[Reader-list] Fareed Zarkaria Unmasked

[Pawan Durani]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/trager/44911
 An "Untold Story"<http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/trager/44911>Eric
Trager<http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/category/contentions?author_name=trager>-
11.29.2008
- 1:58 PM

Mere hours into the horrific attacks in Mumbai, CNN/Newsweek
bloviator<http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/trager/12891>Fareed
Zakaria inaugurated the typical "root
causes" <http://www.newsweek.com/id/171006/output/print> debate by
"explaining" away the terrorists' motivation:

One of the untold stories of India is that the Muslim population has not
shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last ten years. There is
still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted.
There's enough alienation out there that there are locals who can be drawn
in to plots.

Of course, there's a lot that stinks about Zakaria's so-called
"explanation." As
Abe<http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/greenwald/44801>noted,
early reports indicate that some of the attackers were British
citizens of Pakistani descent - i.e., not "persecuted" Indian Muslims.
Moreover, a Chabad house was among the targets - i.e., an institution not
frequented by "discriminating" Indian officials. In short, the empirics
don't point to "institutional discrimination" as a "root cause" of the
Mumbai attacks.

Yet Zakaria's instant analysis of the attacks is pernicious for a second
reason: if "institutional discrimination" against Indian Muslims is truly an
"untold story," Zakaria deserves a good deal of the blame. After all,
Zakaria is one of the most prominent foreign policy journalists in the world
- he is the former editor of *Foreign Affairs*, the editor of *Newsweek
International*, and host of CNN's weekly *Fareed Zakaria GPS*. He is also,
arguably, the most prominent Muslim of Indian descent in America, and his
father was a prominent Indian Muslim politician.

So check out Zakaria's archive<http://fareedzakaria.com/articles/archive.html>:
how many of his articles have addressed the plight of Indian Muslims? How
often has he told the story of their apparent exclusion from India's
economic development? More specifically, where are Muslims' ostracism
mentioned in this *Newsweek *cover
story<http://fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/030606.html>that
Zakaria wrote on India's boom? At what point did Zakaria reference
India's Muslims during his CNN interviews with Condoleezza
Rice<http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0806/22/fzgps.01.html>,
Pakistani politician Imran
Khan<http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/10/fzgps.01.html>,
or fellow India-jet-setter Thomas
Friedman<http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0811/23/fzgps.01.html>,
among others?

Indeed, if "institutional discrimination" against Indian Muslims is truly a
"root cause" of the Mumbai attacks, we should ask Zakaria how he managed to
neglect this "untold story" for so long. He is either a shamefully
unobservant journalist or a blatant apologist for terrorists.