Opinion

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ERRATIC
STRONGMAN

FUELING
TERRORISTS

Editorial

Talking to Muslims

UNSTABLE
QUAGMIRE
OF A WAR
WE'RE IN

UNSTABLE
QUAGMIRE
OF A WAR
WE'RE IN

ERRATIC
STRONGMAN
WITH
POTENTIAL,
NUKES

ERRATIC
STRONGMAN

WM{

ACTUAL.
NUKES

T

he Union for Reform Judaism and
veyors of hate" and rejecting the idea that
its president, Rabbi Eric Yoffie,
Islamic extremists are a reason to back off
never shy away from controversy,
dialogue: "When we are killing each other in
particularly at the union's biennial conven-
the name of God, sensible religious people
tion. The December gathering in San Diego
have an obligation to do something about it.
was no exception.
Our task is to find the voices of moderation
The news came out of Rabbi Yoffie's
and to reclaim from the fanatics the true
Shabbat sermon, which serves as a State of
essence of religious belief!'
the Union address. While he made some
Fair enough. But where was that tone two
excellent proposals, most notably in his
years ago when Yoffie addressed the threat
call for the Reform movement to restore a
of a different religious group, evangelical
traditional emphasis to Shabbat observance Christians?
and Shabbat morning worship, we are less
He called for opening dialogue with evan-
excited about his launch
gelicals, just as he seeks
of a movement-wide
with Muslims
We're not saying dialogue
dialogue with American
now But instead of holding
Muslims.
it's wrong to open out an olive branch and
It's not that we dis-
downplaying the extremist
dialogue with as minority, he lectured the
agree with reaching out
to Muslims. Nor do we
religious right as a whole,
many Muslims
endorse the stereotyp-
blasting its mixture of reli-
ing or demonizing of
as we can.
gion and politics and, in a
Muslims. We hope that
fit of irony, its arrogance:
the dialogue being pilot-
"We bring a measure of
ed by 10 pairs of synagogues and mosques
humility to our religious belief ... We have
— including the Islamic Association of
no direct lines to heaven, and we aren't
Greater Detroit and Congregation Shir
always sure that we know God's will!"
Tikvah of Troy — will succeed in creating
He mocked evangelicals' views on family
friendship and understanding.
values, and he overflowed with righteous
What bothers us, however, is Yoffie's tone. indignation at the "hateful rhetoric that
He is beyond conciliatory toward Muslims,
fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry"
denouncing critics of Muslims as "pur-
among those who oppose same-sex mar-

riage."We cannot forget that when Hitler
came to power in 1933,"Yoffie said, "one
of the first things that he did was ban gay
organizations
Yes, and we cannot forget that the worst
thing Hitler did was kill 6 million Jews
simply because they were Jewish, just as
Muslim terrorists have killed thousands
of Israelis for being Jewish and thousands
of Americans for not being Muslim and
countless fellow Muslims for not following
the same path through the Koran. Yet the
strongest language Yoffie can muster is
"Islamic extremists constitute a profound
threat!"
Evangelical Christians may support dif-
ferent social laws than many of us like, but
they do so within the context of American
democracy. The biggest threat they pose

is their ability to help elect political candi-
dates whom we might oppose. And they are
the strongest friends Israel has.
As Yoffie acknowledges, Israel has few
friends among Muslims. Muslims are a
driving force in modern anti-Semitism
worldwide. And more than a few of them
see nothing wrong with killing us.
We're not saying it's wrong to open dia-
logue with as many Muslims as we can.
Nor do we doubt Yoffie's personal commit-
ment to increasing understanding among
all religions; after all, he has spoken
both at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University
and before the Islamic Society of North
America. We just wish Rabbi Yoffie would
speak as warmly about those who are
already our friends as he does about the
friends he hopes to make.

everyone it was still green
as the dickens. That may be
absurd, but those who detest
Detroit gave them a pass.
Reliance on ethanol already
is resulting in higher food
prices as more corn is divert-
ed to fuel. The energy bill
also is overly optimistic about
the possibilities of technol-
ogy. The automakers should
be spurred on if they've held
back on attainable fuel efficiencies. But for
government to impose goals that can't be
realized is posturing.
If you are serious about this issue either
you tax gasoline more heavily or slap a
surtax on light trucks and SUVs, rather
than try to design vehicles in the legisla-
ture and courts. But that would not be a
politically astute move. It's much better
just to hammer the car companies.
Of course, the downside to those fuel
economy standards is that cars will have
to be made of lighter, less crash-resistant

materials. You can bet that many of the
same people who want to hang the Big 3
now for being polluters will want to draw
and quarter them then for being murder-
ers.
I'm certainly not immune to these atti-
tudes. One of my cars is Korean, the other
a GM product made in Oakland County.
I still regale people with horror stories of
the Ford Torino I bought in 1970, a car
that broke down if you looked at it the
wrong way. Sometimes you could only get
it going by lifting the hood and smashing
the battery with a tire iron, which got me
many peculiar looks from passers-by. It
was such a lemon it was even painted yel-
low.
But that was then, when the carmakers
were fat and arrogant. Now we see them in
their ruin; and while some of it was their
own doing, all Michigan is feeling their
pain.

"

❑

Reality Check

Road Kill

T

he biggest problem about being
behind, a wise auto executive
once told me, is that you're
behind. While you're playing catch-up, the
competition is going on to the next big
thing.
Worse than that, perceptions are slow to
change and the flaws that put you behind
in the first place get lodged in the public's
mind. No matter how many surveys indi-
cate that Detroit has pretty much caught
up to the Japanese manufacturers on
quality control, you will never convince a
major segment of the public that is true.
They still can taste the lemon they bought
from Mercury or Buick back in 1981.
Worst of all for the Big Three, and for all
of us in Michigan, is that the carmakers
are now politically vulnerable and have
been assigned the villain's role in global
warming. Utilities and oil companies wig-
gled off the hook in the energy bill passed
by Congress last month. But it is no longer
permitted in Washington to question the
assertion that automobile emissions are

A18

January 3 • 2008

iN

the major factor in the environ-
mental doomsday.
The classic New York tabloid
newspaper headline about
President Ford and New York
City could be rewritten to read:
"Congress to Motown: Drop
Dead."
Anything that reduces
American dependency on
imported oil has to be a good
thing. But shouldn't it be a
shared burden? There is a strong whiff
of piling-on here because it is politically
cost-free to bash Detroit.
Opinion makers and academics on both
coasts hate the Big Three. In Boston and
San Francisco, it is regarded as declasse to
be caught in a domestic vehicle.
When Toyota started pushing its line
of trucks and SUVs, these people reacted
as if they had caught their spouse in fla-
grante delictu with a Republican. Toyota
quickly fell all over itself with an expen-
sive public relations campaign to convince

❑

George Cantor's e-mail address is

gcantor614@aoLcom.

