Home >> History, Ideology & Science >> Political Theory  Email  Print Bob Leiken Folly Prof. Barry Rubin - 6/30/2007 Bob Leiken, phony Islam expert, has written a poem about me which he is sending around. For those who don’t know, Leiken is a Latin American expert turned immigration expert turned Islamism expert. He hasn’t read the sources and knows nothing about the subject, of course. He makes the most basic errors. I wrote a satire making fun of him. You can also read my article on Muslim Brotherhoods at http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2007/issue2/jv11no2a8.html--which Leiken himself read and disregarded before launching himself on his latest career as the Muslim Brotherhood's apologist. Lenin called such people "useful idiots."
This ignorance wouldn’t matter if he weren’t advocating that the United States team up with Muslim Brotherhoods, thus helping the forces responsible for extremism, repressive dictatorships, and terrorism in the world.
Imagine someone who advocated in the 1930s that the fascists were misunderstood and you could work with the more moderate ones. Same goes for the Stalinists. How different would the world be if the appeasers had won out on those occasions.
In this current conflict, what Leiken doesn’t know—well, one of many things he doesn’t know—is that when people like him talk about engagement with Muslim Brotherhoods, people in the Middle East reach the following conclusion:
The Islamists are winning, even the Americans are recognizing it. We better either
join the Islamists, give up or make our own deal.
Lives are at stake. People are tortured, murdered, blown up. This is not a game. The policies Leiken advocates cost lives and may even cost countries. Just imagine that you are an Egyptian or a Jordanian who doesn’t want to wear a veil, lose the limited freedoms now enjoyed, or have a regime that implements Islamist punishments. You hear about some American pseudo-intellectual who is advocating that the West work with those who want to turn your countries into Iran- or Taliban-type societies. And if you want to discount 10 or 20 percent for the “moderation” of the Muslim Brotherhood go right ahead.
How typical that Bob has responded with a poem—a poem which makes no reference to the Middle East or Islamism. Not a detailed discussion of the issues but a poem which you are free to interpret as you wish.
I will only remark on the opening three lines:
Line 1: To suggest that those who oppose revolutionary Islamism lack a heart is pretty shocking. Think of the victims of this movement. Now think of someone who is promoting his career by advocating cooperation with the closest thing to totaltiarianism in our era.
Line 2: To suggest that those who actually research their topic and can provide detailed refutations of his claims have no mind is equally shocking. Isn't the absence of mind something that arises from the lack of real research, serious analysis, and instead just talking to people who want to seize state power and create dictatorships and believing them?
Line 3: Well if goods offered to the public are worthless, whose goods does that label best fit? I think this poem is all too revealing.
I repeat, as much as during the struggle against fascism and the struggle against Communism, the fate of freedom and civilization is at stake. This is no game for dilettantes.
And yet we are living in an era in which fools and ignoramuses too often seize the floor and the microphones. What is truly remarkable is that they don't even see how clearly they are demonstrating their total lack of qualification to conduct rational discourse.
And if you have any doubt on that point here's the poem
Absence of heart - - as in public buildings
Absence of mind - - as in public speeches
Absence of worth - - as in goods intended for the public,
Are telltale signs that a chimera has just dined
On someone else; of him, poor foolish fellow,
Not a scrap is left, not even his name.
Indescribable - - being neither this nor that;
Uncountable - - being any number;
Unreal - - being anything but what they are;
And ugly customers for someone to encounter;
It is our fault entirely if we do;
They cannot touch us; it is we who will touch them;
Curious from wantoness - - to see what they are like;
Cruel from fear - - to put a stop to them;
Incredulous from conceit - - to prove the cannot be;
We prod or kick or measure and are lost;
The stronger we are the sooner all is over;
It is our strength with which they gobble us up.
If someone, being chaste, brave, humble,
Get by them safely, he is still in danger,
With pity remembering what once they were,
Of turning back to help them. Don't
What they were once was what they would not be;
Not liking what they are not is what now they are.
No on can help them; walk on, keep on walking,
And do not let your goodness self - deceive you;
It is good that they are, but not that they are thus.
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