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some great points...



Why Does the Left Continue to Insist that Islamic Terrorism Has Nothing to Do with Islam?

By Jonah Goldberg — November 21, 2015


Dear Reader (Including those of you stunned by the news that Charlie Sheen has a sexually transmitted disease. Not since Jim J. Bullock announced he was gay have I been more shocked),

If you Google “Christian terrorism,” you’re probably a jackass to begin with. But if you do — bidden not by your own drive to jackassery but by the natural curiosity inspired by this “news”letter — you’ll find lots of left-wing trollery about how the worst terrorist attacks on American soil have been committed by Christians. Much of it is tendentious, question-begging twaddle. But I really don’t want to waste a lot of time on whether Tim McVeigh was a Christian or not (he really wasn’t).

What I find interesting is that many of the same people who clutch their pearls at the mere suggestion that Islamic terrorism has anything to do with — oh, what’s the word again? — oh right: Islam, seem to have no problem making the case that “Christian terrorism” is like a real thing. Remember how so many liberals loved — loved — Obama’s sophomoric and insidious tirade about not getting on our “high horses” about ISIS’s atrocities in the here and now because medieval Christians did bad things a thousand years ago? They never seem to think that argument through. Leaving out the ass-aching stupidity of the comparison, it actually concedes the very point Obama never wants to concede. By laying the barbaric sins of Christians a thousand years ago at the feet of Christians today, he implicitly tags Muslims with the barbarism committed in their name today.

Now, I see no need to wade too deeply into the theology here, but I think I am on very solid ground when I say that Islamic terrorism draws more easily and deeply from the Koran than Tim McVeigh drew from the Christian Bible. Of course, you’re free to disagree. In a free society, everybody has the right to be wrong in their opinions. (But don’t tell anyone at Yale that.)

THE BIG LIE

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton said: “Let’s be clear, though. Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”

Now, unlike some people who e-mail me in ALL CAPS, I have no problem with politicians saying, “Islam is not our adversary.” In fact, I think it would be disastrous if our political leaders went around saying anything like “Islam is our enemy.”


It’s the second part of that Hillary quote that I have trouble with. Yes, some — most! — Muslims are peaceful. And while peacefulness and tolerance don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand (just look at opinion polls in the Muslim world on questions of sharia, homosexuality, women’s equality, free speech, and, of course, the Joooooooz), let’s stipulate that a great many Muslims are tolerant in their own fashion, too.

But it is simply a lie — an obvious, glaring, indisputable, trout-in-the-milk lie — that Muslims have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.

Simply put, this is nonsense. But it’s not just nonsense. It is highly refined nonsense. If nonsense were radioactive, you could dump a barrel of it in a centrifuge, wait a few weeks, and out would come the claim that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. Just off the top of my head is my hair. But figuratively speaking off the top of my head: The jihadists say they are motivated by Islam. They shout “Allahu akbar!” whenever they kill people. “Moderate Muslims” in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have been funding Islamic radicals around the world for nearly a century. This morning in Mali, terrorist gunmen reportedly released those hostages who could quote the Koran. The leader of ISIS has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and openly talks about restoring the Caliphate.


Oh, one other thing: The Islamic State is called the Islamic State. I used to eat at a restaurant called “Burrito Brothers.” Saying the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam is like telling someone eating a burrito they bought at Burrito Brothers that Burrito Brothers has “nothing whatsoever” to do with burritos.

And like many other highly enriched radioactive substances, this nonsensical notion is weaponizable. It is dangerous. I would like to think that if you had an honest conversation with Hillary Clinton away from the cameras, she would say something like, “Of course, Islamic terrorism has a lot to do with Islam. But we can’t say that publicly because we have to isolate the radicals, not radicalize the moderates.”


That is an entirely defensible position intellectually. But that doesn’t make the “This Isn’t Islamic” claim any less of a lie. And what makes the lie dangerous — very dangerous — is the possibility that, to borrow a phrase from Barack Obama, these people believe their own bullsh***. The danger is twofold. On the one hand, if you engage an enemy without actually understanding its motivations and ambitions, you will inevitably screw it up because you’ll be constantly surprised by the facts on the ground. As Irving Kristol once said, “When we lack the will to see things as they really are, there is nothing so mystifying as the obvious.”

On the other hand, if you are trying to rally political support for your strategy, while at the same time giving the public every reason to believe you’re operating from a home-base in fantasyland, only fellow bullsh***ers and fools will rally to your banner. And, you’ll lose the confidence and trust of those people who see through the fog of bovine excrement.