Taking Islam Seriously

Must read, seriously:

In today's Dubai, home to cutting-edge resort design and prestigious golf and tennis tournaments (in which, we presume, women sometimes wear shorts or tennis skirts) it is still unlawful to be allowed entry into the country if one's passport is stamped by Israeli Customs. Will keeping the pages of an odd Koran or two dry really change the rancid philosophy that holds 1.5 billion people in a death grip of shame, perversion and hatred?

Yet [Frank Rich, is his most recent idiotic colum] can't let himself go that far, because that would actually serve to put him to the right of this administration even as it would install him directly in the center of American public opinion. Those complaining about Koran abuse see the latest yawning episode as either a shameful display of America's arrogance and disrespect for the world's second largest religion or one more foul-up by a government and its military that only serves to make the fight harder.

Nonsense. The other two Abrahamic religions have come to terms with the fact that modern life has ample accommodation for religious practice but will not tolerate discrimination based on one's spiritual proclivities. Of course, both Christianity and Judaism have their radicals; it would be virtually impossible for that not to be so. But only Islam has institutionalized hate and slaughter to the point that massacres and bombings by radicalized Muslims hardly surprise anymore. What is so sensational and troubling about abuses in American-run military prisons is that Americans thought that we all were past the era when deviants were given the keys to jail cells.

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What bugs Mr. Rich is that interrogators used inmate's religious nuttery as a way of breaking them down. Given that radicalized Muslims have been characterized by mainstream adherents as having perverted Islam's tenets and practices, wouldn't poking that particular sore spot be a useful and legitimate questioning tactic?

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When the president tosses yet another off-handed "Islam is Peace" remark he does no service to the thousands who have been slaughtered and oppressed so "peacefully." When the media refuses to use certain words (e.g. "terrorist") for fear of insulting Muslims and seeming to be on the side of the US government, thus inciting yet another Islamist riot, it hardly demonstrates an understanding of the stakes in this fight. Neither the government nor the media wish to call out the foe, no matter that that very same foe yells in our face each and every day what its intentions are.

We may be winning or losing this war; it's getting harder each day to tell. But if we lose, it will not be because the enemy is superior in strength, morality or guile. It will be because we have failed to take the threat with the seriousness and dead calm that an existential crisis demands. We have failed to identify the enemy and in doing so have turned the fight in on ourselves. The current spat between the government and the media would make for lively entertainment in another time. As we grow towards what is likely to be a showdown with thousands, maybe millions, of radicalized religious fanatics it might be a good idea for us to come to some agreement on whom we fight before it is too late.

From Via Instapundit. As he says, read the whole thing.

Related: Newsweek Puts the American Flag in the Trash Can for Japanese Edition: Odd which symbols Newsweek frets about desecrating and which it doesn't.

Instapundit Is on F'n' Fire Update: When does the left excuse and engage in apologism over brutal beatings of gays and women? Why, when such outrages are perpetrated by a swarthier "oppressed group," such as Muslim immigrants, of course.

The left has come along way since that "content of his character" hooey, huh?