A "Letter to the Editor" In These Times Declined to Print

In the January 2016 issue, the democratic socialist newsmagazine In These Times (ITT) published two whiny, hand-wringing articles on Islamophobia that were filled with "leftist" anti-Western masochism that I felt compelled to responsd to through the "Letter to the Editor" posted below.  These two articles, Saqib Bhatti's "Our Best and Bigoted," and Jane Miller's "Paris and Provocation" [both of which are linked below], were just too much typically "politiclly correct" (PC) masochistic beating of breast, as well as too much beating up on fellow citizens for alleged "insensitivity" to persons of color generally, and Muslims in particular, despite three murderous, cold-blooded atrocities perpetrated in the name of a particularly vengeful, bloodthirsty version of Islam itself--the 9/11 attack on the World Towers by suicide operatives crashing planes into these buildings' sides and thus killing not only the perpetrators, but thousands of others who had nothing to do with the wars in the Middle East; and the late 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that followed the murder the editorial staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo nearly a year earlier for allegedly "insulting the prophet Mohammed."  The gist of these two articles was, "What do you expect?  the West caused all this, on all three counts!" something I profoundly disagreed with--as a socialist opposed to all real forms of racism and discrimination, certainly, but also as a civil libertarian of the political left upholding the rights of free speech, including "offensive" speech, and the right of persons to be "safe and secure in their persons" despite the foreign policy of their government, over which they have very limited, if any real, control.  However, ITT evidently disagreed that this was a "legitimate" political position for a left publication to publicize in a "Letter to the Editor" concerning articles it itself published.  Joel Bleifuss, Editor and Publisher of In These Times, finally responded to numerous einquiries abbout my "Letter" with a terse "In These Times doesn't publish every letter submitted," nothing more.  Yes, I suppose not--especially, comrades of In These Times, a publication/website which has published several articles of mine in the past it had no ideological quarrel with, but somehow can't find within itself the intellectual honesty to published a concerned editorial letter critical of two articles it did publish? Or is the purpose of  ITT's readers' forum only to publicize "Letters to the Editor" that it agrees with, or which praise what it does publish?  Yes, oftentimes the left does indeed have a very selective understanding of "free speech," notably on topics such as "Islamophobia," where properly adhering to PC guidelines is very important.  Be that as it may, my "Letter" below was very fulsomely praised by a prominent extensively-published socialist writer of my acquaintance, and I still believe, was indeed worthy of publication by ITT.  Whose decline to publish I can only see as PC self-censorship.--GF

To the Editor:

Jane Miller's and Saqib Bhatti's whiny articles in the January 2016 In These Times  do a disservice to ITT, to leftist and socialist values, and to true religious tolerance and fighting honest simply because they are Muslim, and does not mean refraining from criticism of Islam or Islamic organized groups). [Miller’s article can be accessed on the Internet at http://inthesetimes.com/article/18646/Syria_ISIS_Paris_UK-Parliament, Bhatti’s at http://inthesetimes.com/article/18647/why-race-relations-on-campus-must-be-challenged-and-transformed.]  Both authors conveniently overlook that al-Qaeda and ISIS openly bragged about their complicity in 9/11 and the Paris attacks, along w the bragging and complicity of self-identified Muslims in other terrorist attacks, all the way from the murder of the Charlie Hedbo cartoonists of a year ago right up to the celebration by ISIS of the lone-wolf but Islam-inspired killings in San Bernardino.  Tellingly, while professed Muslim Bhatti has nothing to say about direct Islamic complicity in 9/11, as admitted at the time by al-Qaeda itself, and while also refusing, same as Jane Miller, to admit that al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, the repressive authoritarian regimes of both Iran and Saudi Arabia are, in fact, just as Islamic as Pat Robertson is Christian (both reprehensible, of course, but both equally supported by direct reference to their respective Holy Books, the Qu'ran and the Bible, both of which I have read completely, without cherry-picking only for the "good parts"), and while Bhatti does properly denounce and make us aware of the individual acts of bigotry and intimidation that followed in the wake of 9/11, he would rather lecture Westerners on Islamophobia after 9/11, despite clear Islamist gloating over this despicable terrorist attack.  Further, while I certainly have no interest in justifying in any regard the acts of blatant racism he scores, I also have no interest in being, like so much of the "regressive left," silent about the clear links to 9/11 and other acts of Islamist terrorism deliberately promulgated in the name of Islam itself.  Now, if Bhatti and Miller wish to blame such atrocities on a rogue Islam, a dangerous deviant from "mainstream" Islam, they need to say so directly, and not somehow backhandedly support or justify such actions committed in the name of Islam.   Because, frankly, as one of those supposedly benighted Western socialists and upholder of Enlightenment ideals, I am sick and tired of all the cant promulgated by Ben Affleck and others about "devout" Muslims who wish only to be left in peace and who are supposedly foes, not silent partners of, Islamist terror, correctly called Islamofascism--by, among others, persons of Muslim background themselves!  (Such as ex-Muslims of distinction as British humanist, socialist and atheist Maryam Namazie, author Salman Rushdie, the American Muslim magazine, and many others).   I do not apologize in the least for regarding Affleck's "devout" but silent Muslims as every bit as complicit in the spread of Islamofascism as were all the "good Germans" who were also noticeably silent about the Nazis and their atrocities, and were thus at least de facto collaborators with the Nazis rather than resistance fighters against it.   (But of course, all too many of these "devout" European Christians actively collaborated with the Nazis and informed on the whereabouts of their Jewish and other "undesirable" neighbors, so that they could be carted off to the Final Solution.)

Jane Miller is equally disingenuous in her tortured attempt to somehow paint some sort of "moral equivalence" between aggressive acts in the Middle East by US and other Western forces and the targeting of individuals or groups of individuals by Islamist-inspired terrorists.  She is simply committing the logical fallacy of comparing apples and oranges here, and though she tries to justify this somehow by the same tortured logic that the Weathermen used in the 1970s to defend their bombing of unconnected, or only vaguely-connected, groups of individuals to the foreign policy of the US and its allies in Vietnam, it simply doesn't hold--it didn't hold then, and it doesn't hold now.  That somehow, rock concert attendees and restaurant patrons are as "complicit" in the foreign policies of the US and France in the Middle East same as their governments, and have no more claim of innocence than direct Islamist repressive, terroristic organizations as ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their devotees are internationally, and as Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban are in their national homes. No, I do not see the bombing or ISIS headquarters in Raqqa and Europeans and others willingly, even eagerly, travelling to join ISIS as the "moral equivalent" of Islamist terrorism in the West.  The unfortunate fact of modern warfare is that the doctrine of "total war" in which civilians are as "justifiably" attacked as are military forces has prevailed everywhere ever since the Civil War; but no, that does not make Sherman's March to the Sea, or the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, or even the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the "moral equivalent" of the Confederacy's war to preserve and extend slavery, the Rape of Nanking and Japanese atrocities in the Philippines and elsewhere, or the Nazi death camps and puppet governments such as Vichy France, all to be "equally condemned."  There are obvious moral differences, despite the atrocious nature of the first five, and in defense of "benighted" Western values, I would pointedly note that while groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamists have arms and territories, not to mention--Yazidi and other "non-Muslim" sex slaves!--the "benighted" Enlightenment-inspired secularism of the West grants to the likes of Pat Robertson and his ilk only TV stations, or the ability to run for office and publish in print and social media, despite the wishes of his (and their) rabidly religious followers to be able to do what ISIS and others do, not only to non-Muslims, but to what they consider to be "bad Muslims" in their controlled territories!

Last, I would extend to Jane Miller and Saqib Bhatti my eager hand in building a truly socialist movement that would extirpate the likes of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other Islamofascists of the East as thoroughly as an earlier generation of socialists, Communists, and democrats extirpated the threat of state-controlling Western and Japanese fascism.  Are they game for it, or will they shamefacedly refrain from such a necessary task in our time?  Same, I might add, as the Quaker socialist I know here in Indianapolis who stated that "It would "have been all right with me" if Hitler had conquered the world rather than have fought World War II, conveniently overlooking the fact that, had Hiller prevailed, he wouldn't have been talking such to me, but would, instead, have been a casualty of the Final Solution to the Quaker/Pacifist Problem! 

George Fish,

Indianapolis, Indiana

[Author's note:  I am a contributor to both ITT in print form and to its website since the 1990s, most recently having published on its website two articles on social justice advocate Roy Bourgeois, in September 2012's "Boy Bourgeois' Journey" and August 2011's "The Rebel Feminist Priest."]