November | 2008 | Thoughts Of A Conservative Christian

November 2008
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It makes one wonder, we are in the middle of what the President-elect called the worst financial crisis since the great depression, we are fighting a war against Islamic terror on at least two fronts and our National Security agencies are warning about a terrorist threat on the US homeland during the transition period. And Obama and his democrats are worried about shutting up people like Rush Limbaugh. It makes one wonder, just what exactly is Obama trying to hide?

The Obama Fairness Doctrine By Bethany Stotts November 18, 2008

Is there something about his policies that Obama doesn’t want us to know?

Just three days after the election, a Brookings Institution leader issued a memo to President-elect Barack Obama asking him to restore the Fairness Doctrine. The Vice-president of Governance Studies at Brookings, Darrell West argues that the Fairness Doctrine would help restore journalistic ethics and fulfill the media’s mission to educate the populace.

In the first of twelve memos to President Obama which will be issued over the next eight months, West argues that the incoming chief executive needs to “Restore the Media Fairness Doctrine and Requirements for Television Public Affairs Broadcasting.” West writes,

“At present, television and radio—on which Americans depend heavily for news and information—generally do not produce or promote thoughtful or deliberative discussions. The idea behind media regulation in the 1980s was that satellite technologies and cable television would allow for the presentation of diverse viewpoints…That approach has proved largely ineffective” (emphasis added).

“With profits falling, traditional media sources too often produce little substantive information and fail to give citizens adequate information about their government,” he argues. “America needs a marketplace of ideas equal to the policy challenges.”

It is ironic that West would promote a doctrine shown to water down free speech in the name of “a marketplace of ideas.” As Accuracy in Media has documented, the Fairness Doctrine had a significant “chilling” effect on news outlets, promoting self-censorship by broadcasters wary of government regulation.

It is not for nothing that the doctrine has been labeled by some as a “Hush Rush” law.

However, the new president-elect is unlikely to favor a return of the Fairness Doctrine, per se. In June 2008, Obama press secretary Michael Ortiz told Broadcasting & Cable that “Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters.”

This issue serves as a “distraction” for the Obama campaign from more important policy reforms like media ownership and diversity, Ortiz argued. “[Obama] considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible,” B&C’s John Eggerton quotes Ortiz. “That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets.”

As AIM has documented, witnesses at last November’s hearing by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on “Localism, Diversity, and Media Ownership” proposed measures which would stifle free speech and talk radio without instituting equal time requirements. Frank Blethen, CEO of the Seattle Times, told the Senators last November that they should

“keep all current FCC ownership restrictions and public service mandates;”

“craft new FCC mandates to ensure internet freedom;”

“institute a ban on cross-ownership of national print and national broadcast outlets as a companion to the local cross-ownership ban;” and

“push for limits on newspaper ownership.”

AIM editor Cliff Kincaid warned that the Senate committee hearing could spark a renewed push for the Fairness Doctrine, especially since two committee members were John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, strong advocates for the return of the doctrine.

A study released by the Center for American Progress (CAP) last summer argued that talk radio suffers from a “structural imbalance” that favors conservatives. Their remedies: promote localism and minority ownership, and fine broadcasters who aren’t in compliance.

John Podesta, the President and CEO of CAP, is Barack Obama’s transition co-chair, one of three top positions within his transition team.

In a 2004 symposium, Podesta outlined his views on what he sees as having gone wrong with the media:

“We’re here because we understand that the media as it’s owned and organized today bears only the faintest resemblance to that Jeffersonian vision. We’re here because instead of being an uplifting force of enlightenment, media conglomerates today are sometimes the exact opposite.”

Media outlets, that is, like Clear Channel and “Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.” “What would they [the Founders] think of the fact that even though Americans have more TV channels than ever to choose from, three-quarters of us are seeing content that’s generated by only 5 different media companies?,” queried Podesta. “And what would any of them say of a broadcaster whose influence is so great, but journalist ethics are so feeble, that 48% of its viewers believe a war was justified because of an event that never occurred?” (emphasis added).

Statements like these make it clear that Podesta, along with CAP, intend to muzzle conservative expression—especially within the talk-radio market, which they have argued favors conservatives because of this “structural imbalance.”

Columnist Michelle Malkin, a Reed Irvine Award recipient, called CAP’s proposals a “Hugo Chavez approach to the radio airwaves.”

Barack Obama has shown that he considers key portions of Blethen’s and CAP’s proposals a priority when regulating the media. His presidential agenda to “ensure the full and free exchange of ideas through an open internet and diverse media outlets” hinges on four points:

protecting the “openness of the internet” through net neutrality;

encouraging “diversity in media ownership;”

protecting children “while preserving the first amendment;” and

“safeguard our right to privacy”

“Barack Obama believes that the nation’s rules ensuring diversity of media ownership are critical to the public interest,” stated the web page on November 7. “Unfortunately, over the past several years the Federal Communications Commission has promoted the concept of consolidation over diversity.”

“As president, Obama will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum.”

The CAP study found that “markets that air both conservative and progressive programming are statistically more likely to have female- and minority-owned stations in the market, and are significantly less concentrated than the markets that air only one type of programming” (emphasis original).

In his agenda, as found on November 7, Obama also committed himself to creating a government with “a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens.” But citizens who visit the change.gov website were unlikely to see what America’s future president intended for the media over the last week—because the content was taken down. A new, abbreviated version, was recently reposted on http://www.change.gov.

In the interim, the website had an agenda of two paragraphs, forcing those searching for information to retrieve the agenda through independent archives. It is unclear at this point how much of the agenda has been changed. This merely adds to a long history of statements in which our future president either denies inconvenient truths, or scrubs his website to remove misleading statements.

Lynn Woolley, writing for AIM, recently commented that “The Fairness Doctrine is going to make a comeback, and the only thing that might stop it is the American people.”

Is there something about his policies that Obama doesn’t want us to know?”

Up to some time ago I was convinced that Muhammad was a historical figure. Although I always based my thinking on the assumption that the Islamic historical narrative regarding Muhammad was very unreliable, I had no doubts that at least the basic lines of his biography were historically correct.I have now moved away from this position and will soon publish a book in which I will, among other things, comment on this question and explain my arguments in more detail. This essay is only a short summary of my most important arguments. It also deals with the question of what implications historical-critical research has for the Islamic theory and how I deal with my research results as a theologian.

And with those words Muhammad Sven Kalisch, Muslim Convert and Professor of Islamic Theology sent shockwaves through the theological world, lost his departmental chairmanship and an probably put a bounty on his head.

My position with regard to the historical existence of Muhammad is that I believe neither his existence nor his non-existence can be proven. I, however, lean towards the non-existence but I don’t think it can be proven. It is my impression that, unless there are some sensational archeological discoveries — an Islamic “Qumran” or “Nag Hammadi” — the question of Muhammad’s existence will probably never be finally clarified.

Read more about Sven’s theory and some of the academic and Islamic reactions below:

Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt Islamic Theologian’s Theory: It’s Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed By ANDREW HIGGINS

MÜNSTER, Germany — Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany’s first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn’t like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.

So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed.

Read a translated excerpt from “Islamic Theology Without the Historic Muhammad — Comments on the Challenges of the Historical-Critical Method for Islamic Thinking” by Professor Kalisch.

Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn’t portray the Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises.

“We had no idea he would have ideas like this,” says Thomas Bauer, a fellow academic at Münster University who sat on a committee that appointed Prof. Kalisch. “I’m a more orthodox Muslim than he is, and I’m not a Muslim.”

When Prof. Kalisch took up his theology chair four years ago, he was seen as proof that modern Western scholarship and Islamic ways can mingle — and counter the influence of radical preachers in Germany. He was put in charge of a new program at Münster, one of Germany’s oldest and most respected universities, to train teachers in state schools to teach Muslim pupils about their faith.

Muslim leaders cheered and joined an advisory board at his Center for Religious Studies. Politicians hailed the appointment as a sign of Germany’s readiness to absorb some three million Muslims into mainstream society. But, says Andreas Pinkwart, a minister responsible for higher education in this north German region, “the results are disappointing.”

Prof. Kalisch, who insists he’s still a Muslim, says he knew he would get in trouble but wanted to subject Islam to the same scrutiny as Christianity and Judaism. German scholars of the 19th century, he notes, were among the first to raise questions about the historical accuracy of the Bible.

Many scholars of Islam question the accuracy of ancient sources on Muhammad’s life. The earliest biography, of which no copies survive, dated from roughly a century after the generally accepted year of his death, 632, and is known only by references to it in much later texts. But only a few scholars have doubted Muhammad’s existence. Most say his life is better documented than that of Jesus.

Sven Muhammad Kalish

“Of course Muhammad existed,” says Tilman Nagel, a scholar in Göttingen and author of a new book, “Muhammad: Life and Legend.” The Prophet differed from the flawless figure of Islamic tradition, Prof. Nagel says, but “it is quite astonishing to say that thousands and thousands of pages about him were all forged” and there was no such person.

All the same, Prof. Nagel has signed a petition in support of Prof. Kalisch, who has faced blistering criticism from Muslim groups and some secular German academics. “We are in Europe,” Prof. Nagel says. “Education is about thinking, not just learning by heart.”

Prof. Kalisch’s religious studies center recently removed a sign and erased its address from its Web site. The professor, a burly 42-year-old, says he has received no specific threats but has been denounced as apostate, a capital offense in some readings of Islam.

“Maybe people are speculating that some idiot will come and cut off my head,” he said during an interview in his study.

A few minutes later, an assistant arrived in a panic to say a suspicious-looking digital clock had been found lying in the hallway. Police, called to the scene, declared the clock harmless.

A convert to Islam at age 15, Prof. Kalisch says he was drawn to the faith because it seemed more rational than others. He embraced a branch of Shiite Islam noted for its skeptical bent. After working briefly as a lawyer, he began work in 2001 on a postdoctoral thesis in Islamic law in Hamburg, to go through the elaborate process required to become a professor in Germany.

The Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. that year appalled Mr. Kalisch but didn’t dent his devotion. Indeed, after he arrived at Münster University in 2004, he struck some as too conservative. Sami Alrabaa, a scholar at a nearby college, recalls attending a lecture by Prof. Kalisch and being upset by his doctrinaire defense of Islamic law, known as Sharia.

In private, he was moving in a different direction. He devoured works questioning the existence of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Then “I said to myself: You’ve dealt with Christianity and Judaism but what about your own religion? Can you take it for granted that Muhammad existed?”

He had no doubts at first, but slowly they emerged. He was struck, he says, by the fact that the first coins bearing Muhammad’s name did not appear until the late 7th century — six decades after the religion did.

He traded ideas with some scholars in Saarbrücken who in recent years have been pushing the idea of Muhammad’s nonexistence. They claim that “Muhammad” wasn’t the name of a person but a title, and that Islam began as a Christian heresy.

Prof. Kalisch didn’t buy all of this. Contributing last year to a book on Islam, he weighed the odds and called Muhammad’s existence “more probable than not.” By early this year, though, his thinking had shifted. “The more I read, the historical person at the root of the whole thing became more and more improbable,” he says.

He has doubts, too, about the Quran. “God doesn’t write books,” Prof. Kalisch says.

Some of his students voiced alarm at the direction of his teaching. “I began to wonder if he would one day say he doesn’t exist himself,” says one. A few boycotted his lectures. Others sang his praises.

Prof. Kalisch says he “never told students ‘just believe what Kalisch thinks’ ” but seeks to teach them to think independently. Religions, he says, are “crutches” that help believers get to “the spiritual truth behind them.” To him, what matters isn’t whether Muhammad actually lived but the philosophy presented in his name.

This summer, the dispute hit the headlines. A Turkish-language German newspaper reported on it with gusto. Media in the Muslim world picked up on it.

Germany’s Muslim Coordinating Council withdrew from the advisory board of Prof. Kalisch’s center. Some Council members refused to address him by his adopted Muslim name, Muhammad, saying that he should now be known as Sven.

German academics split. Michael Marx, a Quran scholar at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, warned that Prof. Kalisch’s views would discredit German scholarship and make it difficult for German scholars to work in Muslim lands. But Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islamic studies scholar at the University of Marburg, set up a Web site called solidaritymuhammadkalisch.com and started an online petition of support.

Alarmed that a pioneering effort at Muslim outreach was only stoking antagonism, Münster University decided to douse the flames. Prof. Kalisch was told he could keep his professorship but must stop teaching Islam to future school teachers.

The professor says he’s more determined than ever to keep probing his faith. He is finishing a book to explain his thoughts. It’s in English instead of German because he wants to make a bigger impact. “I’m convinced that what I’m doing is necessary. There must be a free discussion of Islam,” he says.

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