Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Sickening - National Review caves to CAIR

UPDATE: Rich Lowry has just posted a reply (of sorts) to the NR/CAIR issue.

...A National Review Book Service e-mail blast for the book "The Life And Religion of Mohammed" by Rev. J.L Menezes was sent out a couple of weeks ago to the magazine's (opted-in) e-mail list. The ad copy in the e-mail, which invoked “the dark mind of Mohammed” among other things, was written by author Robert Spencer. But it went out under the name of a member of NR’s publishing staff, who should have, but didn’t review it. The book service is a joint project with a publisher who has been responsible for what books to feature in this service and how best to publicize them.

...CAIR has been agitating for us to apologize for weeks, but we obviously aren’t going to apologize for a position that isn’t our own. We are, of course, more than happy to defend our own actual positions against CAIR, or any other noxious grievance group.


What about Sword of the Prophet? I still don't like it.

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My jaw dropped when I read this.

LGF is reporting that due to pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on themselves and Boeing, a big advertiser, it is removing advertising for two books critical of Islam and the prophet Mohammed from their site, the National Review Book Service.

According to Robert Spencer of JihadWatch, NR Managing Editor Rich Lowry indicated that NRO was 'choosing its battles'.

The National Review is the doyen of conservative publications. Back in the early 1980s it was staunchly free market and anti-communist and was a lonely clarion voice for reason, decency and morality. Founded by William F. Buckley, Jr., probably the unofficial dean of the conservative movement, the magazine has never made money. Nevertheless I consider it to be the finest conservative on-line publication extant today with a superb blog, The Corner, and an exceptional stable of regular and occasional writers including Victor Davis Hanson, Jonah Goldberg and David Pryce-Jones.

My sense is that Boeing with its dependence on large aircraft orders from many countries globally is extremely sensitive to possibly losing a contract to the Airbus cartel for any reason pressured the National Review into this. Picking battles indeed. It's still sickening that CAIR is succeeding in trying to force the removal of research and literature critical of Islam. I predict CAIR will next try to force corporate 'divestment' from entities that profess viewpoints that differ from theirs.

The two books in question are The Sword of the Prophet and The Life and Religion of Mohammed. [The latter is out of print according to Amazon.]

Why do they fear it so much? I think I'll get a copy of each.

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