I've got this article from my friend, who is an American living in London.

It's headlined "A Wake-Up Call for America's Jews" and written by Aisha Siddiqa Qureshi. First impression is that the article promotes a "dissident" Arab view, surprisingly pro-Jewish:

“Dear Jews, everywhere, I would like to point out the time bomb likely to explode in your faces. It has already been detonated in France. When it happens in the country you call home, you may be shocked and unprepared, so I present this letter to you as a warning. In it, I will inform you of some basic facts – facts that can never be changed.”

 

My first reaction was rather skeptical, “too good to be true”. The article uses “canned” language, with a lot of signs of being a propaganda piece.

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Alexander Avtsin

Sent: 04 October 2004 12:44

To: xxxx xxxxx

Subject: RE: Interesting Article to read

[...]

 

I've read the article - my first impression, it's "too good to be true". I'm

not saying it's fake, it's just the author is probably a Kurd. I didn't

check who she/he is yet.. And for every panicking view on one end of the

spector there's a calming one on the other.

I'm not saying, that the danger of the global anti-Semitism doesn't exist,

but I think it's exaggerated at this point. If you are interested in further

discussion, let me know :)

 

After further research, it became apparent that the author hasn't published much except for the piece in question. A Google search on "Aisha Siddiqa Qureshi" reveals 61 links to the same message in different formats. To further deepen my suspicion, the author provides description of a seminar from Aish HaTorah website. Note similarity of the names of the author and the website ("Aish" is the man in Hebrew).

 

In the meantime, I’d probably stick to the view, expressed by Ami Isseroff of MidEastWeb for Coexistence, in his comment on the Occam’s Toothbrush blog:

 

It is incredible to me that anyone would be taken in by this article. I will bet that Aisha Siddiqa Qureshi, who seems to have published nothing else, is a pseudonym for someone who is an orthodox Jew and right-wing Zionist. Masquerading as a deep philosopical and social analysis, it lapses into a cheap bit of election year propaganda, announcing that the author (ostensibly a Muslim) prefers the Republican party because of its JUDEO-Christian ethic.

THere are actually Muslims and ex-Muslims who write legitimate and cogent criticism of Islam (eg Nonie Darwish). We can agree or disagree with their ideas, but their are honest and authentic representatives of their culture, Trash like this article by a fake Arab makes the real critics of Islam suspect.