My fellow AOL blogger Scott Johnson of Powerline has written a lengthy review of my book The Enemy at Home which was published in the New Criterion. I probably wouldn't have seen it--I thought the New Criterion went out of business years ago--but it's been reprinted elsewhere. The title of the piece is "D'Souza Goes Native."
I'm writing a lengthy response to conservative critics like Johnson which will expose their errors of fact and logic, and their massive ignorance of Islam. Here I simply want to comment on Johnson's title. "In the four years he claims to have spent studying America and the West through Muslim eyes," Johnson writes, "D'Souza appears to have gone native." Among Midwesterners who haven't traveled far from home, this kind of reference is considered highbrow.
But see how Johnson botches the whole concept and in the process reveals his own small-minded nativism. When a Western guy goes abroad and casts his lot with the foreigners, in the process abandoning the values of his own society, he is said to have "gone native." But I am a native of Mumbai, India. I grew up in a multireligious and multicultural world where Hindu, Muslim and Christian influences were closely integrated. I am from one of the oldest Christian families in India. I learned English as well as two native Indian languages. From childhood I was exposed both to Western ideas, imported into India through the British, as well as non-Western ideas and influences.
Voluntarily, I came to America and became a citizen. So if I have "gone native," I have gone native in America. I have assimilated to the American way of life, not by osmosis, but deliberately and deliberatively, and I have given the reasons for my change of heart in my book What's So Great About America. Since I have a good knowledge of both Western and non-Western cultures, I approached the leading thinkers of radical Islam in an attempt to study what their ideas are, and why they are winning so many converts to their nefarious cause. My objective is to understand the enemy, so that we can fight him better.
Unable to grapple with a guy who actually knows other cultures from within, who has a real knowledge of the Muslim world, and who doesn't succumb to the rabid Islamophobia characteristic of Johnson and some others on the right, my philistine fellow blogger can do no better than accusing me of "going native." Next time remind me to bring my prayer rug.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 2)
1. Yikes! Let us all bow down to Mr. D'Souza's worldliness as we worship his mastery of ad hominem.
Phil at 7:06PM on Feb 27th 2007
2. yes, but...
where's the substantive rebuttal? This is a silly response, picking on a semantic dispute and trying to redirect readers from the actual content of Johnson's post. This is typical of the dishonest and shoddy thought process of D'Souza...and, unbelievably, he claims that his aim is to understand the enemy...
take a look here (http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/3826)
for a thorough debunking of both D'Souza's conclusions and, more importantly, his "scholarly" methods, which are no more than an attempt to plaster an intellectual sheen on a partisan and unsupported thesis.
rick freedman at 8:52PM on Feb 27th 2007
3. The link to Mr. Johnson's review is here.
Terrence at 9:44PM on Feb 27th 2007
4. Hmmm, second try. (No html tags allowed?)
http://www.newcriterion.com/archives/25/03/sjohnson/
Terrence at 9:45PM on Feb 27th 2007
5. I suggest Mr. D'Sousa read Dr. Bostom's "Legacy of Jihad in India". The establishment of the Delhi Sultanite from 636 C.E. to 1206 C.E. was brutal, cruel and viscious.
Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists were murdered mercilessly and their temples defiled. Their women and children were enslaved. All those who didn't convert were either killed or forced into dhimmitude.
The Koran is very clear on the purpose of jihad, convert or be put to the sword.
Weren't you taught Indian history when you grew up in Mumbai?
fred edwards at 10:01AM on Feb 28th 2007
6. Is this string of insults the sum total of Mr. D'Souza's rebuttal? Dissapointing.
AOL Reader at 10:08AM on Feb 28th 2007
7. Goooooo Dinesh. I absolutely love your tart slap back at one member of the conservative echo chamber. I cannot claim to have reached any sort of definitive state of mind about Islam, but I do know that the drumbeat of seething, nativist, creepy culture mania is NOT good for us as a nation or as a party -- meaning the GOP. Full disclosure: I've walked a long piece down the road with the fear & hate brigades and it's not a good or productive place to be. With 1.2 billion Muslims and counting on planet Earth, how could it be?
I'm intrigued enough now to order your book. Just the fact that you are willing to step outside the echo chamber, and that your ideas are eliciting such fevered criticism from elite "thinkers" is reason enough to hear you out. I'm very open to what you have to teach me, having finally tired of blind fear (masquerading as hate) and able to admit my own ignorance. May the Wilber force be with you...
SouthernGal at 10:53AM on Feb 28th 2007
8. "I thought the New Criterion went out of business years ago"
This guy brings to mind Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s comment about William F. Buckley, years ago:
"There is no one from whom I would rather take lessons in superciliousness."
Sorry to see you go, Dinesh.
billsykes at 11:38AM on Feb 28th 2007
9. Mr. D'Souza has beclowned himself.
Anon at 12:29PM on Feb 28th 2007
10. That's it? That's all? As Christopher Hitchens has said, the word "Islamophobic" is just stupid. Mr. D'Souza seems unfazed by the total rejection of his thesis by the right blogosphere. Some tried to be polite (see Stanley Kurtz at NRO), but in the end, Max Boot got it right: "execrable."
Dennis at 1:04PM on Feb 28th 2007
11. I look forward to seeing your "lengthy response to conservative critics like Johnson which will expose their errors of fact and logic, and their massive ignorance of Islam."
But what you offer above is simply petty and a poor prolog for substantive debate.
hgwells at 1:05PM on Feb 28th 2007
12. Poor Din Din.
To have offered such a confining, limited argument in a book that restricts one to assailing the Midwestern background and publication of one's critics.
Surely, Din Din, your blond trophy wife could have done far better and if only with her finely manicured nails. Now you have but to pout and whine about the bother of it all.
Poor, sad Din Din. Left only to attack his own people in the Conservative and Neoconservative Theocratic Fundamentalist sect. Shabby, Din Din, quite shabby indeed.
Mark at 2:57PM on Feb 28th 2007
13. I used to think highly of Dinesh D'Souza, considering the excellence of his books "Illiberal Education" and "The End of Racism." But he has shot himself in the foot with "The Enemy At Home." It is not Scott Johnson who is a "massive ignormaus on Islam," it is sadly, Dinesh D'Souza himself. The whole premise of "The Enemy at Home" is utterly flawed, i.e., that Muslims blew up the World Trade Center because they were upset with our morality. Is this why they have murdered 100 million Hindus? Were they just upset with Hindu morality?
Muslims have been attacking and mass killing "infidels" for centuries. The only thing that will placate them is our mass conversion to Islam. "The Enemy at Home" is flawed in the extreme and is in fact, destructive. It does not illuminate the causes and dangers of Islamic violence, it supplies a false rationalization for same. Shame on you, Dinesh D'Souza, for sacrificing your credibility as a scholar on such a flawed premise and frivolous argument.
Stealth Fedora at 5:30PM on Feb 28th 2007
14. dude you want us to ally with al quaida types???if you were in front of my face id crush youre skull for suggesting that.
dinsdale?! at 12:15AM on Mar 1st 2007
15. How can you claim to be a 'culture warrior,' let alone a leader in that long running debate, and not be familiar with the New Criterion?
Kinda seems like claiming to be a soldier but not being familiar with those little metal things called "bullets."
Ross at 5:59PM on Mar 1st 2007