TWO AMERICAN MUSLIMS

FINALLY, a well-written open letter from an American Muslim to an active and influential American-born jihadist, now fled to viper pit of Yemen, the latter most recently connected to the Christmas bomber and the Fort Hood assassin.

No, Anwar, this country it is not evil. It is you who is evil and this nation and its people who are blessed. This nation gave my family the freedom and liberty to practice Islam in a way that no majority Muslim nation has ever allowed. I was raised learning to pray, fast, give charity, build mosques, and help those in need in the character of my faith as a result of the free environment of this United States. I learned this despite the repulsive nature of imams like yourself who drive so many reasonable Muslims away from the faith and so many weak and vulnerable ones towards your fascism.

My parents fled the radicalism of theo-political fascist thugs like you in the Middle East in order to give our family a fresh start in the land of freedom—America. I have throughout my life in my soul accepted spiritual Islam as my relationship with God; however, I have also always wholly rejected political Islam because of its supremacist mindset which you embody.

Growing up in Wisconsin, learning to become a physician and then serving in our armed forces as a naval officer and a physician, I learned about the beauty of the diversity of America and the equal access of all of its citizens to our society and our government. I learned about the beauty of a government which separates church and state and yet was formed by very pious Christian and all people of faith but yet remaining “under God” as a nation of common morals and values. The United States is a nation which you intentionally misunderstand and twist for your own despotic ambitions.

You may believe that moderate Muslims like us at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy are apostates since we reject the Islamic state, political Islam, and governmental shar’iah. But I know Islam well enough to know that there are no intermediaries between a Muslim and God. Takfir (excommunication) is forbidden and you may also be a Muslim but your Islam is not my Islam. You are nothing but a fascist theocrat who uses Wahhabi interpretations of our Qur’an in order to wage illegitimate wars.

The wars of Iraq and Afghanistan are legitimate and are in fact waged with the intention of leaving a far better nation for Muslims and non-Muslims in the free practice of Islam and all faiths than the tyrant Saddam or the despotic Taliban ever did for their citizens which they considered their slaves. You intentionally ignore the representative forms of government being empowered in those nations so that you can deceive those who listen to your propaganda.

American troops are simply doing what Muslims should have done in Iraq and Afghanistan long ago. As a freedom-loving Muslim, I pray that the same revolutions for liberty happen from within the nations of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Jordan, the Emirates, and Pakistan to name a few led this time by civil wars from Muslim liberty movements against the thugs, monarchs, autocrats, and theocrats like yourself who are running these nations.

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DECONSTRUCTING BOB

Self-confessed former and often radical lefty, and who isn't in one's formative wonder bread years just off the dirt farm, Sean Cumyn, is writing a book on the political and moral themes found in the work of Bob Dylan. He also runs a remarkably understated website called Right Wing Bob. Here in the Weekly Standard is a thoroughly enjoyable article penned by Cumyn. A little taste of what is surely to follow. Hacks and hatchet men on the Left are already complaining that colonial patriot and First Citizen, Tom Paine has been co-opted by the Right. And I'm sure the same reactionary outcry will be hoisted when Dylan is revealed to be of solid mind firmly set in the quintessential moral values of timeless conservatism as opposed to those often impenetrable and oscillating birth pangs of the impetuous Left.

Mr. Cumyn writes:

A good deal of hoopla greeted the grizzled rock-musician Neil Young's musical assault on George W. Bush earlier this year. His album Living With War included a hundred-voice choir singing a song entitled "Let's Impeach the President." For those survivors of anti-Vietnam war protests, and their younger would-be imitators, it was a moment for a sharp intake of breath and the tantalizing hope that maybe now, after all, music really could change the world. I mean, everyone has to sit up and take notice of Neil Young, right?

Young's crusading album included another song called "Flags of Freedom," in which he gave a name-check to Bob Dylan, and adapted the melody of Dylan's own somewhat more lyrically complex song "Chimes of Freedom."

He really should have known better. In an interview several months later with Edna Gundersen in USA Today, Dylan was asked about the absence of any song about the current war on his own latest album, Modern Times.

"Didn't Neil Young do that?" he jokes . . . "What's funny about the Neil record, when I heard 'Let's Impeach the President,' I thought it was something old that had been lying around. I said, 'That's crazy, he's doing a song about Clinton?'"

With his sly and somewhat wicked response, Dylan had (1) desperately frustrated the considerable number of more obvious Dylan fans who have been waiting on the edge of a cliff for him to say or sing something—anything!—against President Bush and the Iraq war and (2) told Neil Young none-too-subtly that he found his recent ultrapolitical songwriting essentially pointless.

Somehow, after over 40 years of evidence to the contrary, much of the world seems to continue to expect the man who is arguably America's greatest songwriter to sign on to left/liberal causes at the first opportunity. If nothing else, it is proof that in attempting to kidnap Dylan's songs (in Dylan's own words, his songs were "subverted into polemics" in the 1960s), the left succeeded in convincing the average person that both the work and the man did, indeed, belong to them.

In the summer run-up to the 2004 presidential campaign, a concert tour of anti-Bush musicians was being organized, led by Bruce Springsteen. They would perform in swing states in support of John Kerry. The advance press regarding the tour always prominently mentioned Bob Dylan as one of the musicians being talked about for the lineup. There was no surprise about this expressed in the stories; after all, campaigning against Republican presidents is what Bob Dylan has always done, isn't it? But when dates and lineups were finally announced for the "Vote for Change" tour, one name was prominently missing: that of Bob Dylan.

And indeed, any scrutiny of the record would show that he has never endorsed a political candidate (although some political candidates have endorsed him). The closest he has ever come would be the statement in his memoir, Chronicles, that his "favorite politician" circa 1961 was Barry Goldwater.

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