Huwaydi, Qaradawi, and the aardvark

Meanwhile, in the Qatari paper al Sharq, the prominent Egyptian commentator Fahmi Huwaydi writes: "What Dr Yusuf al Qaradawi said at the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate about resistance to the Americans in Iraq was the headline of all the media... even though his lecture there on August 31 was about "Political Pluralism in the Islamic Understanding", no newspapers cared about his powerful defense of the idea, and concentrated instead on his response to a question by one of the attendees about his opinion towards the kidnapping of American civilians in Iraq, and their killing, to force American forces to leave Iraq, as had happened before in Somalia. What the newspapers and news agencies published was that Shaykh Qaradawi supported killing all Americans in Iraq, without discriminating between military and civilian, but he objected to the beheadings... the Kuwaiti newspaper al Watan ran the first such story, on September 5, saying that "the Shaykh called it an obligation to kill Western civilians in Iraq." Because the speaker was Shaykh Yusuf al Qaradawi, the most important religious reference for Sunnis, and because the matter concerned the permissibility of killing civilians, which is of the greatest sensitivity, and it is well known that Westerners are the very first order of human beings, they aren't Afghans or Arabs or Africans, his comments aroused a great controversy and outrage in various circles.... All the great newspapers and media raced to see how much support or opposition there was for this dangerous call. Because I received four phone calls in one day about this, I can only imagine how it was for others... They all raced to show that this proved two things: first, that he had revealed the truth of the "moderation" which he preached and revealed to all his true face as a radical terrorist, and second that the moderate movement was a fantasy and a delusion... which then proved that all Muslim activists were really extremists and terrorists.

Huwaydi continues: "I therefore obtained a recording of the comments of the Shaykh at the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate. And I found that this was his response to the question: "The Americans who came to Iraq as invaders, and brought with them war, killing them is necessary.. but the beheadings can not be supported by the ethics of Islam.. the constitution of war in Islam is a constitution of ethics, and by those rules we must not kill except those who kill us, and therefore all of those who do not carry weapons it is not upon us to kill." This is the text of the words of the Shaykh... The distortion which these words have received, and the clamour which it aroused in world capitals, which he hastened to deny after they were published... even holding a press conference.. which was attended by some members of the American and French embassies at the side of a large number of journalists and media, where he said "Islam does not permit kidnapping of civilians or their killing"... but his corrections have been completely ignored, and everyone continues to deal with the first position attributed to him rather than the truth."

Alright. Fahmi Huwaydi is one of the most prominent and influential of the Arab journalists, and what he wrote today is, more or less exactly, what I wrote last week about the affair. Huwaydi's account of things - along with some other information that I can't put on the blog - leaves me fairly convinced that I'm right on this one.

But... I can also say that a number of American magazines and newspapers have expressed no interest in this information when I presented it to them. As I feared, the conventional wisdom has congealed around a lie. Some people seem to think that this makes me an "apologist" - that I insist on criticizing people like Qaradawi for things that they actually say and do rather than for things which we make up and attribute to them. For example, I'm happy to criticize Qaradawi for his position on suicide bombing in Israel, or for his recent accusations that Western humanitarian NGOs in the Sudan were prosyletizing against Islam. Fine - I guess dealing with reality can be messy, and dealing with the acceptable storyline can be so much more reassuring. To them, I say go ahead and use the Qaradawi story next time you want to make your points about how moderate Islamists are really extremists. It will be a good anecdote, and it will help your argument. And it will be a lie... but nobody, apparently, will care.

Comments

[paper tigress]

We can have some more fun tomorrow around a new lie...Die Welt to publish that the Syrians tested chemical weapons on the Darfurians last year.

First the Containerships of Mass Destruction Plying the Indian Ocean, then the Yellowcake Forgeries of Niger, today Shaykh Qaradawi the GI-Slayer and tomorrow, the absolute phatasmagorical mother of all of disinformation: Chemical Bashir, the Genocider of Darfur.

[Abu Frank]

Yep, that's pretty definite. Short of actually getting the recording, I guess you've hammered it down about as tight as it's going to go now.