"Islam Bad"?

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at News and Views From Jews Down Under.}

The tidbit below was written by Alex Fishman and published by Y-Net.

More than 30,000 global jihadists have settled in and are fighting in countries that border with Israel. They belong to various groups, but they all have one dream: To liberate the Arab world from heretic regimes, with the climax being the liberation of Jerusalem. Afghanistan is already here; on our border.

Global jihad is the main concrete threat the army will be preparing for in 2014, and it is the focus of discussions the defense minister is holding with the General Staff ahead of the next working year. While not all of the IDF's top officers accept the term "Afghanistan is already here," there is broad agreement regarding the scope of the threat this development poses to Israel.

This is an example of what one opinionator refers to as "Islam Bad."   Some people think that speaking out against political Islam, which is the foremost fascistic movement in the world today, is nothing less than "racism" toward Muslims, in general.

In this way they conflate Hamas and al-Qaeda with all people of the Islamic faith which, in itself, is a bigoted position.

This is something akin to being afraid to oppose the Klan out of a fear of insulting Christians.  If I were a Christian and I was told that opposing the Ku Klux Klan is basically the same as "Christianity Bad" I would be deeply insulted, but this is precisely what people do when they oppose those of us willing to speak out against the movement for politicized Islam.

Is opposition to political Islam "racist" toward Muslims?  What I argue is that political Islam is an exceedingly important political movement within the umma that we ignore at our peril and whose foremost victims are Muslims, themselves.  We don't need to go running around with our hair on fire, but we need to acknowledge and oppose a political movement that oppresses women, hangs gay people from cranes, seeks the submission of all non-Muslims, and cries out for the genocide of the Jews.

Some misguided individuals believe that this is "racist" towards Muslims, in general, which is why the opinionator mischaracterized it as "Islam Bad," with the implication that such concerns are nothing but bigotry.  I would suggest that the opposite is true.  It is not those of us who are opposed to the Jihad who are bigots, but those westerners who cannot bring themselves to stand up against the Jihad who are bigots, because they think that doing so is a smear on all Muslims.

It isn't.

The progressive-left tends to be exceedingly squeamish when it comes to political Islam.  It's not that they are afraid of getting blown up by Jihadis, but that they fear their fellow progressives will smear them as "racist" if they find the cajones to stand up against the movement.  The fear is social, not physical.  This makes them not only cowards, but ultimately stooges for a cause that would see their own people either destroyed or oppressed.  So long as some people oppose those of us who speak out against this movement then those people become stooges for the movement, itself.

One can be a western progressive without being a stooge for political Islam, but not if one insists on spitting hatred at those of who speak out against it.  It's one thing to ignore the rise of a large-scale fascistic movement throughout the Middle East, but it is another thing entirely to oppose those of us who refuse to do so.  Furthermore, supporting an American president that, himself, supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and thus supported the rise of political Islam, more generally, is just plain stupid.  It's one thing to have voted for Obama, even twice, but not everyone who voted for Obama is a sycophant or remains a sycophant.

Failing to stand up to the rise of political Islam, it should be noted, is also a betrayal of progressive-left values.  When I was growing up the progressive-left fought for things like women's rights, gay rights, the rights of minorities to equal treatment within the public sphere.  Now the progressive-left has turned 180 degrees and ignores women's rights and ignores gay rights, so long as the people oppressing women and murdering gay people are Muslims in the Middle East.  In this way, the western-left has obliterated its core value of universal human rights.

Until the western-left can find the strength and the intelligence to stand up for its own alleged values then it is essentially dead.  It may still elect politicians to high office in the United States, and Europe, and Australia, but that has not prevented it from undermining its ideological core.  So long as the western-left supports anti-Semitic anti-Zionism and withholds support for women, gay people, and Jews in the Middle East, then it is a movement that no longer stands for what it stands for.

It thereby sacrifices itself upon the bleeding altar of political Islam.