The British journalist Tom Leonard of the UK's Telegraph has reported recently on the case of the American student Amanda Knox: "Hillary Clinton has said that she will meet a US senator to discuss claims that Amanda Knox was the victim of a flawed trial and anti-Americanism."

As is wont for most journalists these days, Mr. Leonard busies himself with presenting "both sides" of the argument, recounting an American populist opinion, in the wake of an American citizen facing a murder rap in a European country, that Italy's justice system is compromised by its anti-Americanism. But at the end of his reportage he finishes by telling in confirmative terms of a "local Seattle resident" and her blog in which she accuses the American public of an unjustified sympathy for Amanda Fox and an evident aversion for the Italian justice system that has "bordered on the xenophobic."

It seems that journalists and so-called "experts on Islamist terrorism" these days are themselves compromised by an anti-American fervency. I have no doubt that the Italian justice system is detrimentally affected and constricted by what has become a predictable and universal tendency of jealousy and hatred of the United States of America and its citizens.

In Canada this anti-Americanism is most obvious in all Liberal Party campaign platforms, as all Liberal Party politicians are unified not only by their incessant pursuit of election victories, but also by their anti-Americanism, a motif that best defines the limitations of their intellectual capabilities in regards to what these avant-garde "multiculturalists" believe should be our Canadian identity.

The world is now conspicuously obsessed with hating Americans. Ajai Sahni, India's well known and well read expert on Islamist terrorism, is no exception. With even a short incursion into Mr. Sahni's "occasional writings", one discovers denigrative references to the American citizen in general and American foreign policy in  particular.

In his article 'Pax Americana and the Islamic threat', Mr. Sahni writes, "The American posture of extreme threat is essentially a justification for an interventionist agenda." Also, "Xenophobic frenzies have inspired some of the most momentous social and political movements in the US, and the economics and development of many of its industries-particularly the gigantic defence and armaments sector-are directly correlated to prevailing levels of nationalistic paranoia and the continued possibility of selectively 'humane' exports to movements against what America chooses to recognise as 'oppression'.

I guess Mr. Sahni resents the fact that it was because of American intervention that the USA has contributed, as reported by SiliconIndia News Bureau, the equivalent of 14 billion dollars ($57 billion in today's dollars) in economic aid assistance to India since 1951.

This American financial assistance to India matches the Marshall Plan in enormity; not only in numbers, but also in the way unctuous commentators like Ajai Sahni choose to obfuscate proof of American generosity and goodwill, favouring instead to excoriate Americans for what he defines as their "interventionist agenda." But isn't that the way of the world's so-called "experts" when it comes down to how they really feel about the USA?

They zealously condemn American foreign policy but shamelessly cuddle up to the American dollar. It should be made known to Mr. Sahni here that if America appears to him as being covetous of some sort of "nationalistic paranoia," then he must keep in mind that this same "nationalistic paranoia" has been purchased with no other than much American blood. Moreover, every intelligent and thinking American is cognizant of the fact (even if Ajai Sahni is not) that the world owes America, and not the other way around.

Sahni propounds that "there is no locus of terrorism," which is to say that no country should be singled out as being the source of those "masterminds" who promote and act out the Islamist ideology. Yet this "expert" contradicts himself is in his myriad condemnations of Pakistan. (Whether Pakistan is innocent of his incriminations is irrelevant here.) 

In his first paragraph of 'Offensive from Pakistan' alone he refers to Pakistan no less than six times. Elsewhere he writes, "It is crucial to recognize that much of the impetus of extremist Islamism and terrorism experienced in the West continues to emanate from Pakistan-in terms of the actual source of acts of terrorism, their ideological and financial support, elements of leadership, training infrastructure and safe haven.

It is in Pakistan that the world's first modern and global Islamist terrorist movement was bred and nurtured, and from where it was exported-first into the immediate neighbourhood, and then across the continents, into the heart of 'fortress America' on 9/11, and into nation after nation thereafter."

I would say, after reading such statements, that Sahni is unwittingly projecting the view that the locus of terrorism can be found in the predominantly Muslim populated state of Pakistan.

Sahni states that Islamic terrorism can happen "wherever there are believers." But then he writes in 'clash of civilizations' that "It is useful to remind ourselves that there are over 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, and the terrorists are only a miniscule minority among them. You cannot 'criminalize' a fifth of humanity because of the actions of a few among them."

Sahni cannot grasp the fact that Islamist terrorists are not a congenital phenomenon: every terrorist was first a "moderate Muslim" before he or she took the conscious step to becoming an Islamist Muslim; every Muslim is first a "believer" as a "moderate Muslim" before he or she develops into a "believer" as an Islamist Muslim. Sahni here has inadvertently illuminated the most obviated truth about Islamist terrorism: there certainly is a locus of terrorism and it is the religion of Islam proper, although not any particular country.

In 'Islamic Extremism and Subversion in South Asia,' Sahni writes, "There is a profound ideology of hatred that is being fervently propagated through the institutions of Islam, particularly the madrassas or religious schools and seminaries that are proliferating rapidly across South Asia, and it is winning many ardent converts...this is a vocal, armed, well supported, extremely violent and growing minority. The majority, by contrast, has tended to passivity and conciliation, and there is little present evidence of the courage of conviction or the will for any moderate Islamic resistance to the rampage of extremist Islam."

One cannot help but notice that the "institutions of Islam" are mentioned as being used to propagate the Islamist's "profound ideology of hatred." Apparently there is no basis to be found for a contradistinction between the religion of Islam proper and the "profound ideology of hatred" being propagated by the Islamists in the "madrassas or religious schools and seminaries": how otherwise could the extremists assume such a conduit as the religion of Islam proper for the purpose of "winning many ardent converts" with their hateful ideology? An expert who notices every vile aspect of the predominantly Muslim country Pakistan, yet he wilfully deviates from the overt contiguousness of the religion of Islam to the Islamists and their "extremely violent and growing minority."

The majority of Muslims, on the other hand, who have "tended to passivity and conciliation" he accuses merely of lacking "courage and conviction"-rather than condemning their "passivity and conciliation" for what it really is: an approval of a Muslim minority who have reached that objective of Islam beyond the moderate plane. Such a purported expert on Islamist terrorism and Sahni cannot see the vibrant particulars of the appellative "moderate" Islam's connection to terrorism, even when those particulars are staring him in the face. Perhaps such obtuseness is to blame for his contradictions and anti-Americanism.

Michael Devolin,

B'nai Elim Canada