In an article written for Campus Watch and posted at the American Thinker, Brendan Goldman takes a look at the response of Middle East studies academics to the proposed Ground Zero mosque:
John Esposito, director of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, having observed that a large majority of Americans oppose an Islamic center at ground zero, could not decide whether American society now more closely resembles that of Birmingham, Alabama circa 1963 or Nazi Germany on the eve of Kristallnacht:
[Newt Gingrich is] somebody...from the South [who] can remember the problem of racism and civil rights. He’s also reportedly a Christian.... He’s got to remember how a theology of anti-Semitism led to a history of pogroms that ultimately led to the Final solution.
Such callous historical analogies were but one component of a concerted effort by a group of Middle East studies professors to discredit the opponents of the ground zero mosque, whom they helpfully labeled “rural rednecks,” “so-called Christian ministers,” and “the Israel lobbies.”
