GETTING IT

H

ere are two people who "get it." Melanie Phillips, on Londonistan, in a Hot Air video (watch the whole thing). And Robert Spencer, interviewed by Brian Lamb for the past Sunday's C-SPAN: Q&A. The Spencer interview is an hour long, and well worth it. Lamb includes a few short clips from a new film, "Islam: What the West Needs to Know," including Bat Ye'or and Walid Shoebat -- the former is a researcher in the new field of dhimmitude, the latter a former Palestinian terrorist who grew out of the jihad sickness and now speaks against it.

The Phillips video on Hot Air should work for everybody, but the C-SPAN video is (as usual) in Real Video format (embedded on a web page this time, not like my usual hot links). But if you really don't do Real at all, here's the transcript. For background on these two awareness-raising folks, see Spencer's Jihad Watch and Phillips' own blog, Melanie Phillips’s Diary.

Political correctness in the "west" is one of Islamist fascism's most potent weapons. We've been taught that we are beyond having "enemies," that such such ideas are just so last century. Not making another into one's enemy is fine as far as it goes, except when the other has already made you into his mortal enemy, whether you recognise it or not (which matters little to him). Muslims are definitely not the enemy of civilisation, but Islamist fascism certainly is.

It was good to hear President Bush finally use this construction last week, but the outcry against the term was not surprising to me. I would have preferred to hear "Islamist fascism" rather than "Islamic fascism" though, just to make that extra bit of distinction between Islam (the religion) and Islamism (the political ideology). It's a distinction that most of my own Muslim friends can make easily, being opposed to the institution of sharia law in their country.

The Islamist fascists are a plague on normal Muslims as much as they are a plague on the rest of humanity. Sooner or later (better sooner, of course), the vast majority of normal, modern Muslims will recognise their own self interest in getting rid of this sickness.

Probably I retain this optimism due to the fact that my knowledge of the faith comes from many dear and beloved friends across Indonesia, and not for example, from Arabia (or Palestine, or Sudan, or etc). For now I'll keep putting my own faith in the sensibilities inherent in the world's most populous Muslim majority country, even itself infected with some fringe jihadist groups who would consider me their enemy. The silent majority cannot remain silent much longer (he said hopefully).

- posted by Agam @ 2:05 PM 0 comments

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