Roger Cohen Manages To Pin "Islamophobia" On One Person

Roger Cohen's sloppiness was most clearly demonstrated in his preposterous claim that Iranian Jews were actually doing quite well in Iran.

Now, Cohen joins--rather late--with those who attack Conservatives who have shown concern for radical Islamists. Cohen assumes those who are wary of the Islamist attacks in the US are racists:

Funny, several of the angry notes were from Jews, who seemed to have forgotten that not being a race but a religion had scarcely saved Jews from racist persecution: Perhaps the Einsatzgruppen just got in a semantic muddle before opening fire. Perhaps the Malaysian soccer crowd who just booed Chelsea’s Yossi Benayoun, an Israeli player and a Jew, were not really racists. Dream on.


Hatred of Muslims in Europe and the United States is a growing political industry. It’s odious, dangerous and racist. Thanks to my colleague Andrea Elliott, we now know the story of the orchestration of the successful anti-Shariah campaign in the United States, led by a Hasidic Jew named David Yerushalmi who holds that “most of the fundamental differences between the races are genetic.” The rightists in Europe using anti-Muslim rhetoric are true heirs to the Continent’s darkest hours.

I’m glad that at an impressionable age my Dad told me of a dumb white cop with power telling a smart young black woman with promise she was “really just a Kaffir.” The settings change, the vile stupidity does not.

Let's put aside his rather odd claim that Jews are a race and not a religion.

Cohen pins all the wariness of what he conveniently calls Islamophobia on one person. Talk about profiling.
Of course, it is a hop, skip and a jump to paint other Conservatives with the same brush.

Cohen's way of thinking is rebutted by Melanie Phillips writes about Hatred, smears and the liberals hell-bent on bullying millions of us into silence.

But it is interesting that of all the people to blame as the cause of all of Islamophobia in the world--he picks on a Chasidic Jew, all the while failing to address Islamist terrorist attacks that have caused concern, even while there is recognition that unlike Cohen attack on Conservatives, not all Muslims are pinned with the same label.

Cohen has not jumped on the bandwagon with those who have tried to find a connection between the terrorist attack in Norway and Israel.

Perhaps he is saving that the his next column.


Technorati Tag: Norway and Conservative and Islamist.