Doodslag, chauvinism from the mouth of an idiot is a sad thing, but the one so often begets the other that mere logic makes it easier to swallow. Defeat ignorace, one imagines, and one defeats chauvinism. The same goes for the close relationship between ignorance and superstition, but you and the Christian physicist present a unique and depressing challenge to this logic, since you’re clearly not an idiot. But the more competently expressed the hatred or superstition, the more disturbing it becomes.
It seems that your flaw isn’t a lack of consumed information, but the selective assimilation of it. Michael’s piece rather clearly, and without requiring much interpretation or spin, demonstrates the power of internal schism and reform to begin the collapse of evil movements (though as Mike admits, we needn’t believe this is necessarily the beginning of the end). As in Iraq, a survey of the rest of the world shows that the primary forces fighting murderous Islamism are Muslims. With the Muslim population at over a billion people world wide (estimates range from 1.2-1.6), you’ve marked a rather large number of people out as a “grave threat.” By your logic, I suppose we should be fighting against the Kurds, most of whom are Sunni Muslims?
All monotheism in its original form, having come to into existence as it did during a time of perpetual conquest and tribal war, is a form of “war doctrine” which has never been stamped out by military force. It has been softened by a combination of rationalist critique and its own adherents’ eventual choice to force the tenets of religion to conform to peaceful, liberal society. Admittedly, this almost always too incomplete a procedure. But let us entertain for a moment what appears to be your prescription: the eradication of Islam from the Earth.
Islam is not a thing that exists like oxygen or poison ivy. Islam isn’t the sum of mosques, Qu’rans, prayer rugs, and shrines. Islam is a constellation of ideas that exists only in the minds of Muslims. That constellation, it is worth noting, takes different forms in the mind of almost every Muslim, many of whom identify with Islam primarily as a cultural ID, not a way of life. As such, the only way to eradicate Islam is to kill all Muslims whose minds house the varying incarnations if Islamic belief and thought. Is this what you prescribe? If so, your indignation means nothing and your politics differ little from our enemy. If it is not what you prescribe, then you should revisit the drawing board of ideas and come back when you’ve taken more care to comprehend your argument followed to its conclusion.
Jihad will not end with the last of Al-Qaeda, to be sure, but as your own hateful comments show, aggressive tribalism is not unique to Islam or to idiots. It can live in or outside the West, in or outside Islam, and can obviously–as many highly educated Islamists have already proven–not always be tempered by education.
The most silly and unfortunate thing about your insistence that “such schisms are simply respites in the pace and fury of Islamic Jihad” is that you insist on the robustness of the movement and the power of the enemy even as it is being shown up for the pathetic, defeatable, redneck movement that it is. If you were really interested in defeating the scourge of radicalism as opposed to Muslims themselves, then you would want to exploit the slouch in the radicals’ posture of power. Re-asserting their strength suggests that the specter of radical Islamism serves as a totemic and rather dubious rallying point for a far more sinister desire of yours.
