The Definition of a Dhimmi
The “scholar” who submitted a bizarre rationalization for the defense in the trial of Cleveland radical imam Fawaz Damra has withdrawn his testimony.
The Chicago Tribune headlines this one, “After Jewish outcry, scholar bows out of testifying for imam,” as if only Jews should/would be concerned about violent hate speech like Damra’s.
Scott Alexander, the Harvard-educated director of Catholic-Islamic studies at Catholic Theological Union, submitted statements last month in the case of Fawaz Damra, a Cleveland imam charged with lying to immigration officials about ties to militant Islamic groups.
In one of the statements submitted to the court, Alexander provided an explanation for some incendiary language used by Damra.
At a 1991 Chicago rally, the imam called for “directing all the rifles at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews.”
Alexander, 42, serving as an expert witness for the defense, stated that Damra’s remarks were part of the religious and political rhetoric used by Palestinians opposed to the Israeli occupation to draw supporters to their cause.
“As unquestionably hate-filled and thus morally reprehensible as such language is, when Palestinians refer to Jews as `descended from apes and swine,’ or encourage support for those who `kill Jews,’ they do so with the reasonably justifiable self-image of victim and persecuted, not of victimizer and persecutor,” Alexander wrote in the summary of his proposed testimony.
The Tribune then quotes Scott Alexander attempting to defend his statements—by using the teachings of Sayyid Qutb, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the principal promoters of the Islamic supremacist doctrine of violent holy war. Amazing.
Alexander said he was not endorsing Damra’s language, but was trying to provide a deeper understanding, based on the Koran and the ideas of Islamic theologians, of why a Palestinian opposed to the Israeli occupation would use violent language.
“I tried to emphasize the vile nature of the language,” Alexander said. “I was asked to testify whether there were any Palestinian contexts in which this hateful and violent language would not be construed as persecution.”
Alexander said he found in the teachings of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian ideologue and inspiration behind the current radical Islamic movement, that these curses are used to name oppressors.
“This is evidence that there might be people who use hateful and violent language in their minds to name those they perceive to be the oppressor,” he said.
“This is not me talking, this is Qutb,” he added.
And the followers of Sayyid Qutb, unaware that their language is taking place on some meta-level only intellectuals like Alexander can perceive, go about their business chopping off heads, bombing synagogues, exploding themselves on schoolbuses, and driving airplanes into buildings.