Childhood, Moderates, and PBS/Horse Manure

Rashid, Farid, and Tariq were a few of my best friends. We did the things, well, pretty much opposite the whole sugar and spice and everything nice mumbo-jumbo. I don't mention any girls names, like Malika, because my Anglo father was considering trading his blond haired, blue eyed little boy for one or two daughters… of course, he says he was only considering it to joke with me (mmm hmmm). One of the reasons I remember my friends' names is their insistence on me understanding the meaning of their names. Rashid, the oldest, was perhaps the brashest and biggest risk taker amongst our small band of brothers. Ironically, he was also the best source of advice available. He rightly predicted the times we would probably get in serious trouble for our antics should we be caught… of course, he was so wise, we were rarely caught. Rashid's name meant "excellent counselor."

Tariq, on the other hand, was remarkably handsome (inside and out), seemed to get in quite a bit of trouble apart from our band. Despite this, his use of sheer charisma got us out of plenty of jambs and even managed to get us fed at the market occasionally. Tariq was named after Al Tariq, the Night Star, that part of man given to him by Allah that shines in the darkness.

Farid was also appropriately named. Of our band, he was perhaps the most eloquent, and the most determined to speak English proficiently… myself included. Thanks to Farid, I was privileged to encounter the Quran in just the fashion it should be encountered… through the eyes of a child that was nearly a man. Other than my Grandfather, Farid is probably most responsible for me going to seminary. Farid was the only Muslim I'd met whom I believed knew God. Others were part of Islam as I was a part of Christianity, but Farid and my Grandfather knew God. Farid's name meant "unique."

I cannot forget these Moroccan boys. I was also privileged in other ways – our parents too were friends. One couple worked in Rabat at the palatial estate of King Hassan II, the son of the Sultan who, with the Berbers, won Morocco's independence from France. This couple strongly encouraged us to go to Ceuta with them, for a vacation… close in time to one of a couple of coup attempts (the late 60's and early 70's were very good years). Good people, people of courage, and their children were people of faith.

This isn't told to waste your time, it's told to establish some small measure of my bona fides. I'm familiar, from both education and experience, with moderate Muslims. Many years later, I wound up in various Middle Eastern countries worrying that I might be shooting at someone I knew. Remarkably unlikely, I know, but I was also having a hard time connecting some of these extreme lunatics with the kids I knew. The short of it is simple, these monsters were nothing like my friends (of course, I don't know that my friends didn't become radical Islamists, but I do doubt it). There is a huge difference between the two that is rarely, if ever, highlighted by mainstream media outlets. You guessed it – that is why I spent this time reminiscing. I'll spend minimal time telling you the meat of the story, since everything else was prelude.

Many sites shed more and more light on an appalling episode in PBS history, but Campus Watch: Monitoring Middle East Studies on Campus probably has the most informative and well rounded account. Moreover, they give a hat tip to all the sites they pulled from and put it together in a very interesting fashion!

In an example of Western academia trying to stifle the voices of reform from the Islamic world, it seems that Aminah Beverly McCloud, the director of the Islamic World Studies program at DePaul University, helped sabotage the airing of a documentary on moderate Muslims.

The documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, was to air on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) next week as part of a taxpayer-funded series called America at a Crossroads, but was canceled by managers at the PBS station WETA in Washington, D.C. for what the film's producer, Martyn Burke, believes were political reasons.

Check out the entire article – it really should make your blood boil. If it doesn't, try Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish at The Atlantic Online, it provides some excellent bullet points, one of which is:

WETA appointed an advisory board that includes Aminah Beverly McCloud, director of World Islamic Studies at DePaul University. In an "unparalleled breach of ethics," Burke says, McCloud took rough-cut segments of the film and showed them to Nation of Islam officials, who are a subject of the documentary. They threatened to sue. "This utterly undermines any journalistic independence," Burke wrote in an e-mail to WETA officials.

This is why I said something about my childhood friends. We in the United States pay taxes that support PBS, and personally, I love the entire notion of public broadcasting, but when the bureaucrats in charge of this ridiculously left leaning sacred cow undermine a piece for a purely left agenda…

Great, what do I do here? My writing about it doesn't do much in the way of changing things. OK, I don't normally throw around gutter language here, but let's call this what it is, horseshit. It's time to shovel it up and put out in the field because it doesn't belong where people congregate. On second thought, perhaps you guys could write your own little piece (figuratively shovel some of this horseshit) and deposit it on your favorite congressional desk. I will.