Ajami - it spreads

Why do I go on and on about this Qaradawi affair? Because, as I feared, the claim that Qaradawi issued a fatwa condoning killing American civilians has quickly consolidated into "fact" despite the considerable evidence against it, including Qaradawi's own denials and Fahmi Huwaydi's reporting based on an actual tape recording of the lecture.

The latest? Fouad Ajami: "Sunni Islam's most influential preacher, the Egyptian-born cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. That cleric rules the airwaves with his access to television and the Web. He had issued a fatwa authorizing attacks on American civilians in Iraq, and al-Rashed saw in this ruling the ruinous ways of the radical preachers."

Note how Ajami uses Rashed's article (so very originally.... shouldn't Rashed get royalties from every hack who has essentially reprinted his column with a little bit of commentary?), but describes Qaradawi's supposed fatwa with a flat declarative "he had issued" - not "according to Rashed, he had issued", but just "he had issued." Note how Qaradawi becomes one of the "radical preachers" - since what other kind would issue such a fatwa? Or, you might be led into believing, what other kind of Islamist is there?

You might think that a "scholar" such as Ajami would have encountered the same questions about authenticity that I did - it isn't that hard, if you read Arabic and are paying attention. You might have thought that this might have troubled him, and that before publishing an essay which hinges upon this second-hand allegation he would want to check it out, just to be sure. But since that wouldn't fit Ajami's political agenda, and since nobody is going to challenge him on it, why should he bother?

And so the legend congeals and spreads, repeated over and over again, unchallenged outside of obscure aardvarkian burrows. And, as some correspondents have so shrewdly noted, what does it matter whether he "really" said it or not, when we all know that so-called moderates are really just radicals in disguise, so he might as well have said it?