The meaning of that “tiny minority” of Muslims

Sage McLaughlin writes:

Regarding the survey results showing seven percent of Muslims think the attacks on 9/11 were “completely justified,” I of course agree with your and Robert Satloff’s observation that “radicalism” has been disingenuously defined down by Esposito and Mogahed.

But what strikes me is this—seven percent is an astoundingly high figure! It means that around the world, nearly one in ten Muslims you are likely to meet sees absolutely no problem with the brutal and deliberate massacre of non-Muslims on basically any scale. This is bone-chilling. To hear people talk, you would think the figure was something more like some fraction of one percent, an infinitesimal minority belonging to a crazed, militant “movement.”

Just think if seven percent of the world’s Catholics believes the wanton slaughter of any group was completely justified. It is simply unimaginable. To present that figure as some kind of a relief, as some sort of exculpatory data point in Muslims’ favor, is evidence of a profound cowardice and self-loathing.

Remember this the next time you hear someone pontificating that we cannot “make war on a billion Muslims.” You can’t make war on the 400 million who apparently feel al-Qaeda’s pain, either. So how about we go back to our respective sand boxes? Separationism is truly the only way to protect ourselves from this savage, degraded Arab faith and its unfortunate adherents.

LA replies:

Sage writes: “To present that figure as some kind of a relief, as some sort of exculpatory data point in Muslims’ favor, is evidence of a profound cowardice and self-loathing.”

It is evidence of the fact that the liberal West is bent on committing suicide, and therefore it will not react against any expression of hatred and animus toward itself, no matter how vile. Nor are today’s “conservatives” capable of confronting and correcting this liberal suicidal impulse, since they share liberals’ basic premises. When it comes to Islam, here is the true difference between liberals and “conservatives”:

Liberals say that Islam is wonderful, and that anything that seems troublesome about it at the moment is the result of our own misunderstanding and mistreatment of Muslims.

Conservatives say that Islam is wonderful, with the exception of a tiny and unrepresentative minority of extremists.

In short, liberals say that Islam is completely wonderful, while those gimlet-eyed conservatives say that Islam mostly wonderful.

The liberal and conservative view of Islam is essentially the same. Liberals and conservatives both accept the Islamization of the West and refuse to see the significance of the fact that 7 percent or even 37 percent of Muslims are jihad and sharia supporters.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 11, 2008 04:06 PM | Send