Misleading Lessons In Understanding [on Fawaz Gerges of Sarah Lawrence College]

The oily Fawaz Gerges managed to pull the wool over a number of faculty eyes when he slithered up the tenure pole at Sarah Lawrence, a school where Adda Bozeman once taught, and where her papers (the curator being Prof. Adams) can now be found. A Russian émigré, Bozeman was among the very first to describe the immutable problem of Islam, the violence and aggression of Islam, the fact that Islam is not like any other belief-system that we call a “religion.” Indeed, Samuel Huntington borrowed, it is clear, much from her.

Yet here is the oily Gerges, not only teaching young girls (and now boys) at Sarah Lawrence -- a school that during the war, and for at least a decade after, profited from the refugees from the Nazis, and then the Communists, on its staff. It was also a place where some of the ills of the modern American university first could were detected - the smiling vacuous university president, the general atmosphere of wallowing in “tolerance” (to be replaced later on by “diversity”), all acidulously etched by Randall Jarrell in “Pictures From An Institution.” Were Jarrell alive today he would have fun taking apart the likes of Fawaz Gerges.

Gerges, apparently a smooth man, is also a greedy one. A few years ago he was asked to write a letter on behalf of an Egyptian Christian, who needed evidence that, were he returned to Egypt, would suffer as a Copt. Gerges was apparently prepared to do it, to write that one-page letter -- but only if he were to be paid $5,000, or $15,000 (I can’t remember which). The poor Egyptian couldn’t afford that.

And of course, Gerges is one of the many sly ones who has managed to convince some network -- ABC? -- to put him on a retainer as an “expert” on “terrorism” or “Islam” or something. Most of them are merely silly repeaters of the obvious, but Gerges is more than that. He’s a sly and determined apologist for Islam and the Islamic worldview, and therefore of no value to an audience of Infidels, who desperately need a little instruction, whatsoever. He’s a guide to nothing and nowhere, and it is at this point insulting to all of us that he is still retained, on his fat retainer, to present his misleading lessons in understanding.