teaching respect of the American tradition of separation of church and state. Again, these are fundamentals of US cistizenship--but in today's world, they go very much neglected.

--Orson

 

I dissent from this problem as typical for a variety of reasons.
This is definitely a concern to every good citizen, wherever they live. But instead I see the stereotypical liberal-guilt patterned humanitarianism at work here.

See
"Myth of the Muslim hate crime epidemic," May 28, 2003,
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm20030528.shtml
AND "More Muslim hate crime myths," May 30, 2003,
both by Michelle Malkin.
"The FBI and Justice Department have vociferously condemned and aggressively prosecuted a string of anthrax hoaxes that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. But when it comes to cracking down on hate crime hoaxes by Arabs and Muslims, the feds -- too busy conducting politically correct "outreach" with Muslim leaders who pooh-pooh hate crime fraud -- have been appallingly negligent. There is no way of knowing whether fake hate crimes outnumber real anti-Muslim crimes because no law enforcement agency keeps track. (Note to frustrated cops: Send me your suspected hoax cases and let's get started.)

"Hoax crimes waste precious investigative resources, exacerbate racial tension, create terror and corrode goodwill. It's a shame so many in the media are more concerned with protecting the twisted cult of victimhood than with exposing hard truths."

The problem is with the very concept "hate crime." All crime, by definition, is hateful. The neologism "hate crime" becomes elastic, a political stick through which to single out politically incorrect thoughts, resulting in palpably divisive double standards.
Consequently, just resentments get dismissed. (Anyone notice the parallel's with the affrimative action debate?)

--Orson