Conservative blog charges: The ID think tank is in league with Islamic radicals

Here's a weird turn of events: Conservative blog Little Green Footballs thinks the ID think tank Discovery Institute is in league with Islamic radicals.

And here all those other conspira-zozos insist the evil Discos are fundie Christians who think all Muslims are going to hell! Who knew how fast things could change?

Head evil Disco Bruce Chapman (a Reagan admin official in a former life) responds,

The blog site Little Green Footballs has slandered Discovery Institute, whether
intentionally or not, by implying that we are in league with Islamic radicals in Turkey. They base this fantasy, apparently, on a CBC radio report of a year ago that was so poorly researched that it called Discovery Senior Fellow David Berlinski "Paul
Berlinski" and referred to us as the "Christian Discovery organization." Then they interview a host of people of varying views in Turkey who are critical of Darwinism and imply that they are all connected. They seemingly imply Discovery's involvement in this situation based on the fact that Berlinski was invited to speak at a conference held by the municipal government of Istanbul last year. Big deal. (Berlinski, by the way, is a secular Jew, so work with that fact for a while, boys.)

If people at LGF think they can make the case that Discovery Institute is somehow soft on Islamic radicalism and terrorists, perhaps they should pick up a copy of our Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter's new book, The Long War Ahead: And the Short War Upon Us. It is published by Discovery Institute Press and I challenge the LGF folks to read it—or any of my own writings on the Iraq War and the war on terrorism generally—and continue contending that this institute would ever have any truck with people—Muslim or otherwise—who doubt the danger of Islamic fascism.

I think Chapman is wasting his time. Many North Americans are not prepared to be rational either about most Muslims or about the evidence for design in nature. So this is their chance for two freakouts for the price of one.

I am surprised that Little Green Footballs would so easily credit anything that the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) broadcasts on the intelligent design controversy. The last thing the CBC people would do would be to pick up the phone to anyone in Canada who knows the Discos and ask how likely this is.

Speaking for myself, I have met a good number of the Discos, and have a pretty shrewd idea what they are like (earnest eggheads and lab rats, mostly). I certainly wouldn't protect them if I had any reason to believe that they were burka boys. It all sounds to me like a disinformation campaign.