Army War College surrenders

Raymond Ibrahim is the author, most recently, of Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West, published last year with a foreword by Victor Davis Hanson. Ibrahim is the Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a frequent contributor to the Gatestone site; his Gatestone columns are compiled here. He knows whereof he writes.

Ibrahim had planned to lecture on his book at the Army War College on June 19. In a new installment of an old story, however, his lecture was canceled due to “CAIR-induced hysteria” presenting him—a native Arabic speaker of Egyptian/Middle Eastern descent—as a “racist” and “white nationalist” who is out to incite American soldiers to murder Muslims.

Ibrahim gives a first-person account of the events leading to his cancellation in “Terrorism-Linked CAIR Forces U.S. Army War College to Capitulate on Raymond Ibrahim’s Islam Lecture.” He writes that, although the Army War College claims that the event has been “postponed”—and that CAIR’s smear campaign has nothing to do with its decision—that is precisely what happened.

Quotable quote: “The grand lesson of this entire debacle should be disheartening for all who care about this nation. If an ethnic Egyptian and native speaker of Arabic, with verifiable credentials, whose extended relatives continue to be persecuted because they are Christian, can be characterized by Islamist groups with terror links as a ‘racist’ and ‘white nationalist’; and if, of all places, the U.S. Army War College, as opposed to the average ‘liberal’ college, can so easily capitulate to such patently deceptive tactics—the true motives of which are to keep the actual and troubling history between Islam and the West concealed from the military—know that the hour is late indeed.”

NOTE: Ibrahim adds: The National Association of Scholars has stepped forward with an open letter to President Trump calling attention to War College’s capitulation and urging him “to use the ‘bully pulpit’ of the presidency to call on USAWC Commandant Gen. John Kem and Provost Dr. James Breckenridge to restore” Ibrahim’s lecture.

JOHN adds: Ibrahim is one of the few people who systematically keeps track of, and tries to publicize, the worldwide persecution of Christians. I have frequently quoted his columns on that topic here. Maybe showing concern about the violent persecution of Christians (most of them non-white) is what it means to be a “white nationalist” these days.

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