The Left's Fascination with Islamists

Janice at You Heard it Here has a great post today on how CAIR is claiming victory for pressuring the American Library Association to cancel a panel discussion. The reason for CAIR's distress over the panel, "Perspectives on Islam: Beyond the Stereotyping"? Robert Spencer was one of the four panelists.

Spencer, on his site Jihad Watch yesterday, explained more fully the events surrounding the panel and its cancellation. Here's how he opens:

The American Library Association invited me to speak on a panel tomorrow, which led the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case, along with some complicit, bemused, and Leftist academics, to kick up a controversy -- previous posts about this here and here.

However, now the other three panelists, caving to pressure from this terror-linked group, have withdrawn from the panel, and the ALA has canceled the panel. The panel was stacked three against one against my point of view, but even three-to-one wasn't safe enough for CAIR or these evidently very insecure academics.

Keep in mind, the American Library Association (ALA) is not what its name might imply. It's a hard-left group that, among other things, fights tooth-and-nail against protecting children in libraries. The ALA refuses to block access to child-porn websites on library computers, siding with the obscenity-viewing "rights" of predators over the safety of children visiting the library. The ALA has also been ignoring the librarians in Cuba who have been jailed for actively supporting Cubans' right to choose what to read.

Ever since 9/11, I've been trying to figure out why the Left (including Academia), which has so much disagreement with Islam, would side with groups like CAIR and against American culture. In the comments to Spencer's explanation of events, Gozan303 describes it this way:

Academia today is like an adolescent schoolgirl with a huge crush on what she perceives as the fascinating badboy in the class. If a stinky old teacher or parent comes around and tries to point out the obvious problems with the guy, like he has a police record a mile long, or he doesn't have a steady income or education, that just gets the girls prepubescent interest piqued further, since everything cool is what the stinky old establishment rails against. Right?

The .edu crowd has a huge crush on Islam, because it ruffles the feathers of that old dinosaur, Judeo-Christian western culture. Robert, bringing the irrefutable truth, is unwelcome in the same sense as the stinky old parent, because he would interrupt their swooning adoration session directed at the school badboy. Your [Robert Spencer's] credibility and reputation are strengthened by each such inanity as this. Who knows, maybe good old logic and non-contradiction will be the new fashionable outlaw one day. I've always thought truth should ride a Harley.

Gozan303 is absolutely right. And just like the schoolgirl, who doesn't realize that if the badboy ever took an interest in her he'd hurt her, the Left doesn't want to know that they're just as big (maybe more so) a target of the Islamists. So they'll keep fawning after their badboy every time he goes after that stinky old Robert Spencer, but sooner or later they're going to wake up to the fact that badboy is just plain bad, even to them.