It's because he's the "new face of hate," duh. That what The Dallas Morning News'er and Crunchy Con writes in the winter issue of City Journal, the urban-affairs quarterly published by the Manhattan Institute. In the piece, titled "Muslim Mau-Mauing," Dreher writes about moving to Dallas -- which his wife, a native Dallasite, refers to as "a September 10 kind of place" -- and a run-in he had with Sayyid Syeed, who was the head of the Islamic Society of North America when he went to visit with The News' editorial board in 2003.
Dreher writes that Syeed, with some local Muslims, came to talk about how journalists "needed to join with the organization in promoting peace, tolerance, and reconciliation." But Dreher couldn't help but ask Syeed why, exactly, his organization's board included Siraj Wahaj, who, says here, was classified by the United States Department of Justice as one of several "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City monuments," including the World Trade Center in 1993. Did not go over well.
Writes Dreher: "The professorial Syeed dropped his polite mask, shook his fist at me, told me that I would one day 'repent,' and compared my question with a Nazi inquisition. Hysterical indignation, I soon learned, is the standard operating procedure for Islamic groups in dealing with the media in this town."
Yeah. This ought to help. Oh, and in that same issue of City Journal, Ron Kirk is mentioned in the piece headlined "The New Black Realism." Because, as you know, Ron Kirk is all about keeping it realism. --Robert Wilonsky
