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What Is This Thing Called Hate?
 Michael
Graham, a talk-radio host here in
Washington, has stirred a hornets’ nest by calling Islam (the whole
thing!) a “terrorist
organization.”  After
all, he points out, the terrorist acts that have arrested
the West’s attention lately haven’t been committed by the
Pennsylvania Amish. They’ve been committed by Muslims in the name
of Islam.
Naturally, Muslim groups are
accusing Graham of “hate.” He replies that he’s only
dealing in plain facts that others refuse to face.
If the debate (such as it is) ended
here, I’d declare Graham the victor. Hate has become the
most abused word in the English language. It should be a matter of shame to
all of us that American universities, our intellectual strongholds, now have
“speech codes” forbidding what is called “hate
speech.” Most Western countries actually have laws making some
forms of expression criminal, punishable with prison terms, even if no actual
harm can be proved (or is even alleged).
Chief among these crimes is what
is called “Holocaust denial.” An infidel, in the West, might now
be defined as anyone who expresses faint doubts about the victors’
account of World War II; but the list of taboo beliefs and attitudes continues
to swell as the list of self-described victim groups lengthens. Discuss
objective realities — race and violent crime, for instance — at
your own risk. Be sure you treat rap music as one of the vital signs of
American culture.
Pleading truth may be a strong
defense, as long as your advertisers aren’t upset. Here the seemingly
uninhibited Graham is always very prudent. His roster of terrorists
doesn’t include Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, or Ariel Sharon. The
state of Israel is a democracy, of sorts, so Zionism isn’t considered
“hate,” though many Jews are embarrassed by it.
“To generalize is to be an
idiot,” said William Blake, generalizing. He wasn’t even referring
to talk radio or campus speech codes, two areas where it may indeed be
idiotic to acknowledge the basic truth of any unflattering demographic
observation, no matter what the statistics indicate.
![[Breaker quote for What Is This Thing Called Hate?: Free speech and stereotypes]](2005breakers/050726.gif) Of
course even hard-looking statistics
may soften under analysis. “Facts” about race and crime, which
may be accurate as far as they go, look a lot different when you take into
account the number of criminals who grew up without fathers. When black
illegitimacy was unusual, black crime rates were far lower.
In a similar way, terrorism among
Muslims may be due to more specific factors than their religion, which they
share with far more Muslims who aren’t terrorists. Many Muslims,
especially in the Arab world (where, after all, only a minority of the
world’s Muslims live), share their grievances without adopting their
violent methods.
Popular stereotypes usually have a
grain of truth in them, but they are prone to gross exaggeration. Forty
years ago white Americans were spooked by the so-called Black Muslims;
they were called a “hate” group. But their scary image in the
press was hardly justified by their sober behavior. Still, that image was
unfortunately strengthened in 1964 when their spokesman, Malcolm X, made
one of the most explosive utterances of the decade: he said the
assassination of President Kennedy was a case of “chickens coming
home to roost.”
The uproar, now forgotten, was
tremendous. I remember my own horror at the time. The Black Muslims
silenced Malcolm, who soon broke with them and was shortly thereafter
murdered, apparently by some of them. A couple of years later I read his
autobiography and was happily amazed to find how badly I’d misjudged
the man.
Today streets and schools are
named after Malcolm, and the Black Muslims seem pretty normal — just
part of the American landscape. The old “hate” group has
become pretty conservative; in fact, it always was.
America reeled again in 1964 when
the new world heavyweight champ, Cassius Clay, announced that he’d
become a Black Muslim, changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and denounced
“white devils.” But once again the original shock has been long
forgotten, and Ali has become an endearing old guy, about as menacing as
Smokey Robinson.
What’s hate got to do with
it? A fellow may pop off now and then without hating anyone at all. He may
have a point most people aren’t ready to hear yet. We should be wary
of the ones who are eager to shut him up.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2005 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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