Neocon frontman gored
On Monday, March 5, Dinesh D’Souza, a Hoover Institution fellow and writer, and I had a lively debate on WDAY’s Hot Talk with Scott Hennen, following our recent vigorous exchanges in print and on the Web on the nature of Islam. Faced with D’Souza’s delusional ignorance and arrogance in the first five minutes of our debate, I concluded that his knowledge of Islam was tenuous—his claim that he has spent four years studying it notwithstanding.
Hence the key segment of our exchange, transcribed verbatim from the recording of the show:
TRIFKOVIC: Have you actually read the Koran? Have you ever actually read the Koran?
D’SOUZA: Of course I have.
TRIFKOVIC: Do you know how are the Suras arranged?
D’SOUZA: They are . . . er . . . they are not arranged in any chronological order . . . er . . . [pause and . . . er . . . [pause and so I quote in my book both the violent and . . .TRIFKOVIC: Just tell me how ARE they arranged.
D’SOUZA: The other point . . .
TRIFKOVIC: Can you just tell me how are the Suras arranged?
D’SOUZA: . . . right. You can’t just call . . .
TRIFKOVIC: Why don’t you just tell me how are the Suras arranged?
HENNEN: OK, one at a time here; your question for Dinesh, Serge, is?
TRIFKOVIC: In what order are the Suras arranged in the Koran?
D’SOUZA: [long silence . . . I really don’t know what you mean by that. When you say “in what order” then . . . err . . . [pause there . . .
TRIFKOVIC: [ . . . They happen to be arranged by size, from short to long! [sic!
D’SOUZA: [without interruption And when did Iran . . .
By continuing blithely with his “points,” rather than correcting my assertion, Dinesh D’Souza merely confirmed urbi et orbi what had been established beyond reasonable doubt in the course of our exchange: that he has not read the Koran and that he may never have had one in his hands.
As it happens, the eccentric arrangement of the Muslim holy book—from those endlessly long and often boring Medinan Suras like Al-Baqarah with almost 300 verses, or Al-’Imran with 200, to the shorter and more interesting Meccan ones—is the Koran’s most salient feature. It is its one feature that is bound to be noticed and remembered by any modestly observant and not necessarily astute layman.
That this key feature of the book is unknown to an author who claims to have spent four years studying it is indicative either of his tenuous hold on reality, or of his excessively creative imagination. Either way, the gall necessary for such a person to aspire to authoritative statements on Islam defies belief. Grotesque images spring to mind: Groucho spewing pronunciamientos on Dostoyevsky, Yogi Berra on quantum physics, Maya Angelou on poetry . . . The story would be farcical, were it not for the seriousness of the subject.
[color=orangeDinesh D’Souza is a beneficiary of the upper class White Man’s Burden — the need to pander to “lesser breeds without the law.” While usually this kind of mentality is manifested by so-called “White liberals,” “conservatives” are even worse when they are able to pull a Third Worlder, no matter what his qualifications.