The "religion journal" column in the national section of today's New York Times reports on American Muslim publishing. The article quotes the editor of "The Minaret, a Muslim magazine with an investigative bent."
An "investigative bent" doesn't probably come to mind as the most noteworthy characteristic of the Minaret, unless the Times has in mind the sort of "investigators" who claim the Holocaust is a myth.
As the Zionist Organization of America has noted, after a French court convicted Roger Garaudy of denying the Holocaust, a Minaret editorial (Vol.20, No.3; 1998) claimed that "the French judiciary succumbed to the pressure of Zionists." The editorial criticized American Muslims for being "silent on the sentence imposed on Garaudy," and said, "Muslim organizations should have taken the case to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights."
Another Minaret editorial, (Vol.20, No. 5; 1998), said, "Our country should not have been forced to support and finance Zionist brutalities and barbaric policies. Our pluralistic society has become prisoner to a country that follows racism and apartheid in its policies. . . The supporters of Israel have created a quiet reign of terror in the U.S. People cannot speak loudly against the apartheid policies of Israel."
One Minaret cartoon, the ZOA reports, showed Uncle Sam crying sympathetically as an obese Jew with a violin played in his ear a tune with the lyrics "Israel. . . Holocaust . . . Israel . . . Holocaust."
Another Minaret cartoon depicted Jews in the form of a hook-nosed tumble-weed with a large Jewish star, occupying "Palestine" and declaring "I'm Isaac, the Zionist tumbleweed, from halfway across the world."
It sure would have been nice if the New York Times had exhibited a bit more of an investigative bent in its survey of the Muslim publishing scene.
Watch the Label: An article in the business section of today's New York Times refers to "John Makin, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute." It also refers to "conservatives like William A. Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute."
As for liberal Robert Greenstein of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Times article describes him as "Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities." The conservatives and libertarians get labeled, while the liberal goes unlabeled.
Lost at Brooks Brothers: An article in the business section of today's New York Times reports on the sale of Brooks Brothers. Not a sale on merchandise at Brooks Brothers, but a sale of the chain of clothing stores. The Wall Street Journal had this news yesterday, so the Times is late again. The New York Times article claims that the attacks on September 11 "affected the flagship Brooks Brothers store in Lower Manhattan." The flagship Brooks Brothers store is not in "Lower Manhattan" but in midtown, at 44th Street and Madison Avenue. Business at that flagship store may be off because of the attack. There was a Brooks Brothers store in Lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center that has been closed by the attack. The Times article seems to conflate and confuse the two stores.
A separate article on the front page of today's New York Times reports, "Brooks Brothers, near Rockefeller Center, had an offer: buy one shirt and get a second one 40 percent off." The reference is to the store at 666 Fifth Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets. But the way the sentence is written, readers are left wondering whether the offer is available at all stores or just at the one "near Rockefeller Center."
Not in the Times: There may be a mention somewhere in today's New York Times of the fact that an anthrax-tainted letter was sent to Dr. Antonio Banfi, a pediatrician at a children's hospital in Santiago, Chile. But Smartertimes.com sure couldn't find any such mention and only heard about it from an Associated Press dispatch distributed by Iraq News.