Field Guide to Useful Infidels by Islamist Watch December 27, 2016 in This Article

A Journalist’s Manual: Field Guide to Useful Infidels By Islamist Watch December 27, 2016 In This Article Executive Summary 1 Introduction 2 Ben Affleck 3 Christiane Amanpour 4 Karen Armstrong 5 Max Blumenthal 6 John Brennan 7 Chris Christie 8 Morris Dees 9 Matt Duss 10 John Esposito 11 Glenn Greenwald 12 Martin Indyk 13 John Kerry 14 Grover Norquist 15 Leslie Wong 16 James Zogby 17 Countering Useful Infidels and Their Organizations 19 Executive Summary Americans have lived with the threat of attack by jihadi groups for nearly four decades. Despite this clear and present danger, some non-Muslim commentators, politicians, and other public figures challenge the idea that Islamism, a radical political ideology with ambitions of global conquest, has anything to do with this violence. We call such persons useful infidels (a variation on “useful idiots,” a term widely attributed to Lenin). Useful infidels employ various methods. Some seek to redefine the threat by arguing that ISIS killers should not be described as Muslim terrorists out of fear that doing so would provide “the type of Islamic legitimacy that they are so desperately seeking, but which they don’t deserve at all.” Others seek to distract from the Islamist threat by claiming there is a deluge of anti-Muslim hate crimes or non-Muslim threats of violence where few exist. Some cooperate with Islamist groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Others focus on depriving law enforcement of the necessary training and resources to recognize and counter Islamist threats. Or they legitimize Islamists as the only representative and acceptable face of American Islam, to the detriment of moderate Muslims, who are ignored and powerless. Many useful infidels defame those who speak up about the threat of Islamism, both Muslim and non-Muslim, often accusing them of bigotry and claiming their critique, and not Islamism itself, is the cause of jihad, extremism, and violence. Some go so far as to compile blacklists of those accused of this alleged thought crime. This demonization has painful consequences by confusing Americans and making them fearful to speak up. Those fighting the threat of Islamism, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, need to express themselves freely, without fear of their reputations or livelihoods destroyed because they stand up to a totalitarian ideology. The media having an especially important role to unmask useful infidels, this handbook helps journalists in particular to recognize how useful infidels operate to shape public discourse on Islamism and to mainstream specious views. Non-journalists will also find it helpful to understand the hitherto-obscure function of useful infidels. We hope that journalists and scholars alike will build on this first analytic building block. 1 Introduction The profiles that follow illustrate how individuals across a wide range of fields advance Islamist ideas. They were chosen for their prominence and the extent of the damage they have inflicted. This is by no means a complete list and may be updated and expanded in the future. 2 1. Ben Affleck Ben Affleck has risen to become one of his generation’s most celebrated movie stars and filmmakers since co-writing the Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1997 filmGood Will Hunting. Affleck subsequently appeared in a series of blockbuster films, such as 1998’s Armageddon, 2001’s Pearl Harbor, and 2002’s The Sum of All Fears, which made him an A-list celebrity. After a decline in his acting career, he rebounded as a director, notably for the Oscar-winning Argo (2012). Affleck has eagerly used his celebrity status to promote progressive views on issues ranging from gay marriage to the minimum wage and universal healthcare, while donating time and money to the Democratic Party and an assortment of philanthropic and progressive causes. Affleck has gained the most attention accusing others of bias toward the Arab-Islamic world. During an October 2014 debate on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Affleck famously called the anti-Islamist views expressed by Maher and fellow panelist Sam Harris “gross” and “racist … like saying, ‘you shifty Jew.’” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent Islamist group named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator during the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, subsequently added Affleck to a list of individuals it deems worthy of thanks from Muslims. In His • “[T]he Arab terrorist thing has been done a million times in the movies.” — Applauding the Own Words: decision by producers of his 2002 film The Sum of All Fears to replace the Palestinian Islamist villains of Tom Clancy’s novel with neo-Nazis. Slate, May 28, 2002. • “I think [the Middle East] is the most misunderstood part of the world by certain people in the United States. … There is a perception in some circles that Islam is inherently more violent than Christianity, that this notion of jihad is inherent in Islam and leads Muslims to be more brutal than Christians. I think that is false.” — Agence France Presse, December 24, 2003. • Bill Maher: “You’re trying to say … that’s all the problem is, these few bad apples. The idea that someone should be killed if they leave the Islamic religion is just a few bad apples?” Affleck: “The people who would actually believe in that you murder someone if they leave Islam is not the majority of Muslims at all.” — Real Time with Bill Maher, HBO, October 3, 2014. (According to a 2013 Pew poll, the percentage of Muslims who support the death penalty for apostates from Islam is 79 percent in Afghanistan, 76 percent in Pakistan, 86 percent in Egypt, and 82 percent in Jordan.) • “ISIS couldn’t fill a Double A ballpark in Charleston, West Virginia, and you want to make a career out of ISIS, ISIS, ISIS.” — Directed at Sam Harris. Real Time with Bill Maher, HBO, October 3, 2014. (As Politifact pointed out, the only such facility in Charleston is Appalachian Power Park, which has a maximum seating capacity of 4,500 for games, less than a fourth of what was then the most recent CIA estimate of ISIS fighting strength.) 3 2. Christiane Amanpour Christiane Amanpour serves as CNN’s chief international correspondent. Hired by CNN in 1983, she gained widespread notice for her coverage of the 1990-1991 Gulf War and the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia. Criticized by the New York Times for her emotional reporting and anti-Serbian speculation during the siege of Sarajevo, Amanpour later insisted this did not compromise her objectivity. “I now say truthful, not neutral. There is a difference here. Truthful is bringing the truth. Neutral can be creating a false equivalence between this side and that.” Amanpour sparked considerable controversy with her 2007 series CNN Presents: God’s Warriors, which drew equivalency between Islamist terrorists and Israeli settlers. Even liberal MSNBC host Dan Abrams accused the veteran journalist of the “worst type of moral relativism” for failing to “distinguish between Islamic terrorists who utilize fierce violence to achieve warped goals, and the merely fiercely religious or even just those who fiercely believe in the state of Israel.” In Her • “The impact of God’s Jewish warriors goes far beyond these rocky hills. The Jewish settlements have Own Words: inflamed much of the Muslim world.” — CNN Presents: God’s Warriors, CNN, August 21, 2007. • “The top Republican candidates have decided to make a war on Muslims — you know, 1.5 billion members of another faith.” — CNN, September 24, 2015. 4 3. Karen Armstrong Karen Armstrong is a popular author and prominent commentator on religion. Born in 1944 in Great Britain, she became a nun at age 17 but left the convent seven years later as a nonbeliever with claims of physical and psychological abuse. She told her story in the autobiographical Through the Narrow Gate in 1981 and shifted toward a career in teaching, writing, and broadcasting. Two of Armstrong’s books charted the path she would take in the coming decades as a public intellectual: 1991’s Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, which won the Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award, and 1993’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Armstrong believes that Islamist terror is motivated by “humiliation” caused by colonial abuse of the Muslim world and continued Western support for repressive Arab regimes and Israel. “Every fundamentalist movement that I’ve studied, in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation.” Actions Speak Louder: Armstrong spoke at the 2012 annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization originally founded by Muslim Brotherhood activists and named as a co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial. In Her • “The West has to share a responsibility for what is happening in the Middle East. If it had not Own Words: persecuted the Jews, there would not have been the need for the creation of the State of Israel. The Muslim world did nothing to the Jews, and the Palestinians are paying the price for the sins of Europe.” — Interview with Al-Ahram, July 4-10, 2002. • “[W]hen I saw the towers fall on September 11, one of the many, many thoughts that went through my head was, ‘We helped to do this.’ The way we split up these states, created these nation-states that ISIS is pulling asunder, showed absolutely no regard for the people concerned.” — Interview with Salon, November 23, 2014. • Salon: “When you he ar, for example, Sam H arris and Bill M aher re cently arguing that there’s something inherently violent about Islam — Sam Harris said something like ‘Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas’ — when you hear something like that, how do you respond?” Armstrong: “It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps in Europe.

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