|
Bush: Radical jihad is the problem, moderate jihad is the solution?
President Bush’s major speech today on the war on terror represents his first serious treatment of the ideology and objectives of our Islamic enemies—too bad he didn’t start doing this four years ago. But though he now calls our enemies “Islamic radicals” and not just “terrorists,” a rhetorical correction that conservatives have been demanding for years, he still denies that this radicalism has anything to do with Islam itself (“This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision”), or that it is supported by a major part of the Muslim population worldwide, or that it is empowered within the West by Muslim immigration, which he doesn’t even mention in his speech.
He continues: “These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus.” Let’s see now. Daniel Pipes says there is a “moderate” Islam which has been hijacked by a “radical” Islam characterized by jihad. Bush has done Pipes one better. He says there is a good jihad which the extremists have changed into a bad jihad. Bush not only relativizes Islam, as Pipes has done; he relativizes the radical, jihadist core of Islam. It seems we still have a long way to go before our leaders speak the truth to us about the religion of peace. Email entry |