A front-page story in this morning's New York Times suggests that American Muslims are somehow being unfairly excluded from the American political process. The article begins and concludes with the story of Salam Al-Marayati. The article describes Mr. Al-Marayati as the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles and says he "is not regarded as a man who sees a conspiracy around every corner." Well, he is not regarded by the Times as such, at least. But maybe the Times is choosing to ignore Mr. Al-Marayati's public record. According to the Zionist Organization of America, Mr. Al-Marayati has been quoted in a magazine, the Minaret, as saying, "Jewish unlawfulness is tolerated because powerful brokers can dictate terms on Congress and the Administration." He has also been quoted as saying, "Just as Hitler forged a conflict between Judaism and Christianity, apologists for Israel crave for Islam to be at odds with both Judaism and Christianity." An editorial in the Minaret, on whose six-person editorial board Mr. Al-Marayati sits, said, "The supporters of Israel have created a quiet reign of terror in the U.S." Another Minaret editorial defended the French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy and called on American Muslim groups to champion Garaudy's case before the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
Well, maybe Mr. Al-Marayati doesn't see a conspiracy around every corner, just in the corners where American Jews, supporters of Israel, or those who accept that the Holocaust actually happened live. All of which tends to undermine the thesis of this front-page Times article, which is that Muslims are somehow getting treated unfairly. In fact, when Mr. Al-Marayati's nomination to a counterterrorism commission came under attack, American Arabs chalked it up to anti-Arab racism, not anti-Muslim sentiment. But now that an Arab-American, Ralph Nader, is taking the presidential race by storm, the Times can't really make a case for the difficulty of Arab-Americans gaining influence in American politics. So it has to resort to claiming a bias against Muslims. This too, is absurd -- Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam variant has had no problem insinuating itself into the American political process this year. Even Senator Lieberman has been asking for a meeting with Rev. Farrakhan.
Yet the Times article claims, improbably, that "like other immigrant and ethnic groups before them, Muslim Americans have seen their efforts rebuffed, resisted and blocked by the groups that came before them. There is still no Muslim member of Congress. There are more than six million Muslim Americans, but a crescent-and-star sculpture did not join the Christmas tree and menorah in the park in front of the White House until 1997. It was only during the Clinton administration that the White House began holding dinners for Muslim Americans celebrating the end of the Ramadan fast." There's no evidence given in the Times article that the reason for the lack of a Muslim member of Congress or the lack of a crescent-and-star sculpture in front of the White House is that they were "blocked" by "the groups that came before" Muslims. What "groups" are the Times talking about? Jews? Talk about seeing a conspiracy behind every corner.
The truth is, despite the best efforts of the Times to turn this into a case of bias like that which confronted other "immigrant and ethnic groups," the obstacles that the Al-Marayati types are facing in American politics have to do not with their religion nor with their national origin but with the substance of their expressions of anti-Semitism and of their support for anti-Israel and anti-American terrorism. The Times story goes through the motions of quoting a Jewish leader who makes that argument, but it is clear from the way the story is framed that the Times agrees with Mr. Al-Marayati, not with the Jewish leader.
Race and Medical School: For an example of murky thinking about race, check out the report in today's Times about medical school applications. The article says that "the number of students applying to medical schools has shrunk by a fifth in the last four years, reflecting what health professionals described as a growing disenchantment with managed care, coupled with blossoming opportunities in other fields." At the same time, the article reports, "after shrinking for several years, the number of blacks, Hispanics and American Indians applying increased slightly." This is puzzling. Does the "growing disenchantment with managed care, coupled with blossoming opportunities in other fields" not affect the decisions of blacks, Hispanics and American Indians? And why is the Times paying such close attention to these racial categories? The article tells us that "the numbers of non-Asian minority women" applying to medical school fell slightly, but it doesn't tell us what that number is, or how it compares to the proportion of "non-Asian minority women" in the rest of the population. There's a reference to "underrepresented minorities," which we guess means blacks, Hispanics and American Indians.
To get a clearer view of what is going on, Smartertimes.com had to dig out a September report from the Association of American Medical Colleges. That report says that 18 percent of medical school graduates in 1998 were Asian American, while Asian Americans represent only 4 percent of the American population. That same report said 15 percent of medical school graduates in 1998 were black, Hispanics and American Indians. Those groups, the report said, are 25 percent of the overall American population. Judging by that report, non-Hispanic whites were "underrepresented" in American medical schools. Unless there is a racial spoils system allocating slots in medical school by quota in exact proportion to a racial group's proportion in the general population, some groups are likely to be over-represented, and some groups are likely to be underrepresented. Today's Times story sheds no light on this topic. If anything, by omitting information about the number of Asian students, it obscures what's really going on.
Note: Don't miss Ronald Radosh's new article on "The New York Times' Love Affair With Communism."