Eltahawy: An Unprofessional Journalist

By Rod Dreher • September 26, 2012, 10:36 AM

Cops busted a lone protester — angry with subway ads equating enemies of Israel as “savages” — as she spray-painted over one of the controversial signs today.

A Post camera crew captured the bizarre conflict between suspect Mona Eltahawy, 45, and a woman defending the ads.

“Mona, do you think you have the right to do this?” said Pamela Hall, holding a mounted camera as she tried to block the barrage of spray paint.

“I do actually,” Eltahawy calmly responded. “I think this is freedom of expression, just as this is freedom of expression.”

Hall then thrusts herself between Eltahawy’s spray paint and the poster.

Eltahawy — an activist who has appeared on MSNBC and CNN — engaged her in an odd cat-and-mouse dance, spraying pink every time she had an opening.

“What right do you have to violate free speech,” Hall pleaded.

“I’m not violating it. I’m making an expression on free speech,” an increasingly agitated Eltahawy shot back.

I take that back: it’s not depressing, it’s infuriating. Eltahawy is an American Muslim journalist. She has every right to denounce the provocative subway ads. But she has no right to deface them, and to thereby deny the right of the ad buyers to express their legally protected opinion. This is the equivalent of answering speech you don’t like by screaming so loud nobody can hear your opponent, then claiming that you were simply exercising your own right to free speech.

The fact that a journalist, of all people, doesn’t understand this basic lesson of First Amendment etiquette is appalling. Does she actually think she’s doing the Muslim cause a favor by this? All over the world, Muslims are calling for the imposition of blasphemy laws in the West. People have the impression that Muslims cannot tolerate speech with which they disagree. Mona Eltahawy, a Westernized American Muslim, gives aid and comfort to people who believe Islam itself is the problem.

Posted in Islam. Tagged free speech, Islam, Mona Eltahawy.

76 Responses to Eltahawy: An Unprofessional Journalist

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Rebecca Trotter says:

September 26, 2012 at 7:01 pm

Rod, do you SERIOUSLY think Eltahawy was actually trying to deny her opponents unhindered political speech? Really? I mean, I realize the woman doesn’t seem too bright, but you expect me to believe that you believe that she thought that by defacing one sign, the best she could, she could shut the other side up? Despite the fact that there are many other signs out there that would also need to be defaced. AND the fact that the city authorities will repair the damage within hours never occurred to her? She really thought she was going to be shutting her opponents up with this act? That doesn’t even make sense!

How about she was doing just what she said – expressing her response to the ad in a manner commiserate with how upset it made her? That actually makes sense. Although it doesn’t fit with the anti-free speech Muslim trope as well, I guess.

And it’s always nice to see how the action of one woman already known to be loopy is enough to confirm some of your reader’s established belief that Muslims are other and not moderate. Because all of the Muslims in NYC who did not respond to these ads by holding protests or defacing property don’t count. Only this one who did gets to represent Muslims, right? Seeds. Fruit.
chipotle says:

September 26, 2012 at 8:42 pm

I’d like to see her made an example of. Maybe she should have to pay back the ad-buyer and pay them a significant (but not exorbitant) amount in punitive damages.
M_Young says:

September 26, 2012 at 9:32 pm

““The ads didn’t call Muslims savages; they called Palestinians savages.”

I really don’t have a dog in this fight, but the ad doesn’t specifically mention Muslims or Palestinians. It does mention Jihad. At least the images I’ve see on the internet say only this

In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.

Support Israel
Defeat Jihad

The only people being called savages are Jihadis.
Franklin says:

September 26, 2012 at 9:54 pm

How could you leave out the part about how she said “I refuse hate” as she got cuffed? She sure hated those ads.
Hector_St_Clare says:

September 26, 2012 at 10:15 pm

Mona Eltahawy’s an annoying, politically correct twit, of the kind who love to frequent coffeehouses at places like Smith College, from what little I’ve seen of her on Bloggingheads. And yea, what she did was probably against the law. And, finally, i have no particular fondness either for the doctrines of Islam or for the ‘prophet’ Muhammed.

That being said, my sympathies are pretty much with her right here.

It takes a lot of gall for a cheerleader for the State of Israel to accuse anyone else of being ‘savages’. This is the country, after all, that’s reduced the Palestinians, once the most literate and advanced culture in the Middle East, to the level of sub-saharan Africa: that has caused the mass emigration of nearly all Christians in the Holy Land: that has put into place a crippling system of embargoes, checkpoints, and economic barriers designed to keep the Palestinians poor and weak: that explicitly bases its ruling ideology on a doctrine of apartheid and ethnic purity: that seized large chunks of Arab land in a war that it started. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that the ultra-Orthodox who are becoming an ever larger slice of the Israeli population really aren’t much more enlightened, in my view, than the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia.

Yea, issues of legality aside, I can totally sympathize with her wanting to spray paint over that sign, and I have far more contempt for the insane, imperialist fringe of ultra-Zionism represented by people who made these posters, than I do for Ms. Eltahawy.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

September 26, 2012 at 10:15 pm

Neil’s link shows the amazing ingenuity of self-hating whites. — somehow they managed to turn the grizzly torture-murder of a young white couple by a group of blacks into an opportunity for striking a morally superior pose, and in doing so to belittle the seriousness of the crime.

Yes, there are people who continue to choose to think of themselves as “white” who feel guilty about it, as well as those who for some arcane reason take pride in it. The former acquired the notion that ALL persons designated as “black” are Baptist pacifists. That is no more true, than it is true that ALL persons of African descent are lazy, lying, thieving, lusting savages.

The non-racialist way to deal with a band of men who brutalized a “white” couple is to try them for what they did, considering their skin color neither a mitigating nor an aggravating circumstance. If they mouth off that the couple deserved it because they’re “white,” I would give that the same weight as a KKK defendant announcing that its OK to kill niggers.

Skin color is worthy of NO consideration. Hard work in a culture with the baggage ours carries, but the only way out.

The perpetrators of the grizzly torture murder were merely acting out their own acceptance of the White Supremacy myth. “Yeah, what massa said, that’s what we are.” They deserve the same fate as the gangsters and winos who make cameo appearances in the movie “Battle of Algiers.”
Franklin Evans says:

September 26, 2012 at 10:37 pm

Fran, I hope you can forgive me my incredulity, but why did you ignore the middle phrase in the sentence you quoted?

Laws were changed. Violence was stopped, and in some cases prosecuted, if too many years later (“however imperfectly”). Eisenhower ordered troops to enforce school desegregation. There is a long list of examples beyond those two.

We are in a dark period, a nadir on the cycle of our country’s commitment to basic liberties. You’ll get no argument from me on that. In the meantime, the USA stands for certain things. Do you really want to call those things dead when they aren’t? Do you really think they will be finally removed without a fight to save them? If so, you are far more cynical than I am, no mean feat, but I would mourn any citizen giving up that easily.
Tyro says:

September 26, 2012 at 10:53 pm

puerilities like P*** Christ

I’m getting a bit off topic, but if it weren’t called “p*** Christ”, it would be hailed as an iconic piece of religious photography.

The only people being called savages are Jihadis.

Plus anyone who doesn’t support Israel.
Elli says:

September 26, 2012 at 11:02 pm

Rebecca, if Eltahawy can deface the signs without consequence, then what is to stop a Facebook/Twitter/mosque campaign to deface them all?
kathy najjar says:

September 26, 2012 at 11:12 pm

However you feel about eltahawy, and I am no fan, she has the same right to deface as the nitwits that bought the signs in the first place. And to real Muslims, the first Jihad is against yourself and your own baser instincts. Submission is to God. Wahhabis and Salafis, in their addled versions of realities, distort this. Christians never do this, which is why Northern Ireland has celebrated a thousand years of peace. Man(or men) get to tell us what their version of God wants. Quelle surprise!
William Dalton says:

September 27, 2012 at 12:01 am

Isn’t spray painting graffiti on signs of any sort one of the cultural icons of New York City? Why is this example of free expression deemed an affront to the sensibilities of the metropolis?
Joseph D'Hippolito says:

September 27, 2012 at 2:27 am

Mona Eltahawy, a Westernized American Muslim, gives aid and comfort to people who believe Islam itself is the problem.

Rod, Islam itself is the problem! Islam is as much a totalitarian ideology as it is a religion, if not more so. Where are the responsible authorities from al-Azhar issuing fatwas against the destruction of human life and property through riots or terrorist attacks (mostly against fellow Muslims)? Where is any responsible Muslim authority to condemn Iran’s public commitment to obliterate a nation that has done nothing to it?

Islam has been a bane on Western Civilization for at least a millenium. It’s nothing more than religious Nazism. It deserves the same fate.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

September 27, 2012 at 5:00 am

I can’t see why this is up for debate. Defacing signs is vandalism. It might be something we tolerate from teens, and occasionally find humorous. But she’s an adult and should act like one. It is not something a journalist should do and expect to be taken seriously.
Mike Fleshman says:

September 27, 2012 at 7:25 am

Its actions like this that really do make me love New York.How’s that whole free-y speechy thing working’ out for ya Pam?

http://www.alternet.org/when-right-wing-crazy-backfires-5-ways-racist-pro-israel-ads-make-right-look-hateful-idiots?akid=9450.316452.JnIcHL&rd=1&src=newsletter717162&t=2
Peter says:

September 27, 2012 at 8:08 am

M_Young,

Only if you can break everyone down to either supporting Israel (unconditionally usually) or Jihad.

If I think Israel should pull back to the 67 borders but has a right to exist am I supporting Israel or Jihad?
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

September 27, 2012 at 9:15 am

Tyro said:

I’m getting a bit off topic, but if it weren’t called “p*** Christ”, it would be hailed as an iconic piece of religious photography.

I tend to agree. It’s a pretty dramatic photo.

Only if you can break everyone down to either supporting Israel (unconditionally usually) or Jihad.

There’s probably a fairly large body of people who have no opinion one way or the other.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

September 27, 2012 at 11:06 am

Islam has been a bane on Western Civilization for at least a millenium.

For the moment, Joseph D’Hippolio reveals himself to be an ignorant savage. He’s been known to say more nuanced and intelligent things, so I am not characterizing his entire life and being. Ideologically speaking, he’s an equal opportunity offender, a militant Protestant more Catholic than the Pope, with harsh words for Erin Manning, Barack Obama, and I’ve lost count of how many more, but its a very diverse set of adversaries.

I say he speaks here as an ignorant savage because he has overlooked a plethora of well documented historical facts about the variety of forms, expressions, practices, and inspiration Islam has offered the world, and because he reduces himself to the savage criterion of unmitigated fear, contempt and hatred for “The Other.”

The Renaissance would never have come to pass without the tremendous body of knowledge preserved and developed by Islamic scholars, and in due course made available to benighted Europe. True, there are those today who declare all of this knowledge to be “haram,” but who is Joseph D’Hippolito to say which of these is the “true face of Islam”??? OF course, the savage prefers to see his “Other” as a savage, for how else can they each perpetuate their savagery?

Hector is fond of pointing out that Christianity began as the religion of an oppressed under class, while Islam began with conquest. What this overlooks is that when armies inspired by Islam moved out from the Arabian peninsula, the contemporary Christianity they encountered was the official religion of a corrupt Empire. Nevertheless, for four centuries, caliphs left Christians (whose faith and imperial overlords had fought against them), and Jews (who had gratefully assisted the conquest, thereby gaining access to Jerusalem) to worship as they wished.

Comments are a poor format for comprehensive essays duly footnoted, but as always, I recommend David Levering Lewis’s God’s Crucible as a good starting point for any discussion of this subject.
Joseph D'Hippolito says:

September 27, 2012 at 2:06 pm

Siarlys, I suggest you do some research into figures such as San Juan Matamoros, and such events as the Battle of Lepanto and the Siege of Vienna. Also, I suggest that you learn about the concept of taqiyya.

Moreover, I suggest you realize that responsible Muslim authorities from major seminiaries (like al-Azhar) have made no attempt to stymie the riots of the past couple of weeks, Iran’s public committment to obliterate Israel or suicide attacks against civilians — most of whom are fellow Muslims.

Finally, I suggest you learn to craft an argument without personal attacks, unless you want to be like one prominent Catholic blogger who shall not be named.
Joseph D'Hippolito says:

September 27, 2012 at 2:14 pm

The existance of a “variety of forms, expressions, practices, and inspiration Islam has offered the world” is irrelevant. Germany and Russia inspried various artistic and intellectual advances, yet became barbaric under Nazism and Communism. Why, despite the fact that the Nazis never won an outright majority in any Reichstag election and the Bolsheviks were a minority in the Russian Social Democratic movement?

Because most people, in the face of totalitarian terror, go along to get along. With notable exceptions (von Stauffenberg, Sakarhov, etc.) they won’t confront the evil within. They adhere to blind groupthink.

Even if the Salafists are a minority within Islam, they are the ones who have the power to intimidate and destroy. Why do you think terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda tried to destroy Sufi records and graves in Mali?

Take you head out of your books and take a look at the world around you.

BTW, having “unmitigated fear, contempt and hatred” for those who destroy the innocent to perpetuate their own totalitarian agenda is not a weakness — except for those who have been emasculated by their own pseudo-intellectuality.
Roger McCarthy says:

September 27, 2012 at 3:25 pm

This is a genuinely brave woman who has been assaulted and had her arms broken by Egyptian police for literally standing up for freedom of speech in Tahrir Square – so I really don’t think she has to take lectures from armchair liberals and conservatives.

She is also as far from the archetypal Muslim Other as you can get – look at what she’s wearing in the video – look at what she says day in and day out about women’s rights and democracy and against fundamentalism and bigotry while living in a country where it is not at all hip and safe to do so.

And she knew that there would be consequences from this action and freely submitted to arrest.

Plus has no one actually thought about the point that the subway originally refused these ads and were ordered to run them by an activist judge.

Apply that principle universally and we can force Conservative and Catholic publications to accept ads supporting abortion and gay marriage and Jewish ones to accept ads from holocaust deniers.

But no – rather than think through the issues it just becomes a standard culture-war battle.

Seriously you owe Mona an apology.
Sands says:

September 27, 2012 at 5:33 pm

Any writer worth their salt will protest with a pen in their hand. Pen mightier than the sword and all.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

September 27, 2012 at 9:53 pm

Joseph, my dear brother in Christ, I am deeply honored that you would compare me to Erin Manning. I really am.

Germany and Russia inspired various artistic and intellectual advances, yet became barbaric under Nazism and Communism.

There we go, you’ve just shot yourself in the foot. We don’t generally characterize the entirety of German history as one long Nazi barbarity. While Russia epitomized the worst of autocracy for centuries, we don’t generally refer to Catherine the Great as “Stalin’s Whore” either, nor do we cast Lenin as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. Like Germany, like Russia, the Islamic caliphates had their good and bad centuries. Like the Roman Catholic Church, in specific, and Christianity, in general, Islam has had its more enlightened and more barbaric centuries, its more humanist and more exploitive contributions to humanity.

“Even if the” Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations “are a minority within” the United States, “they are the ones who have the power to intimidate and destroy.” A smaller minority with less power — but you have again made the case in your own words that you are NOT talking about Islam, but about a specific fraction of Islam.

Nobody is arguing that al Qaeda should not be destroyed, on the grounds that the intellectual climate of the court of Caliph al-Rashid was glorious. These are two different things. Only you are trying to conflate them into one.

P.S. Did you mean Santiago Matamoros? Don’t you think its just a little odd that after almost 1000 years, the bones of St. James would turn up at the opposite end of the Mediterranean from where he lived and wrote? What forensic evidence do you suppose the Visigoths managed to come up with anyway?

Lepanto and Vienna both occured 900-1000 years AFTER the life of Muhammed, in response to a specific empire, and hardly the flower of Islamic culture. In between were Turkish migrations, the Mongol invasions, and a dozen other interesting historical events, not to mention the Crusades, which slaughtered all the residents of Jerusalem, Muslim, Christian and Jewish. Don’t toss spare change on the table and pass it off as antique gold bullion.
Roger McCarthy says:

September 28, 2012 at 8:10 am

I am also reminded of the late Christopher Hitchens trip to Lebanon where seeing swastika posters from an openly fascist party in the streets he set about tearing them down and only narrowly avoided at the very least a serious beating from the party’s local thugs.

Now as one of the most famous journalists and free speech advocates in the world should Hitchens have instead gritted his teeth and quoted to himself those lines that are usually falsely attributed to Voltaire about disagreeing with what what you say but being willing to die for your right to say it?

No – he saw a provocation deliberately directed at him and at every value in which he believed and acted accordingly.

So although I am not altogether sure she’d appreciate the comparison Mona was behaving exactly as Hitchens did – the difference is that conservative and liberal and socialist bloggers whose moral and political compass hasn’t been utterly destroyed by anti-Americanism applauded Hitchens.

In fact while the relevant beliefnet blog post seems to have disappeared I seem to remember Rod being being part of that chorus and only questioning of whether he was foolhardy in risking his own life and that of his companions to make a political point.

So taking account of no more physical danger being involved for Ms Eltahawy than that generally associated with travelling on the New York subway system how is her action different to that of Hitchens?
Joseph D'Hippolito says:

September 29, 2012 at 2:47 pm

Siarlys, several points:

1. Islam has had its more enlightened and more barbaric centuries, its more humanist and more exploitive contributions to humanity.

Well, this is one of its more (if not most) barbaric and exploitive. Just look at the behavior of ostensibly responsible Muslim religious authorities to the murder of innocent people and destrution of propoerty by mobs, terrorist and suicide bombers. Nothing but silence.

Moreover, the Koran encourages the killing of Jews, which the Bible never does.

Finally, Islam always has had a militarist, imperialist nature, from the establishment of the first Caliphate through the Ottoman Empire until today.

2. A smaller minority with less power — but you have again made the case in your own words that you are NOT talking about Islam, but about a specific fraction of Islam.

Siralys, read modern history. The Nazis and Communists not only became more than “a specific fraction” of the German and Russian body politic, respectively. They came to define that body politic while holding totalitarian power.

Moreover, just look at the demands by Muslims to criminalize “insulting the Prophet.” How do you think people would react to Christians or Jews advocating criminializing insults to Jesus or Yahweh? Such calls justifiably would be viewed with contempt. Yet Western leaders like Pres. Obama seem to embrace the idea. And that’s not totalitarian?

3. Lepanto and Vienna both occured 900-1000 years AFTER the life of Muhammed…

So what? Just as the clerical sex-abuse crisis reflects the bureaucratic corruption, isolation and sense of entitlement pervading Catholic leadership, so do Lepanto and Vienna reflect Islam’s militarist, imperialist impulse. Remember, the Ottomans viewed themselves as the successors to the first Caliphate. Otherwise, why would they bother to extended their control from the Balkans and attack Central Europe?

4. I am deeply honored that you would compare me to Erin Manning.

I was comparing you to another Catholic blogger, one who weighs far more than Erin Manning ever will, and has far less goodwill.
Donald says:

September 29, 2012 at 5:36 pm

Your post is concern trolling. I think Mona’s action was stupid, even though the post was a racist one put up by a person who wants us to support Israel in all of its actions. But Mona’s stupid way to protest will only be seen as “Muslim” by idiots already prone to think that way. She’s behaving like a slow-witted American lefty and I’m not defending her when I say that. I happen to be a lefty, btw, agree with Mona’s anger, but not her tactics, which are dumb and merely gave Geller some free publicity.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

September 29, 2012 at 11:42 pm

To keep it short Joseph, almost everything you offer makes my case and undermines yours. Your original thesis was that “Islam itself is the problem!” Obviously, its not.

Imperialism, in the name of any politics, religion, or ideology, is a problem.

Terrorizing civilian populations in the name of religious orthodoxy is a problem.

And, if you would care to stop being so mysterious, just who IS this much maligned Catholic blogger you have invoked twice and declined to name both times? What is this? A radio drama version of “Spy v. Spy”???