Author: U.S. Liberals Defending Islam Are Supporting Terrorists' Agenda
by Chad Groening and Jenni Parker
March 30, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A best-selling author who once had to escape from Afghanistan says America needs to evaluate seriously the meaning of free speech in light of wartime realities in the contemporary environment of Islamic terrorist aggression.Dr. Phyllis Chesler is a former college professor and the author of numerous books examining historical and contemporary culture, including About Men (1979); Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism's Holy Site (2002); and The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It (2005). In addition to her teaching and writing, she has been a strong opponent of anti-Semitism and waged several political, legal, religious and human rights campaigns in the U.S., Canada, Europe, the Far East and the Middle East.
In 1961, however, Chesler was only 20 years old when she fell in love and married a man from Afghanistan. And when the American woman accompanied her Afghan husband to Kabul, her U.S. passport was confiscated, and she learned very quickly all about the treatment of women in an Islamic society. Chesler managed to escape and says she literally kissed the ground at the airport when she arrived back home in the States.
But now the retired college professor believes Americans are increasingly unable to recognize the vast difference between a Muslim-dominated society and their own because they are being what she calls "Islamized." She claims the liberal media and the largely liberal academic community in America have turned the U.S. Constitution into a tool to defend anti-American rhetoric and pro-Islamic propaganda against the truth.
"If you have students and professors saying America is to blame for everything and Israel has to be exterminated and is to blame for everything also, and Islam cannot be criticized," Chesler posits, "and you cannot tell the truth about Islam lest you be branded a racist or, worse, a neoconservative, this is the way in which America might be Islamized."
By this means, the retired academic says, liberal college and university campuses are being turned into ideological sanctuaries where radical Islamists can hide behind the Constitution of the United States while they foment their hatred against the America and Israel.
"We have a culture, beginning with the left-wing media and with the largely progressive and left-wing university systems, that wants us to be very sensitive to different cultures and to different religions," Chesler contends. But as liberal students and professors blame the U.S. and Israel for the conflicts in the Middle East and everything else, she says, they close their eyes to any and all criticism of Islam.
In so doing, the best-selling author maintains, the Left in America is playing right into the hands of radical Islam and promoting Muslim extremists' global agenda. As a result, she asserts, "We are now using First Amendment rights and academic freedom rights to protect hate speech and to protect lies."
Chesler is a co-founder of The National Women's Health Network and a charter member of the Women's Forum. She has also been a columnist and Editor at Large for "On The Issues" magazine.
