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“Nothing to Do with Islam”
In the aftermath of Paris and before San Bernardino, Hillary Clinton articulated the forced catechism of the Left: “Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”
What happens when a major political party becomes so wedded to political correctness that it feels constrained to deny reality? Clinton could hardly have chosen a less opportune moment to squeeze her eyes shut about the threat of Islamic extremism – a threat that is glaringly, blazingly obvious.
The first part of what Mrs. Clinton said was true. Islam is not our adversary. There are an estimated 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and if all of them were violent extremists, we’d have a planet drowning in blood. Most Muslims are peaceful. Beyond that, they practice charity, care for the sick, and encourage good works.
But there is a fever sweeping the Muslim world that has infected a significant minority of Muslims – and because Muslims are so numerous, that minority amounts to hundreds of millions. It began in the 1920s with the Muslim Brotherhood. Its Shia incarnation has captured the government of Iran. Saudi oil money has facilitated its spread to places like Pakistan and Afghanistan. President Obama, deluded from the get-go that our enemy was not Islamic extremism, but merely “Al Qaeda,” stood by while the Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria morphed into a new entity called ISIS. Obama never saw it coming because he was determined to believe, with Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats, that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.
Isn’t it odd, then, that in Nigeria (70 percent Muslim) and Lebanon (54 percent Muslim) large majorities say they are “very worried” about Islamic extremism in their countries? The presence of Boko Haram in Nigeria and Hezbollah in Lebanon has a way of concentrating the mind. People around the world are worried about Islamic radicalism too. Perhaps they are mindful of 9/11, the Fort Hood shooting (2009), the Boston Marathon bombing (2013), the bombings of trains in Madrid (2004), the three-day siege of hotels and a Jewish center in Mumbai (2008), the bombings of a bus and trains in London (2005), the attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse (2012), the slaughter of students at a Kenya university (2015), the attack on high schoolers in Peshawar, Pakistan (2014), the shootings at a Mali hotel (2015), the stabbings in Israel (2015), the Bali bombings (2002), the Jakarta bombing (2009), and so very many more, to say nothing of the treatment of religious minorities, homosexuals, and women in many Muslim societies.
As for whether Muslims are tolerant – there’s no doubt that some are, but as the 2013 Pew Survey of global attitudes found, 88 percent of Egyptian and 62 percent of Pakistani Muslims favor the death penalty for apostates. “This is also the majority view among Muslims in Malaysia, Jordan and the Palestinian territories.”
We Americans congratulate ourselves for our comparatively superior ability to assimilate Muslim immigrants into our society, and perhaps we deserve the pat on the back. Then again, we have nothing like the numbers of Muslim immigrants Europe does, and the percentages matter. Even among American Muslims, seven percent told Pew in 2011 that “suicide bombing or other violence against civilians” is “sometimes justified to defend Islam against its enemies.” One percent said “often” and five percent said “rarely.” Eighty-one percent said “never.” Those responses were not very different from the views of Turkish and Indonesian Muslims.
Islam is in the throes of a religious war. The primary victims are other Muslims, but thousands of Christians, Jews, Hindus, and others have been bloodied by it as well. “Don’t get on your high horse,” Obama told Christians, referring to the Crusades. Yes, when Christianity was about the age that Islam is now, it too was engulfed in righteous violence. The West is long past it. They’re not. If another civilization had been able to exert influence over Protestants and Catholics in the 1500s and 1600s to quell the violence and encourage the “better angels” of the society, it would have been no bad thing.
As for today, we owe it to ourselves to be alert to the obvious threat that radical Islam poses to the people of the Middle East (primarily), and to the rest of us. Radicalism has had the wind at its back in the Muslim world for nearly a century. It shows no sign of abating just because Mrs. Clinton and company bury their heads in the sand.
Published in Foreign Policy, Islamist Terrorism
I have been wondering about the language and culture barriers in the so-called screening. This was right in front of them. From this story it is obvious that the security agencies have been misrepresenting their ability to screen people for terrorism for the last twenty years.
I remember reading shortly after the Vietnam War that our biggest problem was understanding the language of our enemies and friends in Vietnam because there were only something like 10 people in the United States who spoke fluent Vietnamese.
Translation involves a lot more than alphabets.
Andy McCarthy has two great posts (here and here) up on The Corner detailing how our government twists itself into pretzels and define an “Islam of their very own” in order to not call Islam inspired terror attacks Islamic.
Islam is Mohammed and Mohammed is Islam. So to kill and lie and force submission to Allah is orthopraxis in Islam. To do so otherwise is heresy (we shouldn’t be looking for “moderate muslims”, we should be looking for the heretics). So why are we so surprised when followers of Islam kill innocent people?
Yesterday I kept hearing the phrase that these two murderers were “radicalized”. It’s as if they recently took some magic pill or passed a masters course. When will people come to the realization that it is Islam itself that radicalizes these monsters?
Caroline Glick is also as confused about this denial as I am.
EDIT:
For those of you who enjoy podcasts, I found this podcast on the origins of Islamic violence very enlightening.
Here’s a compromise rendition: “We are not at war with Islam. But we are at war with those Muslims who believe the Quran justifies the overthrow our Constitutional form of government protecting individual conscience and the equality of all, including women, gays and any other person deemed to be lesser under their version of Islam.”
I really wish you would copy and paste this into a regular post. It is mind-blowing.
Daniel Pipes’s article is interesting. He says there are and are not “no-go zones.” He had one bad incident in Marseilles, but otherwise in other Muslim neighborhoods, he felt relatively safe.
Marci,
I think you mischaracterize Mr. Pipes’ article – I think he was saying that those like Claire that adamantly deny the existence of no go zones are dissembling, while civilians are free to traverse the area any government official, even in an unmarked car, is immediately seen as a threat to sharia and mobbed. I agree with you about housing projects though.
I’m a big fan of Daniel Pipes, but truthfully, I found it hard to figure out what he was saying exactly. You’re probably right. I’m in post-Thanksgiving mind fuzz. :) :)
For years I have seen this said in other places too about the Saudis. But I’ve never known anyone well enough to ask: You don’t mean the Saudi royal family and government, right? You mean the Muslim Brotherhood, a group of citizens within Saudi Arabia, right? Or do you mean the actual government or departments within it?
My understanding, although I don’t really know and am open to correction, is that the Saudi government appeases ordinary people in Saudi Arabia by pandering to the extremists. In so doing, they have clearly fed the fire of that extremism, but I gather it is not out of conviction so much as a desire for self protection.
Because this is an “ideology” (for lack of a better word) that intends to spread its hateful, intolerant garbage as far as they can – I get that – all the more reason to say no more – to the “moderates” get ahold of this because we don’t welcome it in the civilized world – this is why the open borders is not working.
The Saudi Royals are a huge group. Hundreds of Princes. The ones in control by and large do not support ISIS or Al Queda. But there are a number of members of the royal family that are supporters of them and other terrorist groups, and there is always internal struggles for power. I suggest you read the “Looming Tower” and “The Kingdom, Arabia and the House of Sa’ud.”
This is an ideology cloaked in a religion and thus strikes us in a blind spot in our society, our “separation of church and state”. Thank God Hitler and Stalin did not claim Divine Inspiration and form a religion….
Time to go re-read The Fountainhead