There can't, of course, be more than one "Best Cop" Muslim, since "best" as a superlative denotes a unique Muslim -- by definition, only one -- putatively the best of all the Taqiyya Artists. I've bumped into a couple of such Muslims over the years, and at least once I analyzed the issue; but I still can't decide yet which one of them would take the crown.
At any rate, here's the latest candidate in the running: Imam Sheikh Mohammad Tawhidi -- who, as Philip Haney (publishing a piece on Jihad Watch) informs us, is “an Iranian-born Shia scholar who openly campaigns against Islamic extremism" and is known in Australia as the ‘Imam of Peace’.”
What Haney should have said is, “pretends to openly campaign against Islamic extremism” in order to fool stupid Westerners into thinking he is actually a “moderate” or “reformist” Muslim.
What reformist stunt did this Sheikh Tawhidi do to merit his candidacy for “Best Cop”? He filmed himself (or obviously had someone film him) walking into the prayer room at the Melbourne airport (the second busiest airport in Australia, Haney also informs us) and pointing out that among the other harmless books there (e.g., a Bible), lay a most sinister volume titled “Fiqh Us-Sunnah” (“the Law and the Way”). The seemingly dapper Sheikh then starts thumbing through the volume and pointing out sections in it to the camera:
“...page 19 -- Jihad; page 59 -- taking hostages at war; page 48 -- Jizya, making the Infidel pay money, Islamic taxes; 228 -- martyrdom...”
The Sheikh tells his audience that such books could “radicalize” Muslims, and he says he has done his part to alert us, now it's up to us to do something about this -- presumably to interdict the availability of such books to the public.
What Philip Haney meticulously demonstrates in his article is that this book's extremist content -- which the Sheikh pretended to be alarmed at -- is perfectly normative in mainstream Islam. So this Better Cop Muslim, Imam Sheikh Mohammad Tawhidi, performed the deft feat of a Two-Fer:
1) he massaged the meme of the specious distinction between Extremism vs.Mainstream Islam (his own Islam)
2) by doing so through this stunt (pretending to exercise his civic duty here), he massaged the impression that he's a Muslim with a conscience who is concerned about radical Wahhabist Salafist Islamist extremism.
#1 by itself would qualify him as a by-the-numbers garden-variety Good Cop Muslim (defined as such by being able to fool the Western Mainstream already predisposed to believe that most Muslims are relatively good people who just wanna have a sandwich). #2 is good enough to earn him a Better Cop Muslim badge, to the extent that there are people in the Counter-Jihad stupid enough to believe that any Muslim who makes reformist claims is not double-talking taqiyya -- the stupidity here being their apparently inability to see that #2 is dependent upon #1 (which by itself would make anyone in the Counter-Jihad fall off their chairs laughing).
The measure of whether a Muslim propagandist is a Good Cop, a Better Cop, or the Best Cop depends on the audience he fools. If he only manages to fool the broader Western Mainstream, he's just a Good Cop. If he manages to fool some in the Counter-Jihad, he begins to surpass the Good Cop and becomes a Better Cop. Another way to put this (the more cynical, but I think realistic way) is that a Muslim is only "Better" when a certain number of people in the Counter-Jihad are guillible enough to believe he's sincere. Sure, he has to have more talent than a Good Cop -- he has to be able to juggle more balls and pull rabbits out of his hat with more smoke & mirrors -- but ultimately his whole magic trick depends on pockets of weakness and gullibility in his target audience. A "Best Cop" then would be a Muslim who has succeeded in fooling a remarkably high number of people in the Counter-Jihad -- he wouldn't necessarily have to fool all of us. Time will have to tell to determine if this Sheikh Tawhidi qualifies, but from the comments attached to Philip Haney's article, I don't see anything remarkable per se, even if he does qualify certainly as a Better Cop.
While it was nice to see Philip Haney publish on Jihad Watch, as he is one of the rare Counter-Jihadists who seems to have hardly any “asymptotic” tendencies, as I have called them; and his piece was an excellent analysis of the central problem manifested by this Sheikh's stunt -- namely, that the "extremist literature" the Sheikh was doing his civic duty in flagging is actually literature that is part of the normative mainstream Islam the Sheikh himself supports -- Haney himself evinced an asymptotic twitch when he wrote:
“... Imam Tawhidi should certainly be commended for his refreshing courage and honesty (i.e., If You See Something, Say Something), but it also casts a spotlight on an ominous, unavoidable dilemma for [1] Muslim leaders like him, as well as for [2] the global Islamic community...”
And when a commenter (“thebigW”) called him on this --
He should even more certainly be commended for fooling Philip Haney. Is there a category in the Oscars for “Best Taqiyya”? Someone submit the Imam’s video to the Academy.
-- Haney responded to that commenter thusly:
It’s not that I’m fooled; just the opposite. That’s why I referred to See Something, Say Something (it’s an inside joke, which you’ll see better if you look up my book, See Something, Say Nothing. However, if Muslim leaders actually acknowledged that mainstream Islamic teaching is a threat to National Security, that would be an improvement, right?
thebigW then responded:
Only a few of them might like this Imam Tawhidi, but most will continue to lie, and so our general confusion will continue while we slowly boil to death like the proverbial frog in the fairy tale (and the few of them who do will do it like Imam Tawhidi, in such a way as to continue the confusion, not clear it up).
That Haney says he's not fooled is a good sign; however, in terms of his rhetorical presentation, he is to some degree contributing to the “confusion” astutely alluded to by thebigW.
P.S.: This isn't the first time I've spotted asymptotic cracks in Philip Haney.
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