E Pluribus Umbrage

The long, happy life of America's anti-defamation industry.

Tim Cavanaugh from the December 2002 issue

(Page 2 of 7)

Toilet Trouble

"We are not humorless," says Ajay Shah. "There are things that are clearly humorous, and you have to be willing to take a joke." Shah, convener of American Hindus Against Defamation (AHAD), is speaking of Apu, the Indian Quik-E-Mart owner on The Simpsons. Shah occasionally has been called upon to object to this characterization of a penny-pinching subcontinental; he sees Apu as a creation more of affection than calumny. "I get two or three incidents reported every month," he says. "You have to make a judgment whether it's worth pursuing or just trivial."

In the anti-discrimination economy, AHAD is a penny stock, with no paid staff, office, or telephone. AHAD convenes on a case-by-case basis. Its targets have included an Aerosmith album cover depicting a disfigured Krishna, Sanskrit shlokas in an orgy scene in the movie Eyes Wide Shut, and, most famously, a Seattle design shop selling toilet covers with pictures of Ganesha and Kali. In all these cases, AHAD's strategy of engagement with offenders, backed up by e-mail campaigns and the hint of boycotts, resulted in removal of the offending images.

"In all of our protests we have never asked for monetary compensation," says Shah, "because if we can educate people, we'll become a major organization whom they'll come to before they start a project."

AHAD has come under fire from both left and right. In a screed for the Indian Web site Rediff.com, writer Varsha Bhosle attacks Shah's "ingrained Hindu obsequiousness," which allowed the Seattle designer to escape "without a scratch." In Bhosle's view, AHAD is a lily-livered Gandhian group that deserves "a nice Islamic-style whipping."

Liberals, on the other hand, condemn AHAD's affiliations with both the million-dollar advocacy outfit Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, which has ties to India's ruling BJP party, and the nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, whose mission includes "strengthening the [Hindu] society by emphasizing and inculcating a spirit of unity, so that no one can dare challenge it." Both groups supported the demolition of the Ayodha mosque and say attacks on Christian missionaries result from "anger of patriotic Hindu youth against anti-national forces."

"The issues we pick have no political overtones," counters Shah. "We take up issues offensive to Hindus...once people denigrate your symbols, it's a matter of time before they say, 'If people worship these symbols, they're worth ridiculing.'" Shah notes that his group participates in pluralism efforts and meets with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Hindus are very liberal," he says. "We see nothing wrong with people choosing their own lifestyles. If there is a libertarian religion, it's Hinduism."

Upping the Anti

This easygoing spirit is a rarity among anti-discrimination groups. "The issue," Wilcox writes in The Watchdogs, "is the abominable record...with respect to individual rights...misrepresentations and lies, exploitation of normal human sympathy for the underdog, flagrant double standards, hidden agendas, unprincipled methods, and unconscionable use of law enforcement to advance their own ends."

Not surprisingly, the 9/11 attacks pushed these tendencies to the forefront while giving urgency to anti-discrimination efforts. CAIR tallies anti-Muslim incidents, which it says tripled in the last year. The group issues news alerts with headlines that are witty ("Ann Coulter Attacks, Dates Muslims"), breathless ("House Leader Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians"), or mendacious ("First Lady Says She Can't Empathize With Palestinian Mothers").

The post-9/11 backlash, the Afghan war, endless intifadas, and the Bush administration's hysterical terrorist threat warnings have inspired an unbroken string of columns, speeches, and television appearances from CAIR, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), and the Arab American Institute (AAI). The rising profile of these groups never goes unchallenged. The ADL's Foxman, who accuses the AAI's Zogby of "crude anti-Semitism," campaigned to get Zogby's son ousted from a position in the Clinton State Department. Leaders of other Arab and Muslim groups have been subject to similar attacks.

"They're saying don't let me on television because I'm bad," says ADC spokesman Hussein Ibish. "Pipes and Emerson rehash a version of anti-Semitism: 'There is a plot out there to destroy our Christian way of life; they may look like us, but they worship a hostile and alien god.' This is political anti-Semitism, recast against another Semitic group to exclude that group from the political process."

Ibish is referring to Middle East expert Daniel Pipes, head of the Middle East Forum, and Steven Emerson, self-dramatizing MSNBC terrorism expert. The dustup between Pipes and his Saracen adversaries is one of the oddest offshoots of the war on terrorism. Pipes has condemned CAIR as "'moderate' friends of terror." AAI founder Zogby has been the subject of a rant in Pipes' Middle East Quarterly. Ibish, Pipes writes, is "Anti-American, anti-Semitic, inaccurate and immoral."

Pipes' Web site carries exposés about CAIR. CAIR shoots back with a special "Who Is Daniel Pipes?" feature on its own site. Like all pissing contests, it ends with everybody getting wet. Pipes mass e-mails alerts about his run-ins with various interlocutors ("Pipes on 'Hardball' -- hits one back to the pitcher," "Pipes on O'Reilly Factor, dukes it out with host," "Pipes vs. Zakaria on MSNBC's 'Hardball'"). His enemies are even more energetic. Here is how Mohammed Alo, a young writer at toledomuslims.com, describes a Pipes appearance on the defunct talk show Politically Incorrect:

"Host Bill Maher and the other guests quickly argued that Pipes is the one that needs to be controlled and kept out of the public stage. Even they noticed his outright hatred and anti-Muslim sentiments. You could faintly hear an audience member shout out 'Pipe down Pipes!'