Whether antisemitism or Islamophobia or hatred of black conservatives, Media Matters for America is not above any form of prejudice–as long as it suits the left’s agenda and President Barack Obama’s re-election. Case in point: the false claim that Dana Loesch “smeared” Obama by stating–correctly–that he studied in a Muslim school, or madrassa.
In the Muslim world, any religious school is a madrassa–not just the radical, terror-teaching madrassas we hear about in Pakistani border regions, but also your friendly neighborhood storefront that teaches Arabic lessons after school. Loesch, who is a Breitbart News editor and CNN contributor, pointed out–again, correctly–that a madrassa is roughly analogous to Sunday school in the Christian world.
Media Matters cannot, and does not, take issue with any of the above–but tries, laughably, to associate Loesch with a false Islamophobic stereotype, as part of its obsessive campaign to remove Loesch from the airwaves–and to drive conservative voices in general out of the American media, the surest sign that the left cannot handle democratic debate and therefore is trying to prevent it.
Media Matters hack Chelsea Rudman points out that “the American media have most commonly applied the word to schools that sprang up in South Asia after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and engage in anti-Western “political indoctrination.” And she fails, pointedly, to even hint that Loesch shares that view. In fact, her article inadvertently shows that Loesch believes the opposite.
In hyping the use of “madrassa” as some sort of smear in itself, Media Matters is, in fact, reinforcing an Islamophobic sterotype.
Rudman takes Loesch to task for pointing out the differences between the Quran and the New Testament–also correctly–as if noting those differences in the texts were, itself, off limits. Apparently, for Media Matters, there are some truths that the American people cannot handle–will it suggest banning the Quran as a remedy?
Update: Oh, and that CNN story that Media Matters claims “debunked” the madrassa story?
Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.
If it was a Muslim school, it was a madrassa. The Arabic word for “school” is مدرسة – “madrassa.” So CNN debunked nothing except itself–and the Obama campaign.