Academia's Love Affair with Islam

During a brief stroll through my Alma Mater, CUNY, I was shocked to find enthusiastic attention and admiration for Islam. I picked up the monthly schedule of events to find it packed with lectures devoted to Muslims and Islam. The emphasis is on the unfair perceptions in the West coupled with talks about “understanding” the Islamic viewpoint. Critical examination is missing not because Islam is another culture—there is a critical talk on Hindutva—but nothing similar about Islamic culture.

In the Graduate Center’s magazine, Folio, there is a forum on “Immigration and Islam: How will Western Europe cope with its growing and restive Muslim population?” We find that the current revival of Islam among Muslims in the West is blamed on … the West!

“The eagerness with which many young Muslims in Britain embrace their Muslim identity would seem to mirror the way Europeans have come to identity these immigrants,” states Prof. Jose Casanova. Prof. Tariq Modood says, “… among Muslims, the younger they were, the more Islamic they were …” According to the author of the report, Modood attributes this trend “to pressures British Muslims have come to feel after the terrorist bombings and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The fact that Muslims, worldwide, have been returning to the original practice of their religion (Salafi) over the past 30 years has nothing to do with it according to these academics. They are become serious about Islam because of the West!!!

Let me leave the absurdity of this notion aside for the moment and focus on something very telling in Modood’s exposition. Notice how he refers to Iraq and Afghanistan. Why would a so-called moderate Muslim be upset with the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan? Why would a “moderate Muslim” be upset with removing Saddam and ending the civil war in Iraq between al Qaeda and fundamentalist Shiites? Modood clearly see Muslims identifying with the so-called fundamentalists. This only makes sense if there is only one Islam: fundamentalist Islam.

Given the propaganda for infidels, that there is supposed to be a moderate Islam and a few extremists that don’t represent true Islam, we should see vast Islamic support for the defeat of the extremist "hijackers" of Islam. However, here we see the truth coming out … Muslims see fundamentalists as authentic Muslims. No one in this academic forum questioned the implications because these assumptions are tacitly assumed despite the overt disclaimer.

Why the love for such a fundamentalist, barbaric, and oppressive creed? It isn’t just multi-culturalism—note the critical examination of Hindutva. There is truly a love fest for Islam in academia.

See also, today’s article on Front Page Magazine.