This week Prince Turki, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, while speaking at the annual National Council on US-Arab Relations Conference, was asked to comment about a current major article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine by legal expert Noah Feldman. The article was entitled “Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age”, and made numerous references to the so-called “Islamic bomb.”
Prince Turki’s reply was short and to the point. He asked why articles like this constantly refer to an “Islamic bomb” and yet there are no references or questions about “Buddhist bombs”, “Hindu bombs”, “Jewish bombs” or “Christian bombs.” The audience applauded.
Feldman’s erudite discourse certainly lost some of its glitter with his article in the New York Times. Often referred to as “brilliant” in the media, he is a professor of law at the New York University School of Law and a prolific writer.
Feldman worked as an advisor in the early days of the Paul Bremer American transition team in Iraq. He was retained supposedly to be the principal assistant in the writing of Iraq’s then unwritten constitution although he was only in his early 30s and had no direct experience in Iraq. However, his advisory role ended abruptly and it has never been made clear whether he quit or was fired.
Feldman is a graduate of Harvard University, Oxford University and the Yale Law School. He was a Rhodes scholar and served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Feldman is fluent in English, Hebrew, Arabic and French.
He certainly has the credentials but that gives him no excuse for his bigoted use of the term “Islamic bomb” and other glaring examples of intolerance and borderline racism in his writings, particularly in the current Sunday New York Times Magazine article.
Throughout the article Feldman makes further references to “Islamic cultural consciousness”, “Muslim violence”, “Islamic terrorists”, “Islamic discussion of nuclear weapons”, “Muslim voices”, “Islamic discussions”, “Muslim hostages”, “radical Islam”, “nuclear Islamic state “, “comparable non-Islamic state”, “Islamism and anti-Americanism”, “Islamic-ideological” and “Sunni Islamists.”
Some time ago, a wise university professor told me that every time one sees phrases like those above referring to Islam, Muslims or Arabs, substitute those terms with the words “Jewish” or “Christian” and notice how racist they appear.
For example, do we use the terms “Jewish violence”, “Christian terrorists” or “nuclear Christian state”? We don’t, because we would be rightly accused of bigotry and racism. Does that mean that there are no Jews, Christians or Muslims with the negative features that Feldman uses? Of course there are individuals that exhibit these traits, but Feldman condemns a whole religion by his use of these all-encompassing terms in his article.
Feldman further elucidates his insensitivities in his article with the statements like “Suicide bombing has become the archetype of Muslim violence...” and “Over the next quarter-century, it is conceivable and certainly desirable that Islamism and anti-Americanism may be unlinked.”
He also states, “Even among secular Muslims, it has become standard to refer to suicide bombers as martyrs.”
We made many previous references to the insensitive use of the term “Islamists” in previous articles and Feldman takes it one step farther by linking that term to “anti-Americanism.” And the main overall thrust of Feldman’s article is the cross-linking of suicide bombing to Muslims and Islam and, while making that argument, he additionally shows careless use of words with the oxymoron phrase “secular Muslims.”
Feldman also perpetrates the “clash of civilizations” thesis pushed so hard by academicians like Bernard Lewis with statements like, “This means that a nuclear Islamic state would be at least as willing to use its weapons as a comparable non-Islamic state.”
So in Feldman’s world there are two kinds of states or countries..an “Islamic state” and a “comparable non-Islamic state.” It is “them” against “us.”
Feldman who has been given considerable praise for his purported sensitivity and evenhandedness regarding Islam, Muslims and Arabs, seems to have lost his so-called sensitivity with this article. And this isn’t the first time that he has been heavily criticized for his comments on Arab issues. Feldman gave a very pro-Israeli rationale for the invasion of Lebanon by Israel and utterly failed to show any sensitivities to the Lebanese in his analysis.
Feldman also seems to be obsessed with the use of the suffix “ism.”
He uses it throughout the New York Times article in words like “Islamism” and “anti-Americanism.”
Those terms aren’t new to writers who like to attack Islam with clever words and phrases, but Feldman also introduces us to the term “Bin Ladenism” in his article. And he uses it in the context of the Iranian revolution and “Islamist anti-Americanism.”
Feldman might be an expert in legal theory but he needs a lot of work when it comes to cross-cultural and cross-religious sensitivity. He ends his article with an Apocalyptic culturally insensitive and arrogant statement. He states, “In confronting the possibility of the Islamic bomb, we — Muslims and non-Muslims alike — need to remember that Islam exists both as an ideal system of morals and values and as a force that motivates actual people living today, with all the frailties and imperfections that make us human.”
We trust that Noah’s bark is worse than his bite.
