New York Times contempt for “the Pamela Gellers of the world”

Those damn, scrappy Pamela Gellers of the world, dagnabbit, ruin it for all the totalitarians who just want their way with us. How'd Walter Duranty work out for ya, gray lady?

Samuel Freedman genuflects on a *SHOCKA*: an "identifiably
Muslim person not as a security risk, not as a desert primitive, but as
an appealing, everyday American" in a television commercial. Geez Louise. Who cares? The objective of our work is for all people and all the Mr.
Abdul-Rashids of the world to live free. Period. We have no issue with peaceful Muslims (though I wish they were more vocal against jihad). Mr. Freedman implies that all Muslims are savages. I do not. Jihadists are savages, which is what my ad said. What a little bigot you are, Mr. Freedman.

In a Commercial, a Tacit Acceptance of Islam in America Samuel Freedman, New York Times

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What I had just seen was something rare and laudable: what seems to be
the first mass-market product commercial featuring an identifiably
Muslim person not as a security risk, not as a desert primitive, but as
an appealing, everyday American.

The idea that Muslims are depicted negatively in films is a common complaint of groups like Hamas-CAIR, but there is nothing to it. Remember how Fox's 24 depicted terrorists of every imaginable variety, but when they actually got around to showing a Muslim one, Kiefer Sutherland actually filmed a disclaimer apologizing and saying that most Muslims hated terrorism, and this was just a TV show, etc. And before that, there was the novel The Sum of All Fears. The book featured jihadists, but when it was made into a movie, the villains were changed to neo-Nazis to appease Hamas-CAIR.

As if to underscore the point, the Prudential commercial with Mr.
Abdul-Rashid was appearing on television during the same period last
fall that saw two widespread commercial campaigns vilifying Muslims. One
was the series of ads on New York subways and buses
placed by a group led by Pamela Geller, the outspoken blogger and
critic of Islam, which depicted a worldwide conflict between the
civilized West and Islamic “savages.” The other was the billboard during
the presidential campaign that showed President Obama submissively
kissing the hand of a sheik.

Then, during last weekend’s Super Bowl, a Coca-Cola commercial trotted
out the stereotype of the Arab on camelback. As points of comparison,
consider that Frito-Lay retired its “Frito Bandito” caricature more than
40 years ago. And in 1989, Quaker Oats removed Aunt Jemima’s kerchief
and gave her pearl earrings so she no longer evoked a house slave.

I was intrigued enough by the Prudential commercial to find Mr.
Abdul-Rashid. Like the other nine people in the campaign, he is an
actual person, not a hired performer. And as his name implies, he is
Muslim, an African-American born in Los Angeles who converted to Islam
in 1980.

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Mr. Abdul-Rashid, who does some acting on the side, first heard about
the Prudential job through a search for recent retirees that was picked
up by an e-mail list for actors in the Bay Area, where he lives. He made
it through several rounds of interviews to be selected for the series
of “Day One Stories,” as the campaign was called. His spot had its debut
during CBS News’ “60 Minutes” in November 2011, and has played about
130 times since then on networks like the History Channel and ESPN.
Adweek magazine saluted the commercial with one of its “Ad of the Day”
designations.

Nobody from Prudential or from Droga5, the agency that created the “Day
One Stories,” ever asked Mr. Abdul-Rashid about his religion. Nor does
the commercial show him in any religious activity. Still, for any
sensate viewer, his name alone attests to his Muslim identity.

“I’d never thought about the ad in those terms,” because the thrust of
the commercial had nothing to do with my religion whatsoever,” Mr.
Abdul-Rashid, 61, said. “You saw an African-American family interacting
and then my name at the end. But one day I went to a mosque in Oakland
with my friend, and the imam said, ‘This is good, it lets people know we
are the mainstream.'”

Mr. Abdul-Rashid’s first name, given to him by a Saudi Arabian teacher
with whom he studied Islam before converting, is the kind of thing the
Pamela Gellers of the world could have waved like a flag. Even some of
Mr. Abdul-Rashid’s theater colleagues suggested after the attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001, that maybe he would be wise to change his name. He
refused.

“The name Mujahid means someone who strives to live in the way of God,”
he said. “And, yes, it means holy warrior, too. But if you ask me, that
means fighting the good fight. If you see a hungry person and feed him,
that’s fighting holy war. The greatest holy war is within ourselves.”

Freedman's problem is not that I might wave the name "Mujahid" like a flag. It's all the "mujahids," the mujahedin around the world who are responsible for the over 20,000 jihad attacks that have been committed in the name of Islam since 9/11, each one with the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric. The depiction of a kind, gentle Mujahid in a TV commercial doesn't do anything to change that.

There's more. And don't miss Donald Douglas's takedown of this nonsense here.