Althouse: "There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law..."

December 7, 2010

"There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law..."

"We’re conservative here, old and cantankerous."

Here, being Oklahoma, which just passed the "Save Our State Amendment."

54 comments:

Anonymous said...: Oh God!

The NYT travels to Deepest Darkest Oklahoma to report on the strange habits of the natives.

Ooga Booga!; 12/7/10, 9:40 PM
blake said...: Islamophobia!

Fear it!

Be Islamophoiaphobic!; 12/7/10, 9:41 PM
chuck b. said...: Those old cantankerous men. So cute.

You kind of have to laugh at Oklahoma being so concerned about Muslim extremism, given who the actual terrorists have been in that state.; 12/7/10, 9:44 PM
MadisonMan said...: I say Shariah law is about as conservative as you can get.; 12/7/10, 9:44 PM
tim maguire said...: We can make more posts, but we can't improve on shoutingthomas (I would have said he wins the thread, but I haven't checked the final polls on that issue).; 12/7/10, 9:48 PM
coketown said...: The piece reminds me of the Royal Geographic Society's early African dispatches. High-minded ethnographers would slip into a place, take in the local color, then report back to the fawning masses back home with silly and wildly inaccurate interpretations of what it all means. He even found an "east coast liberal" to parrot his own sentiments! It's the FEAR element! The FEAR. Good Jambo.

But really, State Question 755 doesn't sound as ridiculous as it should in order to warrant a piece like this. We hit all the cliches with this one: Bible Belt; votes against Obama; old people; Timothy McVeigh; Islamophobia. Throw in a link or abortion clinic bombings and you'll get a Pulitzer next time, Mr. Cohen.; 12/7/10, 9:53 PM
Peter Hoh said...: For his next foray into the red states, perhaps Cohen can visit Texas to find out why John Cook doesn't like the idea of a Jewish man serving as House Speaker.; 12/7/10, 9:57 PM
Revenant said...: You kind of have to laugh at Oklahoma being so concerned about Muslim extremism, given who the actual terrorists have been in that state.

It is almost as if they worry more about the present and the future than they do about the past.

Weird.; 12/7/10, 9:58 PM
Peter Hoh said...: Cook clarified his views: I want to make sure that a person I'm supporting is going to have my values. It's not anything about Jews and whether I think their religion is right or Muslims and whether I think their religion is right. ... I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office. They're the people that do the best jobs over all.; 12/7/10, 10:02 PM
Chris said...: Seems like a fairly symbiotic relationship- NYT gets to tell scary stories about OK to urban liberals, OK gets to feel good about itself for being the kind of place that urban liberals dislike. Doesn't seem to have much to do with Sharia and Muslims at all.; 12/7/10, 10:05 PM
Anonymous said...: I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office. They're the people that do the best jobs over all.

What's wrong with this?

Feminists, the Black Caucus, gay activists... all these groups organize and push the agenda of their group.

What's sinister about Christian conservatives doing the same thing?

Answer: absolutely nothing.; 12/7/10, 10:06 PM
Rialby said...: I don't think they've ever really seen a real Muslim in Oklahomie!!

I mean if you don't count Mohamed Atta, Zacarias Moussaoui and Marwan Alshehhi.; 12/7/10, 10:08 PM
chickelit said...: From the article: Conflate Obama with creeping Shariah and achieve the political double-whammy of feeding rampant rumors that he’s a closet Muslim and fanning the fears that propel a conservative lurch.

POTUS contributed to this during the Cordoba House fiasco. He refused to distinguish a constitutional right to build a mosque from an ugly, divisive expression of free speech on the part of the Mosque builders. He could have done much better in that regard and the issue still smolders.; 12/7/10, 10:27 PM
Unknown said...: The Lefties act like they believe in civil rights ("You kind of have to laugh at Oklahoma being so concerned about Muslim extremism, given who the actual terrorists have been in that state") when it's just Chamberlainesque groveling.

And the Okies told the PC Thought Police to drop dead.; 12/7/10, 10:28 PM
traditionalguy said...: So old men with nothing to do talk politics from their lifetime of experience. The NYT would consign them to the best Death Panel Obama and Pelosi has enacted ASAP. In the meantime the NYT tells us we should see their resolve to defeat the Muslim conquest of America as if it is foolish nonsense. That NYT story is the foolish nonsense and is the beginning of their Death Panel for leadership that defends Western Civilization.; 12/7/10, 10:46 PM
Revenant said...: Feminists, the Black Caucus, gay activists... all these groups organize and push the agenda of their group. What's sinister about Christian conservatives doing the same thing?

That depends on how much you enjoy reading the sentence "Christian conservatives have the same effect on American life that feminists, gay activists, and the Black Caucus do", I suppose.

I wouldn't be too pleased to see a group I belonged to included in that list. You see, the black caucus, the feminist movement, and the gay rights movement all have one thing in common: they care more about their personal political power than they do about the welfare of the people they supposedly represent. That's why the black caucus shits all over black conservatives, why the feminists cover up for left-wing sex offenders, and why gay rights activists endorse anti-gay politicians like Clinton, Kerry and Obama.

If you relish the idea of an America where, say, Christian conservatives cheerfully endorse pro-abortion candidates because those candidates have agreed to earmark funds for Christian-owned businesses... then by all means, feel free to not worry about Christians becoming just another special interest group.; 12/7/10, 10:48 PM
save_the_rustbelt said...: Being the descendant of Okie mule skinners I can imagine some of the conversations.

Not that many years ago law and order was a matter of Winchester and Colt. Many rural homes had no locks on the door, and there were rarely any burglaries. Ka-boom.; 12/7/10, 10:54 PM
Anonymous said...: News flash:
Islam is not going to Conquer the World.

Peter; 12/7/10, 10:56 PM
Fen said...: And Germany just needs a bit more Lebensraum...; 12/7/10, 11:03 PM
Harry said...: Honestly, I think any law we could pass that would make Muslims less inclined to immigrate to the US is a good thing, in the long run. I know it's a terrible thing to say, but I base it on what I see happening all over the planet.

There are only so many disharmonious groups any one country can accommodate, and I think we've met our quota.; 12/7/10, 11:03 PM
Unknown said...: ironrails, you do know they like their women smooth.; 12/7/10, 11:05 PM
chuck b. said...: "It is almost as if they worry more about the present and the future than they do about the past.

Weird."

Yes, haha. I agree anything that reduces future threat of *any* terror is a good thing.

"they care more about their personal political power than they do about the welfare of the people they supposedly represent."

Isn't this true of representative systems, generally? It's understood that representatives have personal incentives. Is there a better alternative?; 12/7/10, 11:20 PM
chuck said...: My own impression of OK is that it is a religious and socially conservative Democratic state. If religious social conservatives were allowed to be part of the modern Democratic Party OK would still be a blue state.; 12/7/10, 11:23 PM
former law student said...: What I'd like to know is how the families of these Depression babies survived the Dust Bowl.; 12/7/10, 11:54 PM
bgates said...: I say Shariah law is about as conservative as you can get.

Paulina Porizkova would like her body to look the way it did 25 years ogo, and the owner of a 1985 Porsche 928 would like its body to look the way it did 25 years ago. Therefore Porizkova wants to be 74 inches wide and weigh 3200 pounds, because what "the same as 25 years ago" means.; 12/7/10, 11:55 PM
Anonymous said...: I say Shariah law is about as conservative as you can get.

Yeah, that's like the way media used to described your hardcore commie in the Kremlin: "conservative Communist Party leaders."

In other words, conservative = bad.; 12/7/10, 11:59 PM
Peter Hoh said...: I say Shariah law is about as conservative as you can get.

Leo replied: Yeah, that's like the way media used to described your hardcore commie in the Kremlin: "conservative Communist Party leaders."

In other words, conservative = bad.

Conservative and liberal are fairly useless labels when applied to totalitarian states and repressive ideologies.

But hey, it was Dinesh D'Souza who tried to argue that the terrorists hate us because of liberals.

Here's D'Souza describing the idea behind his book, The Enemy at Home. :

The cultural seeds are somewhat different, and that is that the radical Muslims have been able to stir up a lot of hatred against America by saying, in effect, Islam is under attack. If you think about it, that's really the rallying cry of Islamic radicalism, and that's the only believable motive for why large numbers of people from a wide range of countries would be willing to risk their lives to strike out against America. I simply refuse to believe that people in Pakistan and Somalia would go to their deaths because the Palestinians don't have a state. So this idea that America is against your religion and is out to destroy your religion and your values, and undermine the Muslim family, and corrupt the innocence of young people and Muslim girls -- this is a very powerful attack, because it's not in the abstract realm of politics -- it affects the ordinary Muslim in his everyday life.

Here's the link to the interview.; 12/8/10, 12:49 AM
Peter Hoh said...: From the Publishers Weekly review on Amazon:

Pointing to Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears and Noam Chomsky, he decries those who have teamed up with Hollywood and the U.N. to foist an irreligious, sexually licentious, antifamily liberal culture—epitomized by Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues and gay marriage initiatives—on a Muslim world that rightly reviles it.; 12/8/10, 12:52 AM
Methadras said...: blake said...

Islamophobia!

Fear it!

Be Islamophoiaphobic!

Is this word going to be overused like Homophobia was for awhile and used in a completely moronic way. This isn't Islamophobia, it's Islamohatred. Something to be promoted at all costs and I am it's high priest.; 12/8/10, 12:55 AM
Revenant said...: What I'd like to know is how the families of these Depression babies survived the Dust Bowl.

They moved to Ramona, CA.; 12/8/10, 1:22 AM
Kirk Parker said...: edutcher:

"ironrails, you do know..."

Yes of course he knows. Why do you think he's sure they're going to fail at world domination???; 12/8/10, 2:34 AM
BJM said...: @fen

Very droll.; 12/8/10, 3:26 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Shariah law?

Glad I don't live in Al-Qlahoma.; 12/8/10, 6:16 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: WV- cropola

Word Verification wins the thread!; 12/8/10, 6:17 AM
lucid said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/8/10, 6:35 AM
lucid said...: The NY Times and Roger Cohen have Oklahamaphobia.

All those strange and dangerous old people!!!!; 12/8/10, 6:36 AM
test said...: "You kind of have to laugh at Oklahoma being so concerned about Muslim extremism, given who the actual terrorists have been in that state."

You kind of have to laugh at analysis like this. One group killed thousands of Americans one decade ago, and continues to execute attacks around the globe. The other group killed 150 people two decades ago, and the act so horrified the movement he was tangentially related to the vast majority of members renounced them.

Yet liberals lecture us that we have nothing to fear from the group continuing to attack us while concurrently pissing themselves over the group which disbanded over the use of violence.; 12/8/10, 6:40 AM
Opus One Media said...: They have Coburn and Inhofe as Senators - if there is any further proof needed to prove wierd and strange.

.....There's a bright golden haze on the meadow........; 12/8/10, 7:11 AM
Anonymous said...: chuck said...
My own impression of OK is that it is a religious and socially conservative Democratic state. If religious social conservatives were allowed to be part of the modern Democratic Party OK would still be a blue state.

At the local level, Oklahoma is still a Democrat state, but remember, it's the only state whose every county was carried by John McCain. We're a right to work state, thus ending any Democrat influence of importance here; and any Democrat who wants Federal office (see Dan Boren) must be strong on certainly Conservative issues, gun rights being at the top of the list. If you want to be a county commissioner, yep, you better be a Democrat. Brad Henry, our outgoing Democrat governor, has done a good job, a view held by most of my conservative friends as well as me, also a conservative.

I'm not a religious person, but Oklahoma is a religious, socially conservative state. We're also an economically conservative state, which explains why Oklahoma City and Tulsa are both growing, taking in people from both coasts who love the cost of living and ease of starting a business, relatively speaking, of course.; 12/8/10, 7:15 AM
AllenS said...: Read this. It might help some people understand why the fine people of Oklahoma are concerned.; 12/8/10, 7:34 AM
Lincolntf said...: No wonder the NYT is so verklempt. The Left is desperately hoping for another mass murder of Americans, and Oklahoma is trying to get in the way. That's a big no-no.; 12/8/10, 7:50 AM
Clyde said...: Funny thing: Over in Europe after World War II, the government elites decided that multiculturalism was the way to go. (Note that the elites didn't consult with the citizens of their countries as to whether they wished to become multicultural.)

So in France, they brought in Muslims from north Africa. In Britain, they brought in Muslims from India and Pakistan. In Germany, they brought in Muslims from Turkey. Various other western European countries brought in Muslims from hither and yon, all in the name of diversity and multiculturalism, because only a bigot would believe that one culture was better than any other.

The Europeans found out that the Muslims had their own separate cultural beliefs that were grounded in their religion, and that many of those cultural beliefs were incompatible with modern Western societies. They also found out that their Muslims had much higher birth rates than the indigenous European populations, whose birth rates were below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman of child-bearing age.

You can still have a society based on the Magna Carta or the Rights of Man even when you have a small minority whose cultural beliefs are diametrically opposite to them. But when that small minority becomes a larger and larger percentage of the population, then your Magna Carta or Rights of Man can be replaced when a critical mass of dissenters is reached.

The good people of Oklahoma have looked across the Atlantic and have seen the fruits of a multi-culti policy of encouraging immigration from societies that don't believe in Western values. And they are having none of it. Good for them!

As the song says, "We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse, and white lighting's still the biggest thrill of all."; 12/8/10, 8:26 AM
joe six-pack said...: Was it not a New Jersey court that applied Islamic law when judging a Muslim man who beat his wife? At least they overturned the stupid and dangerous ruling!

Yea, I love to compare Tim McViegh and the KKK to the firepower of HAMAS, Hezbollah and the dozens of other Islamic national groups. They are so well matched in manpower, financial support, tanks and artillery.; 12/8/10, 8:37 AM
Robert Cook said...: This column is a capsule sketch of America at large: braggarts about our preeminent greatness, power and strength, yet so terrified it'll all fall down at the slightest breeze that we think ourselves the doomed defenders of the Alamo...outnumbered by massive armed and hostile hordes just outside our fortress, their inevitable breaching of the gates just moments away.

First it was the commies and now its the Muslims. Next it'll be the sinister Canadians.

As H.L. Mencken said in his NOTES ON DEMOCRACY:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

The truth is that we are our own greatest enemies and we will bring about our own inevitable fall.; 12/8/10, 8:43 AM
test said...: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

This is certainly what the left is best at.; 12/8/10, 9:08 AM
Robert Cook said...: "This is certainly what the left is best at."

Dude...so lame.

You'll never convince anyone George Bush was a leftist.; 12/8/10, 9:14 AM
test said...: Cook,

Yep. Try reading your own assertions, particularly where the rich and corporations are ruining the world for their own short term benefit. Why does the left so overhype global warming? Why did the left react to the financial crisis by spending 1.6 trillion?

Because you never waste a crisis. So tie this principle into your earlier comment and take a step toward reality.; 12/8/10, 9:36 AM
Famous Original Mike said...: Think we could find someone in the ghetto to give us a comment that reflects negatively on the inner-city community?; 12/8/10, 9:40 AM
former law student said...: Clyde, different things happened in each country. France colonized Muslim countries, giving Muslims access to what the French call "The Hexagon." Compare Filipino immigration to the US. Germany needed cheap labor "to do the dirty jobs that Germans refuse to do," so Turks are really Germany's Mexicans. Our Mexicans happen to be Christian.; 12/8/10, 10:10 AM
Robert Cook said...: Marshall,

It remains to be seen whether warnings about climate change are, ahem, "overheated" or not, but you're misunderstand the point: Mencken's remark was an accurate assessment of what government does...you know, the people in power over the people out of power.

You can decry "leftists" shouting warnings about their pet bugaboos all you like, but it is the government in power at any given time--whose search for and scapegoating of hobgoblin--who is dangerous, as it is they who can impose tyranny on us for the sake of our "safety."

You make yourself look silly when you say,

"Why did the left react to the financial crisis by spending 1.6 trillion?"

But I suppose you're one of those who are deluded that Obama is some sort of leftist, so your risible statement can be understood as coming from someone whose every waking moment involves misunderstanding the world around him.; 12/8/10, 10:10 AM
test said...: " but it is the government in power at any given time--whose search for and scapegoating of hobgoblin--who is dangerous, as it is they who can impose tyranny on us for the sake of our "safety.""

The only logical way the government doing this exonerates the left is if you believe the two are mutually exclusive. This is wrong. The left and government overlap, and even the part of the left outside the government influences it. You also misunderstand Mencken. He is describing politics gernally, not government. The idea that the left isn't engaged in politics is nonsensical, and your need to substitute that strawman is clear evidence even you understand how obvious that is.

Further, your pretense that Obama is not a leftist is absurd. He supports no moderate or centrist positions. At most he gives them lip service as a compromise to the realities of American politics. But mostly he simply deprioritizes some leftist goals to allow him to focus on others. This doesn't make him anything other than a leftist, it just means you are incapable of incorporating practical reality into your theoretical preferences.; 12/8/10, 11:00 AM
Clyde said...: @ FLS

And in the case of Britain, the Muslims were citizens of the former empire. Each country had its own reasons for bringing in Muslims, but in every case, they forgot their own national history. There was a reason that the Christian nations of Europe fought a series of wars against the Muslims: Because they were being invaded by them for hundreds of years. This continued all the way up to the Ottoman Turks at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Had the Muslims been successful, there would BE no Western civilization.

But then, after World War II, apparently European states suffered a complete case of amnesia, or perhaps felt that it was "ancient history" and that Muslims were fine civilized chaps now, no different than Scots or Welshmen or Catalans, and certainly just as welcome to move to London or Paris or Frankfurt

Many Muslims, however, have not changed, and harbor irredentist objectives in places like "Cordoba" (you might have heard the name recently in regard to that Ground Zero cultural center).

It's only a phobia if it's irrational.; 12/8/10, 11:30 AM
Robert Cook said...: "(Mencken) is describing politics gernally, not government. The idea that the left isn't engaged in politics is nonsensical...."

And that's why I never made any such statement. Political gamesmanship is played by all who are in the game, of course.

But the real harm to the public is caused by the policies effected by government in power, using the hobgoblins of the day to justify their theft of our liberty, as for example, our current fabricated terror of the great boogeyman of Islamic fundamentalism, and the policies that derive from the need to "protect us" from this great danger. Previously, it was the insidious commies who we were told threatened our survival.

Islamic fundamentist terrorism is significantly less a threat to us than was the Soviet state, yet our policies in reaction to it are much more extreme.

We do not have and have not had for half a century a government that could even arguably be called "leftist," or even any significant body of leftists present in the larger body as a whole, so your remark that "the left" spent a trillion dollars in the face of the financial crisis is ludicrous.

("The left," by the way, is a hobgoblin of the right, who have turned "liberal" and "liberalism" into pejoratives almost akin to "communist" and "communism." This scapegoating is employed to undermine any influence traditionally liberal policies might have over government policy, as this would impede the transfer of wealth and resources from the working people and middle classes of this country to the wealthy.); 12/8/10, 2:53 PM
test said...: "Mencken's remark was an accurate assessment of what government does.."

Here's your comment limiting Mencken to government, in which you italicized the word government to distinguish it from my assertion that this happens in politics. Do you even care that you are provably wrong by looking back a few posts?

"But the real harm to the public is caused by the policies effected by government in power, using the hobgoblins of the day to justify their theft of our liberty, as for example, our current fabricated terror of the great boogeyman of Islamic fundamentalism, and the policies that derive from the need to "protect us" from this great danger. Previously, it was the insidious commies who we were told threatened our survival."

Now apply this reasoning to global warming hysteria. Apply it to the left's constant invoking of the religious right. Apply it to your own hysteria regarding "corporations" and "the wealthy".; 12/9/10, 6:36 AM