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TOO SENSITIVE BY HALF
by Jonathan Foreman
The New York Post, December 12, 2001

There has been much pious talk in recent weeks about the importance of catering to Muslim and Arab "sensitivities" while we make war on the Taliban and al Qaeda.

First, there was the anguished call to stop air-strikes for Ramadan - even though Muslim states have historically been as little concerned to cease hostilities during that month as Christian nations have during Easter
and Christmas. (In Egypt, they call the war they launched against Israel in October 1973 the "Ramadan War.")

Then there is the pundits' concern that any peacekeeping force sent to Afghanistan must include troops from Muslim countries like Jordan or Turkey- the implication being that the Afghans can't be expected to tolerate the polluting presence of the infidel on their soil, unless diluted by nominal co-religionists. (Note that, in the collapse of the peacekeeping mission to Muslim Somalia in 1993, the first foreign troops to be ambushed were Pakistani.)

Turn that "sensitivity" around: Imagine Americans - perhaps Southern Baptists living near an army base in the Carolinas where foreign soldiers are trained - becoming incensed at the presence of Muslims in their vicinity and you see it for what it is: bigotry.

In fact, we have more than carried out any obligation we have not to needlessly offend our Muslim allies or enemies. It's not as if the United States has been including ham sandwiches in its food drops or sending Christian missionaries (and/or Playboy bunnies) in with the Marines.

If anything, we have gone too far in the other direction, as when the Clinton administration refused to let the FBI proceed against terrorist front organizations for fear of seeming "anti-Muslim," or when the Bush administration invited to the White House representatives of groups who applauded the blowing up of Israeli teenagers in Tel Aviv pizzerias.

The same concern for the "sensitivities of the Arab street" has meant our choosing to ignore what Abraham Cooper calls the "mainstreaming of anti-Semitism" across the Arab world, which includes popular TV programs depicting Jews as vampires who drink the blood of Arab children.

The fact that such bad-faith concern for "their" feelings is so common illustrates the way a foolish cultural relativism - the idea that all cultures are morally equal, except perhaps our own - has made enormous inroads among the chattering classes.

And the sad truth is that "sensitivity" used in this context is often just a sympathetic code-word for bigotry and religious intolerance - of a type that we patronizingly choose to see as normal and understandable on the part of certain nations or ethnicities.

By truckling to such "sensitivity," we do outrage to our own hard-won principles - both at home and abroad.

In America, the religious freedom on which we pride ourselves does not require us to tolerate child marriages, polygamy or widow-burning. Nor must we approve of or refrain from criticizing the "sensibility" that promotes
female genital mutilation or forbids women from driving in certain Arab and African countries.

If our allies or our enemies dislike the idea of women in authority or in uniform, or if they are horrified at the presence of certain racial or religious groups in our ranks, it is simply too bad for them that they cannot force their values on us.

Our rhetorical concessions to these "sensitivities" also imply that the hatred of America in Islamist communities is a rational response to something that we have done. In fact, that hatred is far more likely to be a paranoid expression of rage at their own societies' failure - failures that have nothing to do with us.

No one wishes to give unnecessary offense, but it's a dangerous error to think that we have the ability to assuage this hatred by playing up to the more unpleasant bigotry that so often accompanies it.

Worse, by pandering to the bigotry of the extremists of the Muslim world in the name of Muslim and Arab sensibilities, we cut the ground from under the few moderates who share our belief in tolerance and religious freedom.