Islamophobia Update

Scott McLemee and Manan Ahmed are going to have to work overtime to answer all the flagrant "Islamophobia" on the internet today. No matter how much these two characters tell commentators to stop "stirring up the nativism and xenophobia of your fellow citizens," certain writers continue to criticize Islam. Here these two noble warriors have tried time and again to convince people to stop playing into the hands of the tiny minority of Jihadists. As McLemee and Ahmed have noted (and these guys are academic types, so they're experts, you see) that by quoting the countless statements of Jihadists themselves on their religious motives and the Koran, we only make them angry. If only the West would surrender its most basic and sublime values, the throat cutting in the name of Allah would stop. Sadly, these contemptible figures are not alone amongst the gutless pseudo intelligentsia that is spurring Western Civilization over the cliff.

As Frank Gaffney notes today at Frontpagemag:

Space limitations preclude more than a handful of examples: The FBI allows CAIR to provide "sensitivity training" for its agents. U.S. intelligence actively recruits at ISNA and other Ikhwan front conferences. One of ISNA's highly placed admirers, Pentagon deputy chief Gordon England's consigliere Hisham Islam, was allowed to purge the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Islamist expert, Steven Coughlin, for warning against such practices.

Most recently, two key federal agencies — the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security — encouraged American officials to eschew, when describing our enemies, use of such terms as jihadist, mujahideen, Islamic terrorist, Islamist, holy warrior and Islamofascism. According to an Associated Press report, the government is supposed instead to "use the terms 'violent extremist' or 'terrorist.' Both are widely understood terms that define our enemies appropriately and simultaneously deny them any level of legitimacy."(Evidently, President Bush has not gotten the word as he used what Andy McCarthy calls the "J-word" in his press conference last week.)

This astounding act of dhimmitude confirms Steve Coughlin's thesis: The enemy has so thoroughly gotten inside our decision-making as to preclude us from understanding his true nature and threat doctrine. By affording the Ikhwan such an opportunity, we have rendered this country, as a practical matter, incapable of countering our Islamist foes abroad — let alone here at home.

The sad fact is that many in academia will applaud these acts of cowardice. Today posted at, of all places, the Huffington Post Sam Harris has a brilliant, must read piece: "Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks." Clearly our anti-heroes (or worse) McLemee and Ahmed need to drop Harris a line and inform him of this numerous thoughtcrimes. Not only does Harris criticize the Religion of Peace, but he also has unkind words for its gutless appeasers in the West:

Witness the free world's response to Fitna: The Dutch government sought to ban the film outright, and European Union foreign ministers publicly condemned it, as did UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Dutch television refused to air Fitna unedited. When Wilders declared his intention to release the film over the internet, his U.S. web-host, Network Solutions, took his website offline.

Wilders, like Westergaard and the other Danish cartoonists, has been widely vilified for "seeking to inflame" the Muslim community. Even if this had been his intention, this criticism represents an almost supernatural coincidence of moral blindness and political imprudence. The point is not (and will never be) that some free person spoke, or wrote, or illustrated in such a manner as to inflame the Muslim community. The point is that only the Muslim community is combustible in this way. The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name. Our accommodation of this psychopathic skewing of priorities has, more and more, taken the form of craven and blinkered acquiescence.

There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for "racism" and "Islamophobia."

"Craven" and "blinkered" are apt descriptions of McLemee, Ahmed, and their ilk. Go read both articles linked above. Just don't let craven worms get away with calling you an "Islamophobe" if you agree with Islam's critics.

Update: Jim Lacey has edited a book titled: The Canons of Jihad, published by the U.S. Naval Institute. Lacey utilizes the typical Islamophobe trick of quoting the Jihadists:

The U.S. counterintelligence community identifies Abu Musab al-Suri as the most important theorist of the global Islamic jihad and considers his manifesto to be the most important strategic document produced by al Qaida or any jihadi organization in more than a decade. But to Americans his 1,600-page manuscript largely consists of incomprehensible, impenetrable Islamic scholarship. With this publication, defense analyst Jim Lacey delivers a meaningful distillation of al-Suri's Call to Global Islamic Jihad, a work that has been called the Mein Kampf of the movement. This project is sponsored by the United States Joint Forces Command.

This work is three hundred pages of the Islamists' own rantings. These Islamophobes are that diabolical.

Crossposted at The Dougout