Unlike Just About Every Fool On The Internet...

... Who’s writing about Islam and Muslims, I happen to actually know something about Islam and Muslims. What’s more, that knowledge was gained via 5 years of daily contact with living, breathing, thinking Muslims.

That’s the sort of thing that would separate me from fools like Charles Johnson and Roger Simon, neither of whom knows anything more about Muslims than the fact that hating them out loud generates site traffic.

Actually, having actual contact with actual Muslims is what separates me from most of the fools writing about Islam and Muslims these days. When I have a question about the religion, the culture or the politics I go and ask a real, live Muslim. Most of the time, in fact, I ask more than one real, live Muslim.

When I sat with Roger and Charles at Roger Simon’s dining room table back in October, 2004 I tried to explain to them that they had it wrong, but neither of them was interested. Islam was evil. Period. If you wonder why I didn’t get outraged with them then, all I can say is getting outraged doesn’t help in this sort of situation. I’ve dealt with other immigrant communities in my day (Vietnamese Catholics, ethnic Hmong and Russian Jews), and so I’ve come to the understanding that the best thing one can do when coming up against negativity is patience. So it has been with the Somalis. I’ve heard negativity from the whole spectrum – from retired Columbus firefighters to prominent Central Ohio African-American community activists – so the idea that one can get into the face of everyone who doesn’t like a Muslim (or a Catholic or a Jew) and do good is an idea born of daydreams...

That said, things have progressed to a point beyond what I had expected with those two jerks. It isn't about being wrong anymore... It's about hating for fun and now, profit.

Someone has to say, “Enough”. Someone that is, who doesn’t have some half-assed political axe to grind. There are plenty of folks out there calling Charles a racist or whatever but, and this is with all due apologies to all my little Leftist friends, all that outrage is born, I suspect, of something other than the deep regard for the vast majority of Muslims who want nothing more than a good life for themselves and their children. Let’s face it, most of my little Leftist friends don’t know any Muslims either... they’re playing domestic politics with a Muslim pawn. So before this even gets started, if you guys want to play your little reindeer games with what I'm going to do here, that’s fine... just don’t count on much sympathy or support for me.

In any event, please allow me be the one to say, “Enough”.

And why not? I’m a hard-core conservative Republican. I worship at the Reagan alter. I voted for George W. Bush. Twice. I support the War in Iraq, and consider it to be both necessary and justified. If anyone wants to question my patriotic bona fides or claim I’m a tool of the Left because I’m not into uninformed Muslim-bashing, well, let’s get it on...

This is what I’m going to do: Next week I’m going to put up a series of posts on my experiences with the Somalian Muslims over the past five years. The purpose here is not to lecture but rather to humanize; to pass on some information gathered first-hand. And what it will be is real citizen journalism... the ground level experiences of dealing with people of a very different world than the one you know. I know it isn’t the sort of watershed moment you get when you stick a camera in the face of a Senator... but at some point somebody really should actually sit down and discuss real, live Muslims when they’re talking about Muslims.

Background:

In January, 2001 I received a phone call from a CPA here in town asking me (begging, actually) to take the Somali Community Association of Ohio off his hands. If I’m known around here for much other than being, how shall I say, difficult, it’s for being willing to take on hard-core poor, inner-city nonprofit organizations as clients. Evidently that rep got as far as this particular CPA, because I’d never heard of him prior to his call. Curious as to what exactly about the Somali Community Association of Ohio had freaked out this particular middle-aged, middle-class white boy of a CPA, I headed down to the dreary and somewhat dangerous area known as Northern Lights to visit the Association’s offices.

The Somali Community Association of Ohio is something of a one stop shop for services for Central Ohio’s 30,000+ Somalian Muslims. Only Minneapolis has a greater number of Somalians on this particular continent. When I arrived, the place was a madhouse. There were at least a 100 Somalians crammed into offices of less than 1,900 square feet. There were at least another 200 milling outside the Association's front door. The din was terrific. The Somali language isn’t exactly guttural, but it has a staccato harshness to it that, when allied to the natural exuberance of Somalis in conversation, adds up to a lot of noise very quickly. There was a lot of bustle, too. Folks weren’t there for conversation; they were there for housing assistance, driving lessons, ESL (English as a second language) classes or referrals for lawyers, doctors or whatever.

Once I saw all this, I understood what had freaked out my little white CPA buddy. Most white folks aren’t comfortable being the only white person in a room. Especially when the room has 100 or so people in it. 100 or so loud people. All he wanted was to be back in his little world, and I obliged him by accepting the Association as a client within ten minutes of meeting the Association’s President. That’s how I came to be the CPA for an Association that serves the needs of the largest Muslim population in the state of Ohio and the second largest Somalian population in North America.

The Association has now been my client for just over 5 years. In that space of time I’ve met and talked to several hundred Somalians, observed two elders’ council meetings, been introduced to the Somalian 'Oprah Winfrey', Somalia's national poet and other people of distinction and accomplishment, listened to a thousand hopes and complaints, explained just anything related to how the United States actually works, and offered what assistance and moral support I’ve been able.

I’ve even acquired a nickname: I’m “Mr. Green”, because I’m the guy who writes the checks...

I had refrained from writing about the Somalians because I wasn’t really sure that there couldn’t be some sort of blowback. It’s not like I always think things through before I post them. But I’ve had conversations about this with the President of the Association and he thinks doing this is a good idea. Good or not, it seems to be an idea whose time has come...

Note: Whether I leave comments on next week is still under consideration. The last thing I want to do is have to babysit this site if it ends up getting invaded by the sorts of morons that attacked Ann Althouse's site when Poodle Chaz got his undies in a twist over her posts. So we'll see.

Comments

[DavidS]

Cool. More soon. Please.

[John-Paul Pagano]

Wow. Thanks for this post, and the upcoming series, to which I look with great anticipation. I completely agree with your sentiments.

Because of its sheer absurdity, I'll never forget a spat I got into with a commenter over at LGF, whose raison d'etre was Muslim bashing, but metier was shitting on Minnesotan Somali Muslims. He would incessantly complain about how they were nefarious welfare queens, and one time he even referred to them as "Bantus". Bantus.

"Enough" indeed, to the fathomless stupidity and baseness of the Charles Johnson wing of the blogosphere.

[wxjames]

At one time, one of my best friends was a Syrian Muslim. I got to know him well. Because of that, I cannot say anything really good about any Muslims I have known.

[Eric Blair]

Geez Dennis, you're brave.

[jonner]

Thanks for this, Dennis. But a point of information: as a Minneapolis resident, I can say with some certainty that Minneapolis / St. Paul has the highest somali population in the US, not Milwaukee.

This site seems to back me up:

"The Twin Cities area has the largest population of Somalis in the U.S., as well as the largest population of Hmong immigrants and Hmong Americans"

[DennisThePeasant]

jonner-

Complete brain fart by Yours Truly. You are, of course, correct.

Duh.

[Sam_S]

OK, I'm starting to catch on, thanks. Carry on, Captain!

[Timothy]

One thing that's always, always, always bothered me about the Poodle Chaz wing of the blogosphere is that they seem to think that there's a lot more variation between people than there really is. Every group has assholes, unfortunately many Muslim assholes like to blow things up. But there are Christian assholes and Envirohippie assholes etc etc who do all that too...just comparatively fewer of them.

But the very few middle easterners and Muslims I've known have been pretty much like anybody else: want to have a good life, want to be successful, etc. I think it's a safe bet that, really, that's what most people want. I don't think it's particularly productive to go around assuming that everybody of a particular religion is a psychotic, especially because it's untrue.

[DennisThePeasant]

Timothy-

Actually Poodle Chaz goes much farther than that... It is clear he regards as Islam itself as an unequivocal evil. He doesn't bother trying to distinquish between those doing good and those doing evil in the name of Mohammed, because in his world if you're a Muslim, you are evil. Period.

[Timothy]

Even worse than I remember, it's been literally years since I actually read anything posted at LGF.

[Blondie]

Good for you Dennis. And by the way, I dig the Spongebob threads.

[Timothy]

Case and point: Ann Coulter. I hope she gets cancer. And AIDS.

[Bane]

Back at you, Timothy. In spades. And painfully.

[John-Paul Pagano]

The issue is enormously complex. Because Islam is largely unreformed in the way that Judaism and Christianity are -- at least the mainstream Sunni and Shia brands of Islam -- you do find more Muslim "assholes" today, as Timothy writes, than people of other faiths; that is, if "asshole" is defined by the use of political violence and support for terrorism (not to mention barbaric customs like female circumcision, murdering gays, stoning adulterers, etc.).

On the other hand, Muslims -- surprise! -- are human beings, and human beings do not always behave like ideological automatons. Human beings are infinitely variable things, they are capable of change, and most are capable of acting in their own self-interest. Ideology matters, but it only explains so much.

This is where the monochromatic (and, not for nothing, thoroughly ideological) prism through which Charles Johnson and his ilk view Muslims falls short. It rests on a prescribed set of beliefs and assumptions, and anything and everything Muslims do gets filtered through it. Anything that challenges those beliefs and assumptions gets discarded, and data that doesn't even fit get retrofitted and crammed in to bolster the belief system. I remember a couple of times when Charles posted about Muslim perfidy when the participants were at best nominally Muslim, or weren't doing anything Islamist or Islamic.

It gets worse, because like his incessant criticism of the "MSM", which suffers from an obvious lack of understanding of both journalism and business, his criticism of Islam is, quite frankly, about as informed as the Nation of Islam's reading of the history of the interrelationship of blacks and Jews. That is to say, it's as deep as the pissing section of a toddler's wading pool, and fueled entirely by preconceived notions forged in a fire of hatred.

Charles is indeed a racist, although he and his lemming horde of followers endlessly dodge the accusation by raising childish, semantic objections to the word. Yes, Islam is not a race. However, Charles's treatment of news regarding Islam is different from, say, neo-Nazi Hal Turner's treatment of news regarding blacks ONLY insofar as Charles is slightly more sophisticated and doesn't use profanity.

If a Muslim is given a parking ticket and there's a news story about it, Charles will post about it and attribute the malfeasance to the Muslim's belief in Islam. (Just as Hal Turner or other racists find examples of black malfeasance and attribute them to the race of the perpetrators.) Ranting Saudi imams are lumped in with serial killers who happen to be named Ahmed, because Islam is evil, and like Dennis Kucinich's mind-control satellites, it makes people do baaaad things.

Charles is just as moonbatty as the moonbats he ridicules, and just as base as the Muslim thugs in French ghettos who look up to Osama. It is a travesty that he operates that cesspool of a blog under the guise of giving a rat's ass about spreading liberal democracy in the Middle East.

[JB]

Granted your strawman that "every Muslim isn't an asshole", why do so few of them show up when it counts?

Your vendetta against, as you say, Raj and Poodle Chaz, is understandable. But your know-it-all, more-tolerant-than-thou attitude is really insufferable.

[Guesst]

I know there are plenty of readers who will be glad to see someone taking up the gauntlet.

Yea!

[Morgan]

DtP:

Good idea.

[Cameron]

Go get 'em, DtP. I spent most of my childhood in Iran and Saudi Arabia, so have been around Moslems (including real fundie ones) a lot. Even most of the fundies were pretty decent, though they thought we Americans were depraved for liking nekkid wimmen and alkyhawl. I think it's an excellent idea for you to just relate your experiences with all the political posturing sucked out. Looking forward to reading future installments.

[badanov]

I have no problems with Moose Limbs as long as they are not carrying AKs, flying MiGs or wearing bomb belts.

[Jane]

Comments or no, I look forward to reading over the next week.

[LACJ]

Yo Dennis you are too fun to read! I am from Cleveland and Cinci, so maybe its just because of that. Can't wait for the posts next week, you hit the nail on the head about why that guy didn't want the account.

But one thing I have to disagree with completely and call you on a knee-jerk reaction is this statement:

"Let’s face it, most of my little Leftist friends don’t know any Muslims either... they’re playing domestic politics with a Muslim pawn."

That statement is absolutely wrong, it assumes and demeans. Don't be so cynical, and don't judge me. Its not about whether you know a Muslim or not, but whether you have

"deep regard for the vast majority of Muslims who want nothing more than a good life for themselves and their children"

or you think they are all evil.

[DennisThePeasant]

JhonnyP-

The statement was a bit broader than I intended... There is a small cabal of Lefty bloggers who monitor my site for stuff (mostly about Raj and the Poodle) they can use for their own purposes. Most of them are real nice about it, so I don't have a problem with it. But I really don't want this particular objection to the Poodle to become part of those fun and games.

[Frank]

Rightwingsparkle, trying to show the human side of (scary quotes) "THEM" has an interested exchange with a Muslim woman.

As for why the moderate Muslims aren't making more protest - the nicedoggie.net Feb. 9th post titled: Confronting the “Religion of Peace” makes a point worth considering.

[Cameron]

Dennis, I'm a lefty who enjoys your site and I often see the problem (across the political spectrum) of people hijacking blog postings for their own purposes. The worst offenses are out-of-context quotes that transform into something entirely different than the original post. That shouldn't be a big problem with what you're posting, since you're keeping the political stuff out.

Still wondering how you wound up as a conservative....our loss. Oh, well..

[richard mcenroe]

I've worked and served with Egyptians, Saudis, Kuwaitis and Syrians.

Against that, Muslims tried damn hard to kill a large part of my family on 9/11, so I'll admit up front it requires a conscious, daily effort of will to not think the "glowing green parking lot" should be foreign policy plan A.

I'll be interested to see what you have to say.