Princeton prof: "Reminds me a lot of Scalia in their approach to texts ..."
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Last time I mentioned the NYT's Andrea Elliott it was to call her on her lavish and pristine three-part whitewash of Brooklyn imam Reda Shata. Example:
Then there was the series' look at terrorism. "What I may see as terrorism, you may not see that way," Mr. Shata says. What does he mean by that? The reporter [Elliott] doesn't tell us. Hamas is a powerful symbol of resistance, he says; the assassinated Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin was the "martyred" "lion of Palestine," he sermonizes; and yet the imam says he condemns all violence. How does he square that? She doesn't tell us. And when he sanctions violence against soldiers, not civilians, how does he define "soldier" and "civilian"? She doesn't tell us that, either.
When asked about a 2004 sermon that "exalted" a female suicide bomber as a "martyr," Mr. Shata seems "unusually conflicted," the reporter writes. He declines to comment for fear of "[inviting] controversy," and alienating New York rabbis he has "forged friendships with." And there the question lies: She just lets him slip away. All the news that's fit to print, apparently, doesn't include the heart of the matter....
Elliott is back with a horrifyingly fascinating profile of the Alabama born and bred, half-American, half-Syrian, Muslim, Shabab leader and jihad-killer Omar Hammami, aka Al-Amriki. In an attempt to categorize Hammami's generically correct path to jihad through an explanation of "Salafism" -- another way of avoiding the problem with plain Islam and plain jihad -- Elliott seems to think she is bringing jihad barbarism into focus by bringing in an expert from Princeton. She writes:
To purge their practice of modern influences, they try to emulate the founders of the faith — the contemporaries of the Prophet Muhammad and the two generations that came after his death in A.D. 632. Young Salafis, for example, often dress in sandals and robes like those thought to have been worn in seventh-century Arabia. The Salafist interpretation of Islamic doctrine tends to be literal and originalist. “They remind me a lot of Scalia in their approach to texts,” says Bernard Haykel, a professor at Princeton University.
Note the slip-slanderous linkage between Salafis and Justice Scalia, whose judicial philosophy is known as "strict constructionist."What a complete and breathtaking disgrace.
This prof thinks the terrorist and the Justice have something greatly germane in common because they both follow their respective texts -- the Koran and the US Constitution -- utterly regardless of content, purpose, point, manner ...
Might as well say: "Salafists remind me a lot of Shakespearean actors in their approach to texts...." Well, they both follow them, right?
Of course, neither US Supreme Court Justices nor Shakespearean actors are inspired to wage jihad by their "texts," nor do they riot and kill over "insults" to their "texts." Something for Professor Princeton to ponder: Could it be related to what's inside the texts?
