In a war without borders, the “front” is in the minds of the worlds entire Muslim population. You don’t treat the battleground like it’s the enemy.
This is a hard concept for the “all or nothing”, “us or them” binary thought processes of the Republican voting constituency to wrap their heads around. They don’t do nuance, so they don’t understand nuance.
I think we all get the nuance. It’s a war against radical Islam, but we won’t call it that because some radical Muslims are our “allies”, or at least we want to keep them out of the fighting on the other side. In the same way WW2 was a war against fascism but we didn’t declare war on Fascism because Spain and many Latin American dictatorships who were on our side were also imitators of the German/Italian governmental model.
The problem is that Franco’s Spain wasn’t funding worldwide war in the name of fascism. Saudi Arabia is funding worldwide jihad. Beat ISIS and they’ll just create another one.
I’m not 100% sure I agree with this logic, but I heard an NPR commentator making a distinction between “radical Islam” and “radical Islamism”. Specifically, referring to terrorism as “radical Islam” implies that if you take Islam, and just make it more so, more Islamic, you end up with terrorism. The KKK is an extreme group that is Christians, but that doesn’t mean the Christianity pushed to the extreme gets you to the KKK, and implying so might offend Christians.
I’m not quite sure I agree with that logic, but it’s also certainly not the case that it’s just obviously and inarguably true that “radical Islam” is a correct and accurate name for whatever ISIS and Al Qaeda are.
That said, I think your first paragraph is approximately on track. But I don’t see what your second paragraph has to do with anything. So what if ISIS is funding things worldwide. How does that change the realpolitik considerations about whether we should or should not piss off the millions of Muslims who are being courted by ISIS, being given the message that the West is at war with Islam?
The Saudis are funding the problem. Plus our leaders should be honest. We aren’t fighting radical Islam because the majority of radical Islamists aren’t fighting us. They are fighting gays, women, and infidels within their own borders. It’s only the radicals who are taking the fight outside the Arab world that we are fighting.
Now whether that’s a wise policy is up for debate. But our leaders would rather not have that debate. A lot of their best friends are people who smile for the cameras in the US while shaking hands with our Presidents and then go home and behead gays and make women marry their rapists(assuming they don’t stone them for getting raped). The Big Lie is that this is not a minority interpretation of Islam in that part of the world.
Furthermore, you’re leaving off half of the equation entirely. Here’s an analogy: suppose that there was a subculture of assholes who were inspired by death metal music to commit actual murders. And suppose that these death metal bands were generally suspected of actually encouraging and appreciating this murderousness, even if we couldn’t prove it.
So a death metal asshole goes into a nightclub and kills a lot of people. In the midst of this he calls up 911 and recites a bunch of lyrics from his favorite band.
The news reports all say “he called up 911 and recited death metal lyrics”. Then when it comes time to release the 911 transcripts, the government decides to withhold the actual lyrics recited. Why? As a coverup? As some kind of namby pamby PC kumbayah nonsense? Not at all, they would be withholding the lyrics to avoid glorifying the specific band that this asshole as a fan of… releasing the lyrics, and spreading his message of hatred is PRECISELY WHAT HE WOULD HAVE WANTED US TO DO.
Not a perfect analogy, granted, but don’t you see how the actual transcript of him pledging allegiance to ISIS does more for ISIS as a recruiting tool and propaganda coup than anything else? The idea that somehow NOT releasing that transcript is propaganda for ISIS, as the OP pretty clearly states, is bafflingly ass-backwards.
What does any of that have to do with whether or not to release full transcripts of the Orlando 911 call (given that everyone knew what was said in it)?
And yes. Islam, as currently practiced in many if not all majority-Islam countries, and disturbingly often in Muslim immigrant communities, is horribly sexist and even more horribly homophobic. You win. That’s true. I can no longer maintain the liberal curtain of silence that has for so long tried to hide that fact from the public. So… what? What next? What do we do with that information? How does that change the political realities of the world we live in?
And in particular, what do you think is more likely to cause future generations of US Muslims to more fully integrate into US culture, which largely values women and gay rights, vs remaining in little enclaves, where hatred and ignorance can continue from generation to generation: a national discourse which spends all of its time talking about how terrible Islam is, or one that tries to disassociate the most hateful fringes from the majority?
The only thing we can do is to give full support to the liberal reformers. Instead, we’ve hitched our cart to the radicals who don’t want to kill us, because they actually command armies and the liberal reformers command nothing. Because THEY are the fringe minority.
You just frame things in such weird ways. Yes, we’re hitching our carts to the people who think ISIS is bad and don’t want to kill us. No, they don’t agree with us on everything. Neither did Russia and the US, despite fighting on the same side in WWII. But that’s how allies work.
I assume someone who cares so much about homophobia didn’t support what the Republican party was doing in that regard, yet you hitched your bag with them because you agreed in other ways.
And none of this has anything to do with why we don’t want to vilify Islam as a whole. That’s not about creating allies with Muslim nations. That’s about countering ISIS propaganda, that we are attacking them because they are Muslims. It’s about weakening the resolve of people who have already joined or were thinking about joining.
And it also happens to be the truth. The vast majority of Muslims do not support ISIS, so there is no way to call what ISIS does as representative of Islam. Yes, a majority may have reprehensible views, but that’s not what this is about.
The liberal reformers can’t do a thing about ISIS. They are a long term strategy to reform Islam, not an army attacking a wannabe Islamic State miliary. Sure, maybe a reformed Islam would be more robust against those like ISIS, but reform takes time. Time we don’t have to deal with this particular threat.
No, we’re just impatient and want Muslims to do the dying. We’ll succeed at that, but there’s no path to reform as long as we back fundamentalist governments who fund ISIS on the downlow. Their disagreement with ISIS is solely about tactics, not about their view of Islam. and therein is the Big Lie that I mentioned before. ISIS doesn’t practice a “twisted” view of Islam for that part of the world. They are just acting in ways the “moderates” consider ill advised and which threaten their own power bases. Al Qaeda hates ISIS too. Does this mean Al Qaeda is “moderate”. No, it’s about disagreement over tactics and power. The Sauds are in the same camp, as is the Pakistan ISI. Then there’s the fact that all over the Arab world, when they get to vote, they vote for governments who think as ISIS does. It’s time to tell the truth: ISIS is not practicing a “twisted” version of Islam. In that part of the world, it’s quite mainstream. From their perspective, what Muslims in the West practice is the “twisted, fringe” view of Islam.
Thank you, but I’m not an apostate from Islam. So far as I know, magellan01 also isn’t. I (and I presume he) also don’t live in those particular countries, either. Those are some very depressing statistics, but I don’t think they answer my question.
Don’t need death metal bands for this with Insane Clown Posse around.