I’m not interested in the latest poll showing extent of Muslim awareness of Muslim extremism. Is that wrong of me?

Daniel S. writes:

The UK Telegraph gives the following report:

One in five American Muslims knows of support for extremism in their community, new research has found, despite Muslims being far happier about the state of the US than other groups.

That is to say a large percentage of Muslims in the US support the mainstream Islamic teachings on jihad and shariah, and that many Muslims in turn are pleased with Obama’s appeasement of the Muslim lobby and his solidarity with Muslims (his father being a Kenyan Muslims by birth).

LA replies:

What’s new about this? There have been so many similar polls in the past, haven’t there, about Muslim opinion in both Britain and the U.S.? Also, what does it prove about the extent of Muslim extremism if one fifth of Muslims know about the existence of Muslim extremism?

To me it starts to seem pointless to follow each of these repetitive, meaningless stories that go nowhere.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’m open to a counterargument.

Daniel S. writes:

It is certainly nothing new. I only referred it to you because Rep. Peter King has been citing the report in support of his congressional hearings investigating the “radicalization” of Muslims in America.

LA replies:

Well, there’s another story I can’t rouse any interest in. It seems to me that the King hearings are fatally compromised by the role of the Democratic members using their every second of talking time to attack the very purpose of the hearings, i.e., to insist that it’s wrong and discriminatory to have hearings on Muslim radicalization rather than on radicalization of all types, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Bingo-ists.

Further, the concept of the hearings is flawed: “radicalization.” As though the problem were not (radical) Islam and the people who believe in it, but a process taking place in America by which otherwise non-radical Muslims were radicalized.

I just don’t care about these hearings. Am I wrong to feel that way?

Daniel S. writes:

I have long said that Rep. King, however noble his intentions may be, has done everything to avoid addressing the real problem: Islam itself. There mere fact that a Muslim can be “radicalized” (i.e. start talking his religion seriously, especially all the stuff in the Koran about jihad) in a way a Catholic or a Lutheran cannot is itself very telling, but King seems to have none of it. Most of the witnesses he has called know nothing about Islam or even worse, are slick apologists like the neocons’ favorite “moderate” Muslim Zudhi Jasser. In the end the hearings will fizzle out to nothing and ultimately be forgotten, having accomplished little to nothing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 01, 2011 04:15 PM | Send