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Immediately after the “hate” gauntlet had been thrown down,
curious minds certainly wondered if the CFSP was indeed a Muslim hate group,
which is to say a group that hates all Muslims because they are Muslims. In a
story of this kind, it is important to know whether the CSP is inspired
chiefly by hate or by something far less toxic -- scholarly curiosity: is
sharia law compatible with constitutional and the common law? In addition, one
would want to know whether Prentice himself hates Muslims simply because they
are Muslims, or whether Prentice is being assailed because of his close
association with the CSP, while he himself is free of the presumed taint of
hatred. Prentice is chairman of the Center for Security Policy and appears to be
far more interested in baseball than irrational hatred.
Unfortunately, none of these questions have been asked,
still less answered, by those reporting on the matter. The charge of anti-Muslim
hatred – like charges of racism and anti-Semitism – may be unanswerable in the
absence of unambiguous definitions. No doubt racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim
hatred should be denounced from every pulpit in the nation, religious and
secular, but the denunciations must be aimed at the thing itself, not an intimation
of its shadow. And, in the absence of firm definitions, those who falsely
charge others with hatred of Islam as such should be fervently denounced by men
and women of good will much in the way Senator Joe McCarthy was reviled when he
sought to tag as communists some people who were innocent of the charge.
McCarthy did correctly identify some people as communists, but he was painting
with a very broad brush, and in some cases his manner of investigation proved
insufficient.
In 1992, Bill Buckley brought out a book titled “In Search of Anti-Semitism.” The
tightly reasoned book ran to 200 pages and Buckley appeared to have captured in
its pages a proper context “to evaluate anti-Semitism and, at the same time,
what is wrongfully thought of as anti-Semetic.” There is no such effort underway
to narrowly define “Islamic
hatred” in such a way that Prentice may be safely put behind its
definitional bars. Neither Prentice nor the
Center for Security Policy, founded in 2008 -- not a fly-by-night
operation, and warmly praised by President Ronald Reagan as “an exemplary organization [devoted] to
the pursuit of peace and national security” -- is engaged in
spreading hate.
Is it not possible that CAIR -- closely associated with the
Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in 1928
in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna, which itself is closely
related to Hamas, a militant anti-Israeli terrorist organization -- may regard
as hate what non-Muslim commentators in the United States choose to view as
critical analysis?
The Council on American Islamic Relations should be wary of
throwing stones from within glass houses. CSP is not an Islamic hate group.
And if Prentice is to be judged an Islamic hater because of his association with
a group found on the growing enemies list of the Southern Poverty Law Center,
should not CAIR and the SPLC be judged according to the same standard applied
in the case of Prentice? Prentice’s response to the charge that he is a hatemonger,
not ventilated initially in many news outlets that have carried the sensational charge, may
be found here.
There is no reason to suppose that the members of CAIR should
be familiar with Kant’s categorical imperative -- “Act as if the maxim of your
action were to become by your will a universal law of nature." Or, to put
the precept in Christian terms, do unto others as you would have them do unto
you. That precept – that moral law – weighs heavily on the Christian conscience.
But there is no reason to believe that violent jihadists, say, soiling their
hands with the blood of innocent Christians, among others, think themselves
under any obligation to submit to Kant’s moral law. Their submission is to
Muhammed's precepts as expressed in the Koran, the hadiths and sharia law.
However, if you want to play ball in Dodd Stadium, Norwich, CT., USA, you’ll
have to play by the rules. And the overarching rule is that there is a world of
difference between proper scholarly activity, permitted under the U.S.
Constitution’s First Amendment, and hate mongering of a kind that falls short
of slitting the throats of those who disagree with you on nice theological
questions.
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