Rectification of Names
In the Analects of Confucius (Book 13, Verse 3), the ancient Chinese philosopher wrote that one of the first and most important duties of a government official was to perform a “rectification of names,” for “if names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”
The latest demonstration of the ongoing foreign-policy fecklessness of the Obama administration was the reported recent statement by a senior official that “the War on Terror is over.” He (or she) has been roundly castigated by many who point out that if the war is over, why are 90,000 troops still fighting (and dying) overseas?
But the administration and its critics are both wrong.
The “War on Terror” isn’t over, not because it is still going on, but because it never existed in the first place. As has been pointed out by some for years, it was always a misnomer to call the conflict in which we are engaged a war on “terror.” Terror is not an enemy to be fought — it is simply a tactic in a broader strategy. The Bush administration came up with the misleading and dangerous euphemism after 9/11 out of a misplaced sense of political correctness (though nowhere near as pathological and reality avoiding as that of the current administration). The Bush administration didn’t want to call it what it really was — a war against Islamism — because it feared alienating the so-called “moderate” Muslims in American and the rest of the world, so it settled instead for declaring war on a particular (but not uncommon) way of waging war.
Unfortunately, this is just the latest resurgence of a war that has been going on since A.D. 700 or so, between Islam and the West, and it didn’t boil up a mere decade ago in September of 2001, except in the minds of the American people. That was merely the most successful of similar attempts to attack us that had been going on for years.
Some might say that it actually started in the late 1970s, when radical Islamists took over Iran. But while that certainly upped the anti-Western activity in the decades since, probably the precipitating event of the latest flare-up in the religious war was almost two-thirds of a century ago, when the Jews were granted their ancient homeland. Because the founders of Israel were largely European Jews, they established a little foothold of western civilization in the theocratic (and Jew-hating) Middle East, and thus ended up on the front lines of the battle that those in Europe who first tried to exterminate them, and then were happy to see them leave, disdain. And as their foremost ally and defender, the U.S. became the “Great Satan” supporting the “Little Satan” at the point of the spear.
Naming a thing is really hard. It means finding the more general categories that contain the thing. Then it becomes necessary to determine the extent of overlap between the general categories that contain the thing to really name something well. Thinking about things gets harder still if one includes “processes” among the things. For example, war between nations contains not only the names of the opponents but also the processes that led to war.
Thinking is hard work. People use more energy in logical analysis than in making snap judgments. That is why 10-second sound bites are more memorable than a one-hour lecture, because people fall asleep when things get complicated. We cannot stress people too much with this thinking thing or they get testy.
Truth, then, becomes an ongoing revelatory experience, given only to those who expend the energy to get at it. Frankly, most people would much rather kill the others who disagree with them than integrate the strangers’ views and their own. Killing seems to make the world clean of opposing opinions that require too much energy expenditure. Think of killing as a green thing, since it saves so much energy.
Its not hard to name this enemy: ISLAM.
Anyone who knows American history knows that our U.S. Marines took on the Islamic Barbary Pirates off of Tripoli in the 1770-1780s. The term “Leatherneck” pertains to the leather collars worn by our service men because the Muslims then, as now, had a penchant for “striking at the necks” (e.g. beheading) – an exhortation right in the Koran.
Barry Rubin is fighting the good fight, but he muddles the issue by making his fine distinction between so-called “Islamism” and Islam. That distinction is a large breach in Western consciousness, and it forms a gaping hole through which Muslim lies pour into the West. Whether it’s stealth Jihad, taqqiya, outright terroism or merely Islamic intimidation exploiting so-called “Islamophobia”, the ongoing onslaught via Muslim emigration to the West, the ongoing buildings of mosques, the infiltration of our academies, our media, up to the top levels of government including the vile current POTUS ( “the Arabic Call to Prayer is the most beautiful sound on Earth” -Obama ), all continue apace.
Words that harm our understanding of our enemy, or abet our enemy to prosper and continue his infiltration:
Islamism
Islamophobia
Moderate Muslim
Moderate Islam
A hone who uses these terms illustrates a gap in comprehension, or a deliberate desire to obfuscate.
While the west has its blind spots regarding Islam, I think you are going too far in the other direction, in saying there are no moderate muslims at all. Certainly I have met plenty of muslims in the USA who are quite asimilated, and are not a threat to our way of life. I beleive that a majority of US moslems are in the moderate muslim category. The problem, as with many minority groups in the USA is you dont hear from them much, and the US groups that supposedly speak for them, like CAIR, are indeed radical islamicist groups.
I would describe our blind spots as follows:
1. Radical Islamicism is indeed a threat, and we should treat it as such.
2. Moderate muslims exist, but in most muslim majority nations, and in many western nations, they appear to be in the minority. And even where the majority of muslims are moderate, as in the US, many of the organizations that purport to represent them, such as CAIR, the Islamic Students Association, and the Black Muslims, are not.
3. Islam is not a religion of peace. It is both a religion of peace and a religion of war, depending on what part of the Koran you quote, just like the bible has peaceful and warlike parts. But while in the bible the peaceful parts (mainly the new testemant) take precedence over the warlike parts (mainly in the old testament), in Islam it is the reverse, the later warlike parts take precedence over the earlier peacefull parts. Until the majority of Muslim scholars change this, and explicitely state that the peaceful parts of Islam take precedence, Islam is far more a religion of war than of peace. If you go back 500 yrs Christianity was also a religion of war, but the enlightment changed that, and Christianity gradually reformed. Now it is vary rare that war is waged in the name of Christianity, and people are forcefully converted to it. Islam needs a similar enlightenment reform.
4. Islamophobia, defined as an irrational fear of Islam is bogus. But what many Islamicist pressure groups call Islamophobia is in fact a fear of radical islamacism, and has an entirely rational basis. A fear is only a phobia if it does not have a rational basis, and the feared object is not a real threat. Fear of radical Islam, and of those who adhere to it, is entirely justified.
There are also several islamic doctrines, subscribed to by a majority of muslims, that are not currently practiced by any other world religious sect, that make Islam incompatable with western freedoms, and that Islam must explicitely reject as a majority, in order for Islam to cooexist with free western societies. Some of these doctrines used to be practiced by Christian nations as well, but no longer are, and other religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism, do not to my knowledge currently practice these doctrines. Among them are:
1. Islam explicitly favors a government that discriminates against non-muslims, and may even discriminate against muslims in a sect considered heritical. Many Christian governments used to do this, but no longer do.
2. If a muslim renounces Islam in favor of another faith, they can be punished by the government as an apostate, another practice Christians have abandoned. Some Christian sects will forbid their members from associating with apostates, but there is never a gov punishment, and the sects, while renouncing association with them, will not violently attack them.
3. If you insult the prophet or Islam strongly enough, or burn the Koran, it is considered blasphemy, and is punishable by death or violence. Again other religions do not do this. They may expell their own members for blasphemy, but will not do violence against others for it, beyond perhaps organizing a boycott against their sponsors, or cutting off gov funding. But Islam goes way beyond that, and actually passes death sentences, and has huge riots. Publish an insulting picture of Jesus and you might lose your job or your funding, do the same to Mohammed and you may lose your life.
Until the vast majority of Islam explicitely rejects these violent totalitarian doctrines, and punished any monority that still practices them, they can never peacefully exist with the west, and must always remain a threat. We cannot treat them as just another religion, just as we could not treat Nazism or Communism as just another political view.
I am encouraged and refreshed by reading this deliberate effort to put things in perspective: The duty of supremacy has been with Islam since the beginning, thirteen centuries ago in round numbers, which is quite consistent with the primary meaning of “Islam”, which best translates as “submission”, literally, and often even compulsively, as amply demonstrated by history. We have values such as gratitude and respect, which contain elements of self-imposed submission, but those are ideals of civil, considerate, mature and wise self-conduct, not imperatives under the threat of severe punishment if we fail to materialize them.
Today, the competition between Islam and freedom is no longer something limited in time and space. Now we have affordable long distance travel and virtually free long distance communication, so the opposition of principle is more blatant as ever, if we dare to see it squarely, which we often fail at. The benefits of modern medecine and technology are affordable to a rapidly increasing number of muslims around the world, who accept them in practice, while often rejecting the consequences and ramifications of free will, which made them possible in the first place. If this is to be resolved, it will come out of a deliberate effort on the part of muslims, perhaps along the lines of what we can observe today in the United Arab Emirates, clearly demonstrating that this evolution is in fact a practical possibility. Not instantaneous and magical, but possible.
We can encourage them and help them but we cannot do it for them. When they choose to subvert our ways and our values, it is our duty to oppose them, forcefully if necessary, because whatever applies to run-of-the-mill bullies in general should be earnestly applied to islamists in particular. Many muslims did not have really much choice of whether to be muslim or not within the many tyrannies they often come from. When they come to our shores it is our duty to educate them about our principles: We did not force them to be muslims, we did not force them to join us, and we are prepared to respect them if they are prepared to reciprocate. We don’t have any reason to deprive ourselves of our freedom of choice, which they are welcome to embrace when they so choose.
Right now, our superiority appears to be technical, sense, but our prowess in the world of technology are not our essence: The essence is personal freedom in general, and freedom to enquire, without which there is simply no science, and therefore no advanced technology possible. This is an example to promote, not something to concede and apologize for.
“The Bush administration didn’t want to call it what it really was — a war against Islamism …”
That’s close but the war is against Islam in ALL its forms and subspecies.
It really isn’t difficult to see what Islam is and what it begets. Its all right out in front of us if we only are honest with ourselves about what we see.
A few easily observable facts:
1. Islam will not reform “as Christianity did with the Protestant reformation”. Violent, militant, jihad Islam IS their reformation.
2. Muslims will never assimilate into Western society, and the greater the numbers of them the less likely they are to assimilate.
3. Islamism is just a euphemism for Islam. ALL varieties of Islam are incompatible with not just Western Civilization but Civilization. They may fight among themselves but the goal of all types of Islam is the end of all other beliefs.
Mr. Simberg is right when he suggests that as with the Germans and Japanese after WWII Muslims will need be converted away Islam.
We must use all means necessary, economic, political and as a last resort military to starve Islam out of existence. The remedy is actually quite easy to see; to carry it out will be another matter, but the future of humanity depends on it.
Chuck, unfortunately our ‘elected representation’ does not and WILL NOT, ‘..economically.. starve’ Islamists.
Friday night news dump, the Uhbama administration BYPASSED CONGRESS YET AGAIN and gave (stole, whatever) nearly $200 million of future U.S. taxpayer IOU dollars to the Trans-Jordanian martyrs/ squatters/ multi-generational self-appointed refugees in the West Bank and their terrorist supporting ‘government’.
Oh, I’m sorry. The aforementioned are referred to as, ‘Palestinian Authority’ and then ever-more insulting, ‘Palestinians’.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/28/friday-night-news-dump-obama-bypasses-congress-funds-palestinian-authority/
Life’s pretty sweet when you’re an unvetted, unaccomplished 50 year-old ideologue held by NO sense whatsoever of our U.S. Constitution.
The Belmont Club’s Three Conjectures spells out the end games and for the sake of my grandkids I know which one I’d choose and damn the other for making me choose.
“the belief that Islam should be the dominant force in the world, that there is no separation between mosque and state, that Sharia law should prevail everywhere, that only the Dar al-Islam is the house of peace and that all other regions are Dar al-Harb, the House of War”
Saudi Arabia is the dominant funding branch and organizing group of Sharia Law, and its promotion on earth. Saudi Arabia is also the Major funding source of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a fact that somehow seems to escape PJM and western media outlets.
Unless and until journalists and western politicians take the wool off their eyes and speak truth about Islam and its promotion by House of Saud, we will continue being herded towards the cliff.
China and Brazil, maybe parts of Russia will be the only powers left standing to oppose Sharia and Islam, because the United States and Europe are handing themselves lock stock and barrel to the House of Saud and Sharia based society.
Lets grow a Backbone and speak truths; Saudi Arabia funds terrorism, Sharia Law, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and should be called out for their actions these last 200 years.
The BLT Marxist just sent 190 million American tax dollers to the PA. A known terrorist group friday night. Money that was held up when the PA was going to declare itself a state at the UN.
For this act to place more weapons, and C4 in the hands of moon god worshiping POS terroist planning the destruction of Israel, I predict the rightful G-d of this world will send more crazy weather, and earthquakes on American soil.
BHO’s default authority, the UN has never finalized a “definition” of terrorism also reflecting similar characteristics of political correctness by BHO and UN. As a reforming bureaucrat, I remember poignant moments with “winks and nods” and “tounge in cheek” conversations about GWOT, Islamists, Jihadis, Salafists, Wahhabis, and the Saudi role. I also remember pre-9/11 Islam practiced by the “unchurched” in remote corners of the earth before Jihadi revivalism which is now financed by the Saudis as an evangelical movement. We can’t go back to before, but need intellectual and semantic clarity to identify and defeat the current threat. Deus Veulent!
If this administration really thinks the War on Terror os over then we should challenge them to ‘walk the talk’ and dismantle TSA, DHS, and the other instruments put in place to fight the War on Terror.
Islam is not a religion. It is a murderous, totalitarian political ideology bent on world domination, being albeit dressed in the trappings of religion. Only a few in the West have figured that out and are willing to say so.
Oh, BTW If the war on terrorism is over, can we get rid of the TSA?
You are now guity of the worst sin that can be committed today- telling the truth. Good luck.
Tiny glimmers of hope occur from time to time, but not frequently enough, even in the MSM. That is to say, once in a while someone notices and makes a small effort at “reporting.” See here for this morning’s Washington Post article on developments in Tunisia. The prospects are not good. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-tunisia-after-arab-spring-islamists-new-freedoms-create-new-muslim-divide/2012/04/28/gIQAN9yJoT_story.html?hpid=z2
While I sympathize with points made in this piece, I disagree with the common claim that the term “war on terror” is simply logically absurd. If one can’t engage in warfare against a “tactic,” then how is it that the (19th century) wars on piracy as well as slavery (vigorously pursued by both Britain and the United States to the point that both of those “tactics” were basically eliminated for that era from the world) were successful?
I’ve come to believe that the happiest time in Barack Obama’s life was when he was a child, living in Indonesia with his stepfather. I believe that’s where he got this romantic notion of Islam he clings to so stubbornly. It’s his pet fantasy, and he’s killing us with it.
“Unfortunately, this is just the latest resurgence of a war that has been going on since A.D. 700 or so, between Islam and the West, and it didn’t boil up a mere decade ago in September of 2001, except in the minds of the American people. That was merely the most successful of similar attempts to attack us that had been going on for years.”
Absolutely correct. America’s war with Islam actually goes back to 1801 when Thomas Jefferson ordered the American Navy to attack the Barbary Coast pirates along the coast of North Africa. Relations between Islam and the United States have pretty much been the same ever since. It took roughly 15 years for the American Navy to totally subdue all of the Barbary Pirates, teaching them that to take on the United States was a bad and costly proposition. It was not until the 1990s, when the radical fundamentalists no longer believed that America would defend itself, that the real problems began, culminating in the attacks on 9/11.
Unfortunately, military strength is the only thing people in that part of the world understand and accept. As soon as we lose that, we will face more 9/11s, and with the weapons out there today (nuclear, biological, and chemical), the next attack that is made on our homeland could be far, far, worse than 9/11.
“…it was always a misnomer to call the conflict in which we are engaged a war on “terror.” Terror is not an enemy to be fought — it is simply a tactic in a broader strategy.”
In philosophy, this is known as “Category Error” – misframing your starting conditions.
So Coulter was right.
My thought exactly when I came to the “by forcibly converting” part.
A lot of people owe the darling Miss Coulter an apology. In the same manner as Mark Twain’s father, she’s become amazingly learned in just a few years.
Greetings:
If you don’t have a plan to undermine or eradicate Islam, you don’t have a plan; you have a hope.
Islam is a millstone.
“As has been pointed out by some for years, it was always a misnomer to call the conflict in which we are engaged a war on “terror.” Terror is not an enemy to be fought — it is simply a tactic in a broader strategy….
…The Bush administration didn’t want to call it what it really was — a war against Islamism”
“Islamism” is just an ideology. You think we should have named the war a war on an idea? A war on thought crimes? Really? Thant’s antithetical to American Liberty.
At least “terror” is an activity rather than a thought, something actualized. Unfortunately, it’s also one that neither the UN nor our own government can consistently define. I suppose a better label would have been a war on terrorists, but again, we can’t agree on how to define them.
“Islamism” is just an ideology”
Yup.
Like “totalitarianism”
or “Facism” or “communism”
All just “thoughts” we went to war over.
Throw “liberty” and “inalienable rights” into the mix too.
All stuff worthy of blood.
LOTS of blood if you ask me
I listened to the BBC report Thursday about the trial of Charles Taylor in The Hague, and the prosecutor’s spokesperson described the verdict as a significant event in the “War Against Impunity”. So the Left has opposed calling our current armed conflict the “War on Terror”, even though that was probably the most apt short desciption to be applied. Why, then, adopt the terminology referring to a war against “Impunity?” Indeed, leaders of all stripes should be aware that the civilized world has the means and sometimes the fortitude to punish them for acting with impunity toward humanity. But it’s not the impunity we oppose — it is the killing, raping, looting, etc. that results from the impunity. These two struggles have something in common. We don’t prosecute the war (or the trial) because of the belief system of the perpetrators, but because of the actions that emanate from those beliefs. Maybe we could call both stuggles the Global War Against People Who Do Really Mean Things No Matter What the Reason, or for short, the Global War Against Really Mean Acts (Global WARMA). People who oppose this war are, of course, deniers of Global WARMA.
Excellent article except for one thing:
“Islamism” (the belief that Islam should be the dominant force in the world, that there is no separation between mosque and state, that Sharia law should prevail everywhere, that only the Dar al-Islam is the house of peace and that all other regions are Dar al-Harb, the House of War)”
This is a perfect definition, but not of “islamism” which is a made up, PC nonsense term just like “the war on terror”. It is a quite correct and nearly complete definition simply of Islam. Islam began 1300 years ago. And it is our enemy. How and when it’ll be defeated I don’t know.
But it won’t be by sexually assaulting every tenth person who wants to fly.
It’s already been said here but, seriously, if the administration wants to declare victory in this war then we need to start insisting on an immediate and total repeal of the so-called Patriot Act and the disbanding of the TSA.
The next terror attack on the US should result in the conquest of Saudi Arabia,
and Islams holy sites. Once the reason for the continuance of Islam is gone,
we can discuss freedom of religion and Islams place in the world, or no place at all.
you make me very depressed-you write:
“if names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”
and then you write about ‘islamism’…a word describing a phenomenon in your DELUSIONAL world view.
Listen to Erdogan, who knows better than you and and all the overeducated,stupid and self described experts stupid commentors like Pipes.
“Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rejected attempts to call Turkey the representative of moderate Islam. “It is unacceptable for us to agree with such a definition. Turkey has never been a country to represent such a concept. Moreover, Islam cannot be classified as moderate or not,” Erdoğan said, speaking at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies late Thursday.”
WHAT IS IT YOU ALL DO NOT UNDERSTAND?????
Islam’s war on the world continues.
Western leaders hamstrung by Leftwing PC, still unable to name the enemy.
Once the real enemy is named, the process of eradicating it from our lands, and isolating it and suffocating it will be pretty straght forward.
It is not a ‘War on Terror’ any more than WW2 was a ‘War on Blitzkrieg’. This is a stupid and dangerous label that distracts from the true threat which is the totalitarian ideology of Islam itself.
We are in the midst of ‘THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR’ and that is what we must call it, for it is the truth.
THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR has raged virtually unabated for 1400 years, since year one of the Islamic calendar when the savage sociopath Muhammed began the war with the first jihad attacks in Medina.
THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR has ravaged and destroyed civilization after civilization, and has waged war against every kind of non-Islamic people and culture on every continent.
THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR is currently engaged in civilizational jihad against:
- the Catholics in the Philippines
- all non-Muslims in Malaysia
- the Christians and Ahmadiyya in Indonesia
- the Buddhists in Thailand
- the ‘infidel’ in Australia
- the Hindus and ‘infidel’ tourists in Bali
- the atheist Chinese in Xinjiang
- schoolchildren in Beslan Russia
- gays, women and all non-Muslims in Iran
- all non-Muslims in Afghanistan (with our help)
- the Chaldean Christians in Iraq
- the Jews in Israel
- the Coptic Christians in Egypt
- the Christians and animists in Sudan and Somalia
- the Christians in Nigeria and Uganda
- democracy in Mali
- embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
- cafe patrons in Morocco
- train commuters in Spain
- the native French in Paris
- soldiers on a bus in Frankfurt
- native Swedes in Malmo
- Danish politicians
- Dutch cartoonists
- cinematographer Theo van Gogh
- journalist Daniel Pearl
- tube commuters in London
- office workers in the twin towers
- defense workers in the Pentagon
- recruiters in Little Rock
- soldiers at Ft. Hood
- students at UNC
- Times Square Pedestrians
- Delta Airline passengers on Christmas day
- Jewish centers in Seattle and Toronto
- Jewish centers in Argentina and Venezuela
And on and on and on…..
It is THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR, inspired by Allah, mandated by Muhammed, commanded in the Koran. It is a violent terrorist war, initiated by a violent terrorist who founded the death and hate cult of Islam. It is barbarity against civility, it is an existential war for global dominion, centered not in Kabul but in Mecca. It is a war of ideology, Muhammeds savagery enshrined in the Islamic reichstag, the Kaaba and the mosque, against every other ideology.
It is THE ISLAMIC WORLD WAR, and it will only stop when the ideology of Islam is destroyed.
~ The Infidel Alliance
“any more than WW2 was a ‘War on Blitzkrieg”
Quite right…
Or better, the amusing preference of many to refer to every single geographic location of conflict as another “war”…Iraq and Afghanistan being “two wars” with Libya later frowned upon as a possible “third war”….
Three wars?
All without a single surface ship lost, or a single aircraft engaged in actual aerial combat?
With a decades worth of casualties equaling but an hour or two of Gettysburg, or the Somme?
By such standards, my father and uncles are Veterans of the “Infinity War” of 39-45
The War of One Million (simultaneous) Places.
The War of Impossible Victory, yet somehow won.
The Confucian rectification of names exists, in Chinese culture, alongside the Daoist paradox that “the way the can be spoken, is not the eternal way”.
Anyway, “the war on terror” was coined precisely because the Bush administration did not want to declare war on all Islam and because it recognized that the terror was being performed on behalf of a Utopian ideology (a one world Caliphate) and, though sometimes encouraged by a few evil regimes for their own devious reasons, this Utopian ideology was not directly in service of the pragmatic goals or political position of any actually existing state.
To recognize that the enemy is a Utopian nutbar who wants to massively reduce the world’s population and economic infrastructure and learning, as the necessary pre-requisite for a world in which Sharia can rule all is to recognize, quite clearly, that the enemy is less any actually existing institution or state as it is those who worship terror as an end in itself. Bush got some things right.
The utopian ideology that wants a one world caliphate is Islam. This is the (rather simple) concept some of us are trying to get through to the rest of you.
It’s not simple because while that is your interpretation of Islam and of many Muslims, it is far from a universal desire among Muslims, much less of the states to which they belong – offer them everything and they might take it – everyone can dream about being the sole ruler of the Umma – but no one ever will, so in reality they will settle for control of what they can reasonably have. So there will remain a pretty important difference between the true Utopians who will kill Muslims and Infidels just because they see terror as the only way, and those who will play the political game in a more pragmatic vein. And any state that wishes to survive has to be less than Utopian.
In any case, the point is that Bush didn’t see the problem your way, didn’t want a war on Islam; and in his way of seeing, a “war on terror” makes sense. The common rhetorical ploy that “you can’t make war on a tactic” is infantile. Means and ends can be, and in our world increasingly are, assimilated.
Well, there is SOME good news.
If you looked at PJ’s, Breitbart, etc. from about a year ago, you would read many fewer entries whose writers had teased out the contradiction of a
religion needing constitutional protection from that THING which is actually an all encompassing totality. I’m talking about “total government” which is what this islamic manifestation du jour is. I’m overjoyed at the healthy grasp of the essentials we commenters have achieved before being overwhelmed by propaganda. Yes, islam and its exponents want to own us.
Yes, there are friends of America, in America, who call themselves muslims and I believe that they ARE our friends. They just haven’t figured out that this latest islamic manifestation has passed them by. I wonder if we’ll ever see a sort of
“Mosque of Reformed Muslims of the United States” which would mainstream themselves, utterly, the way the Catholics and the Lutherans and the Mormons and the Buddhists and the Jews and the Eastern Orthodox, etc., have.
I just wonder if there isn’t going to be a landmark breakup between the islamic monolith which, if some members don’t support terrorism certainly accept it, and American muslims who have a history going back decades. I’m talking about the folks who were in full support of the NYPD surveilance program, for instance.
What would keep them from finally saying “Enough. The one that YOU call allah is not Allah.” Either that, or let them just chuck it out the door and get a life that’s worth something besides dominating us. They’ll need to come to a decision, eventually.
No sarcasm here. I really am gratified to know that America has awakened.