Musulmans getting cagier, and more dangerous

Support for suicide bombing is declining among Muslims, says Pew poll. But, as Daniel Pipes points out, this is not necessarily the good news that the hyper-liberal Pew outfit would have us believe:

Muslims appear growingly aware that the terroristic ways of Osama bin Laden offer a less successful path to realizing the Islamist goals of imposing the Shari’a and creating a caliphate do than the political, lawful ways of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s newly-triumphantly reelected prime minister. Whereas terrorism stimulates its own antibodies and offers no plausible path to power, working through the system is proving successful in such diverse places as Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Iraq, and Bangladesh, as well as in the West.

Therefore, this survey has more subtle and ambiguous implications than first appear.

In short, terrorism is not the problem. Terrorism is but one method used by the Islamic community in its reawakened efforts to spread itself over the earth and subdue all mankind to sharia law. Therefore Westerners and Western Muslims who say that violence is the only thing about Islam that we need to worry about, and that Muslims who seek to disseminate sharia without violence are not a threat to us, are appeasers at best, fifth columnists at worst.

By the way, is Pipes now admitting that there is and can be no such thing as moderate Islam, since he is saying that even peaceful, law-abiding Muslims, like the current rulers of Turkey, are a threat? No, he is not admitting that. As I have shown over and over, even though Pipes will concede (on Tuesdays, Thursday, and Saturdays) that there has never been such a thing as moderate Islam, he nevertheless insists that a moderate Islam can easily be created, and that we must never give up the hope that it can be created, because to give up that hope would leave no option but permanent conflict between Islam and the West. In reality, the only hope for the West is precisely such a state of permanent conflict with Islam, because only in such a state of conflict will the West defend itself from Islam. In the absence of an openly declared civilizational and religous confrontation, Westerners will inevitably tell themselves that only violent Muslims are the problem, and that the doors of the West should be opened wide to all other Muslims

- end of initial entry -

Ben W. writes:

Sometimes I’m a little behind the times—the capitol of China for me was Peiking until I learned that it was now Beijing.

God became god so He is now he.

Guys used to be named “Andrew” but now “Andre” is more popular.

I saw you using the word “Musulman”—I used to write “Moslems” but I see it is now “Muslim.” There used to be Mohammed, now he is Muhammed. In this case what is the right usage for the follower of Islam and its prophet?

LA replies:

I was using the old fashioned word for a little variety.

The standard spelling today is “Muslim” and “Muhammad.”

I’ve gone through many changes on this issue myself. I resisted the current standard usage for a long time, then finally accepted it, except when I’m speaking in a historical context, then (at least sometimes) I’ll switch to the traditional spelling “Moslem,” since it just looks weird and anachronistic to say, for example, that “the Muslims conquered Egypt in the seventh century.” Also, in an informal context I might go back to the standard “Moslem.”

Also, I’ve never seen any good reason to refer to God or Jesus Christ as “He.” To me that’s obtrusive and silly. You don’t add to a person’s dignity—or his divinity—by capitalizing his pronoun. A pronoun is just a pronoun.

Ben W. replies:

Well, I thought you were having a little fun. I said to myself, “Lawrence is reading a 19th century diary of an adventurer in the Middle East.” Last year I had picked up at a second hand bookstore, Dwight Eisenhower’s personal account of his first term in office. It was interesting and funny to read his use of names for countries, movements and groups.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 26, 2007 03:44 PM | Send