The other day The Washington Post gave a big sloppy kiss to professional Islamophobes Pam Geller and Robert Spencer, two writers who have been opposing the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero for months, toning down their extremism while acknowledging their growing influence on the right. That softball piece has since been retitled, "The pens of anti-Muslim conservatives impact N.Y.C. mosque debate mightily."
This makes Geller angry:
She has used this incendiary language, i.e., "anti-Muslim," before (here). She is not only stupid, but dangerous. I am not anti-Muslim. This is a slanderous lie. I love people. All people. Anyone who knows my work, knows me. I am against the ideology that inspires jihad. I am against the sharia. I am against gender apartheid, misogyny, etc.
The Muslims are finishing the work of the Mufti al-Husseini, Hitlers ally and mass slaughterer of Jews during the the holocaust. Sixty years later, it's the Muslims who are dragging the rest of the world with them, in their genocidal dreams of annihilating goodness, creativity, production, inventiveness, benevolence, charity, medicine, technology, and all of the gifts of the Jews.
Who could possibly get the idea that Geller is anti-Muslim? Or Robert Spencer, who calls the headline "libel"? For some reason, given Spencer's history of statements like this one, I doubt that accusation would hold up in court.
I have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven.
Spencer doesn't think there's a meaningful distinction between terrorists and mainstream American Muslims, which is the only way opposition to the Park 51 project really makes sense. This at least, is an honestly held view, but it's still an anti-Muslim one. It's just that for Spencer and Geller, it's OK to be anti-Muslim because all Muslims are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
When this view is reproduced accurately by others, it gives these people a feeling similar to looking in a mirror. The ugliness of their views becomes briefly apparent even to them, so they do what they can to smash it. They realize that on some level, the effectiveness of their advocacy depends on them not coming across as raving bigots, so a certain superficial deniability is required. You could even call it a kind of...takkiya.
