New York Times Upholds its Decision to Call Brigitte Gabriel a “Radical Islamophobe”

In a word: Predictable… But, then again, being called an Islamophobe is a badge of honor in our book!

A Radical Islamophobe?
August 21, 2008
By Clark Hoyt – NYT

Brigitte Gabriel is a provocative author and lecturer, a Lebanese-Christian who came to the United States after surviving the civil war that tore apart the land of her birth. She has made it her mission – one might say her crusade – to warn that radical Muslims, a term she defines as all practicing Muslims, are bent on taking over the West.

Gabriel has a new book coming out in a couple of weeks, “They Must Be Stopped.” Knowing her history, you don’t need to guess who “they” are. Gabriel believes that Muslims cannot serve loyally in the U.S. military, that interfaith dialogue is “nonsense,” and that the difference between the Arab world and Israel is “barbarism versus civilization.” The Muslim world will not be satisfied until all infidels are converted or eliminated, she has said.

Stephen Lee, the publicist at St. Martins Press for Gabriel’s new book, calls her views “extreme,” and I wouldn’t argue with that.

But more than 250 people have written to me in the past several days to protest a description of Gabriel in the Times Magazine as a “radical Islamophobe.” That description was in a brief introduction to an interview with Gabriel in Deborah Solomon’s “Questions For” column. The messages also complained about the headline over the interview – “The Crusader” – and some of the questions posed to Gabriel by Solomon.

Many, if not most, of the messages appear to be blog-inspired. Though written individually, they ask for the same things – that the headline and description be removed from The Times’s Web site and that Solomon publish an apology.

Lee, the publicist, told me, “We had no problems with the questions or the answers, as depicted in the piece.” He said it was “totally accurate” and that Solomon had gone over the edited transcript with Gabriel before it was published.

As for the terms “crusader” and “radical Islamophobe,” both strike me as fair descriptions in the context of a magazine feature that is supposed to be edgier than the news columns of the newspaper. Though much of the interview seemed comparatively mild, Gabriel showed a few of the rhetorical flashes that have made her such a controversial figure. Moderate Muslims, she said, “at this point are truly irrelevant.” Public foot baths for Muslim students at American universities are “the way they are taking over the West. They are doing it culturally, inch by inch. They don’t need to fire one bullet.”

[Oh, you mean, “more Liberal and biased.”]

It’s not hard to see how Gabriel’s experiences might have shaped her views. She has said that radical Muslim fighters destroyed her town in Lebanon, terrorized her family and nearly killed her. She said she was forced to live for seven years in a bomb shelter. In this country, Gabriel formed American Congress for Truth (ACT) to warn against the threat of fundamentalist Islam. If she isn’t a woman on a crusade, in the modern sense of that word, I don’t know who would be.

One person who wrote to me said that Gabriel “is not opposed to Islam in any way, just against the terrifying Islam extremism.” But that isn’t really correct. A blog on The Australian Jewish News quoted Gabriel as saying last year, “Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim.”

I’ve had my issues with Solomon in the past, but I don’t think she or her editors have done anything here requiring an apology or any other corrective action.

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