The Anchoress

There’s a barnburner brewing between Michelle Malkin and Dean Esmay that is both interesting and important, as it has much to do with how the War on Terror is perceived and how we perceive each other, as well. Esmay and I had a friendly tussle a week or so ago, when he challenged me to assert a Muslim’s right to be annoyed at Pope Benedict XVI, to which I responded:

Can they first repeat Benedict’s argument back to him, accurately? It means reading the speech though, with an honest attempt to comprehend his meaning, and then saying, “this is what you said, Benedict - do we have the right of it?”

If they can do that, then yes..they have a right to be annoyed, if they like. Annoyed. Just like Catholics get “annoyed” when they feel they have been treated obnoxiously at the hands of, say, Hollywood. Annoyed does not mean killing, burning, calling for blood and death or converting people under a sword.

Having read Malkin and Esmay, though, I find myself landing rather squarely over here with Eric who is saying what I think most of us are feeling these days.

I, too, get very sick of hearing that Muslims are the enemy. Indeed; if we are at war with Islam, we have no business rebuilding Iraq and trying to help establish democracy; we should be leveling the place and populating it with Americans.

I see the enemy as jihadists…I mean [jihadists] in the sense of waging holy war in the name of Islam…One of the great ironies of the post-9/11 period is that while violent Islamic jihadists attacked this country, there is a constantly growing network — both organized and unorganized — of in-place apologists at virtually every level of society all ready to defend them. Criticize jihadists, and people on the left will call you a racist. An Islamophobe. A bigot. I have seen this too many times to count, and the reason I call it ironic is that before 9/11, feminists routinely criticized the veil. Gay activists did not hesitate to condemn Islamic homophobia. Atheists condemned Islam the same way they condemned Christianity. After 9/11, the PC crowd suddenly included a group which they’d previously neglected, and it seemed to me that the 9/11 attacks helped the image of radical Muslims with the left in this country. And in most newspapers, and on many campuses.

It is good to dialogue with folks like Ali, a moderate Muslim, but not enough such moderates are speaking out, and folks on the left, always desiring to seem “more tolerant” than ordinary human beings, and thus “more noble” have been busily making friends with the very people they used to despise for veiling women and persecuting gays. While they do that, they muddy up just what a “moderate” is. Ali is surely a moderate and even some who hated all Muslims have come around to seeing that (or to hearing it). But I cannot say it is beyond my comprehension why - for many - all Muslims are considered suspect.

As America has risked her young men and women in efforts to save Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia, to liberate them in Afghanistan and Iraq, she has had to watch a seemingly endless video loop of screaming Muslims packing the streets, blades exposed, carrying signs denouncing, America, the Great Satan. It seems like the same mobs have gathered to denounce Jimmy Carter, then Ronald Reagan, then George H. W. Bush, then Bill Clinton, then George W. Bush. Despite all of our “tolerance,” America has seen her flags trampled; despite all the split blood of her young, she have seen her presidents burned in effigy. Despite all of her service to liberty, she has seen scimitars raised at her, in gleeful abandon.

Well, yeah, I may very well be. It is not “hate” but plain common sense that tells me to feel threatened when I know that at any given moment, somewhere in the world, 100,000 men, women and children are gathering and holding signs urging the beheading of anyone who does not show sufficient “respect” to their prophet. I’m a very respectful person but I feel threatened when “respect” seems to mean nothing less than submission and obsequious kowtowing, which I am not willing to offer.

There is a lot of chatter these days, but it seems to me the best way to ease the confusion is for the Muslims themselves to define themselves once and for all - to sort of “take back the faith,” from the extremist, radical Islamists who have come to - in the eyes of much of the world - define Islam.

Absenting that, what we end up with is this sort of displaced hate. Afraid to speak up about one enemy, people turn around and attack the nations they know will not retaliate or abandon them:

Reading her horrifying descriptions of shrill and menacing encounters by Brits toward Americans and Jews, I can only think that the British are suffering from the sort of transference we learn about in Psych 101. They’re terrified…They know they have Muslim clerics standing outside of mosques advising jihad. They hate knowing it. They would rather not have jihad preached in their country…And so they must lash out, in fear.

It’s safe to hate Jews, it’s safe to spout off to the Americans, because Jews and Americans are notoriously forgiving.

If the moderate Muslim majority does not make themselves clear - if they do not themselves bring lucidity to an increasingly muddled world-wide paralysis of understanding - things will only get worse.

Donald Sensing has an excellent post on all of this.