[Dean's World] Dean: An Open Letter To Michelle Malkin

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Posted by Dean:
An Open Letter To Michelle Malkin
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1159488560.shtml


   I am still thinking about how to respond in full to [1]Michelle
   Malkin's response to me. This may be my entire response, or I may have
   more to say later. I haven't decided yet.

   I admit to being a bit surprised and a bit disappointed. For instead
   of directly answering what I thought was a pretty reasonable (if
   slightly heated at the end) posting, she seems to have decided to
   delve into my comments section and dredge up some angry things I said
   to one of my commenters. Which was something I wrote in angry response
   to a troll who's been hanging out on Dean's World for a while now,
   regularly leaving horrible indictments of the entire faith of Islam.

   Yeah I lost my temper and swore. But my comments should not be taken
   out of that context. I won't apologize for swearing--I'm a blue collar
   guy and I do talk like that when I'm angry. Nor will I apologize for
   defending my Muslim brothers and sisters who hate terrorists, of whom
   I know many.

   And what did I say in that comment that was so offensive? I said that
   anyone who spits on the religion of many of our brave fighting men and
   women in the U.S. armed forces, and the faith of Muslims who are right
   now fighting side by side with them, is a traitor. A "G*d damned
   traitor" was my exact phrasing. Well if that makes you mad, too bad,
   because I believe it. You do not spit on the faith of our loyal
   citizens and allies who fight against terrorists. That's just wrong.
   Wrong on every level--politically, philosophically, patriotically,
   whatever.

   But none of that was in my original article directed at Michelle. I
   wrote that in the comments to my article, in response to one guy who'd
   p*ssed me off several times before.

   Still, I simply will not apologize for coming to the defense of our
   Muslim brethren who are engaged in the fight against terrorism. It
   makes me very angry when their faith is treated with contempt. I think
   I have a right to be angry about that. I think every American should
   be angry about that. You should not spit on the faith of our brave
   patriotic soldiers and their allies. You just shouldn't.

   You should not spit on the faith of Hamid Karzai and Nouri al-Maliki
   either.

   I'll also say I'm peeved with Michelle for accusing me of whoring for
   attention. Come off it, Michelle. That's totally unfair. I have about
   30,000 daily readers, and its readership continues to grow over time.
   More to the point, when you were just starting out as a new blogger I
   was very supportive of you even though I often disagreed with you.
   I've always treated you with respect. Even when my blog had far more
   readers than yours I was happy to support you. I also still
   semi-regularly link both Michellemalkin.com and Hot Air, and have
   never once condemned you. We often disagree but I think you add a
   vital perspective, especially as a Woman of Color who is a
   conservative--which is nothing you should be ashamed of, even if
   sometimes I think your rhetoric is over the top.

   I honestly, Michelle, think that I have never disrespected you, but I
   think you have disrespected me here. I was just looking for dialogue,
   but you decided to make me look like a fool because I posted an angry
   comment or two to my original article. (And yeah, my wife [2]agreed
   with you, and that's fine too, she's a great woman and the mother of
   my children, but I think they were both were wrong.)

   I wanted to start a real dialogue, and I think that this whole bit
   with quoting something I said deep in the comments to my original
   article sidelines the very real questions I brought up. So I'll
   re-iterate those questions here, in condensed form (which maybe I
   should have done in the first place):

   1) Shouldn't we embrace Muslims who unequivocally reject terrorism as
   our friends and allies?
   2) Shouldn't we be proud of the Muslims who wear America's uniform?
   3) Shouldn't we admire and respect those Muslims who fight side by
   side with American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Phillipines, and
   other places against terrorists?
   4) Should we not be careful not to paint Islam in broad brush-strokes
   when it might alienate Muslim-American patriots, and the allied
   Muslims who support our efforts to defeat terrorists?
   5) Shoot, shouldn't Hot Air have at least one Muslim Republican in
   their mix? They're out there you know. As a Woman of Color and a
   Republican, shouldn't you be able to understand that?

   I don't think these are unfair or angry questions. I think they are
   good questions, important questions, that every Conservative (and
   every Hawk) ought to contemplate carefully. They certainly aren't
   intended to be attacks or indictments, and never were.

   I will re-iterate my respect for Michelle. Yes, we disagree on many
   things, but I do not believe I have ever been nasty or condescending
   toward her. I think I have supported her many times even when that
   made me unpopular. (Even if, apparently, she never noticed.)

   I think I'm done for now, although there are other specifics I may
   need to address later (well over a dozen trackbacks, and countless
   comments all over the place. Wow, the head spins). But I still think
   that Ali Eteraz, a Muslim-American who hates terrorists, [3]understood
   my point much better than most.

   Update: In response to Dean's World commenter "clarenancy," who says I
   have given no specific links against Michelle, I respond by saying
   that I tried to avoid that. Listing such things would read like an
   indictment, and I was trying not to do that. I thought I was writing
   to a friend and comrade-in-arms, not an evil person who needed to be
   denounced. As I said, it was a call to conscience, not a fight I
   wanted to pick.

   Still, some of Michelle's postings that I think could have been
   better-phrased include:

   [4]The Religion of [DEL: Peace :DEL] Firebombs &Fatwas

   Hmm. Not the violent nutjobs, but all advocates of the "Religion of
   Peace?"

   [5]Muslims kill Christians in Nigeria

   Not Islamic radicals and extremists. Just Muslims.

   In [6]I Support the Pope, Michelle says things like, "The Muslims
   clearly have no response to this, because their religion was spread by
   the sword, and we can see it is spread so still by the forced
   conversions of Steve Centani and his camera operator." Not Islamic
   radicals or extremists. Just Muslims.

   Her co-blogger at Hot Air, Bryan, posted [7]this extraordinarily
   pretentious and condescending article defending the notion that Islam
   is inherently violent based on the Koran.

   [8]Muslims Will Execute Christians, wherein she describes three
   Christians who were convicted of fomenting violence that killed
   hundreds of Muslims in Indonesia--and implied that somehow Christians
   are put to a double-standard. But she did not mention that three
   Muslims are now on Death Row in Indonesia for the bombing in Bali.
   Yes, one Islamic radical got off with a light sentence of only a
   couple of years, but three other Muslims are sentenced to die for
   their horrible murder of Australian tourists and non-Muslim
   Indonesians.

   On the other hand, Michelle wrote in [9]Criticizing Islam on the
   Airwaves the following: "For the record, I do not consider all Muslims
   terrorists and would not call Islam a 'terror organization.'"

   Again I do not mean, and never meant, to indict Michelle. I honestly
   hoped it would be a dialogue between friends and allies, who have
   supported each other for years. I just wanted to ask the question:
   shouldn't we do a better job of recognizing and embracing our Muslim
   friends who hate terrorism and radicalism? Who serve in our armed
   forces, and/or fight alongside our armed forces in the fight to
   capture or kill terrorists?

   [EMBED]

   Please also see the last two or three minutes of [10]this video.

   Please also see this statement by Prime Minister Maliki:

   [EMBED]

   These men are our allies. But not merely our allies, they are our
   Muslim allies.

   Is it too much to ask you to remember that whenever you can, Michelle?

   Seriously Michelle, you shouldn't be mad at me. It was only because I
   respect you that I brought up these questions in the first place.

   Peace and respect to you, my sister.

   Update 2: Something I have noticed in the angry responses to my
   question is the running theme that I somehow "attacked" poor Michelle.
   Please. Read my [11]original question, without delving into the
   comments. Was there any attack there? I don't think there was. I think
   it was an honest call to the conscience of a fellow Hawk, with
   questions I thought badly needed answering. Anyone who thinks I was
   beating up on poor Michelle is just being sexist and stupid. If I
   didn't respect her in the first place I would not have posed the
   questions as I did. Let's dispense with the "poor victim Michelle vs.
   Brutal Dean" narrative--which Michelle never suggested and neither did
   I. Such a narrative demeans us all.

References

   1. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006007.htm
   2. http://www.qoae.net/posts/1159445729.shtml
   3. http://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/09/28/a-muslim-view-on-esmay-challenging-malkin-and-rightosphere/
   4. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005938.htm
   5. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004588.htm
   6. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005935.htm
   7. http://hotair.com/archives/2006/09/18/when-atheists-and-secularists-quote-scripture/
   8. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005955.htm
   9. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003135.htm
  10. http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015391.php
  11. http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1159404710.shtml