Jihad and the West: The Threats Against Robert Spencer
Recently, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watchhad a post about the indifference of law enforcement to the many death threats he receives and the double standard. Spencer writes:
Daisy Khan of the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero said that she had received a death threat, and it was national news. I receive death threats on a more or less daily basis, and send them to law enforcement; I never hear anything back, and the media is no less indifferent. This is a recurring pattern: remember when Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris was threatened over "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day," she had to leave her job and conceal her identity, at her own expense, and the world yawned.
This question of the indifference of the police to death threats coming from Islamists is really the most important question one could ask. I mean, yes, yes, we who have access to reason can get what Islam is about, but this wholesale betrayal of our fellow citizens when they most need us, a moment in which the handwriting on the wall is there for all to see, what is this about?
I compare it to the passive abuser in child abuse, the other parent whose passivity enables the active abuse of the child.
Same question: why?
I don't know that I nor anyone else will be satisfied with my answer because passive enabling is very much an evil and the willingness to be part of that is inherently confusing. Nevertheless, I will try.
The way I see it guilt-mongering and fear of being alienated from important, cherished, even necessary social groups are at the heart of it. Even abject cowardice to confront the evil-doer happens far more often than we imagine. Yes, we all are especially surprised that moral cowardice might be the reason that law enforcement, for example, fails to act. After all, courage of all kinds is a prerequisite for the role.
As a result, real aggression, rational aggression, that could be used to protect the victim is off the table as a response. The commitment is to a kind of smother-mother "Big Nurse" ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") approach that we see almost everyday around us at work and in our family life where loyalty to certain individuals and attitudes trumps coherent choices.
I recently broke off a friendship with someone I respected a lot over this. He really could not countenance admitting that there was something inherently wrong at the basis of Islam and tried to control my posts at an article he had written to avoid the controversy. He is an officer with real combat experience, but he sentimentally chooses to ignore a real analysis of Islam because that meant having to go farther against his mindset of "openness" than he would have been comfortable with.
In the words, as I saw in my friend, this choice, the passive enabling, the ignoring of the threats against Spencer and others is due to the weight of the enormous about-face that many today would have to undergo.
Understanding Jihadism is the real "inconvenient truth" that the West has to confront, and too many simply prefer to make it "your problem" because you "caused a disturbance" and now you have to deal with it.
All that passive enabling of abuse goes on instead of realizing that "all religions are not created equal" in their relationship to democratic political culture.
I know I resisted this understanding to some extent based on knowing and working for quite a few Muslims whose Americanization seemed to be complete and who were absolutely humane with me.
I could say the same for the Italian communists I knew in Italy. They were very warm, humane people incompatible with anything Stalinist, but their own Jihadists, the Italian Red Brigade who kidnapped and executed Aldo Moro, the Italian prime minister, were a shock that combined with the other shocks (Stalinism itself!) and forced Italian communists to come to realize that they had to renounce the fundamental principles of Marxist-Leninism to become acceptable to Italian voters and, actually, to be acceptable to themselves and their own ideals.
Once they had done that, the ex-communists combined with the left-wing of the old Christian Democratic party, and Massimo D'Alema got to be the first Italian ex-communist prime minister of Italy.
If there is not a general and widespread renouncing of violent Jihad, the essence of the incompatibility of Islam and Western political culture, then some kind of social civil war will come to be with tremendous unforeseen consequences. The renunciation is possible and has been done by some sects of Islam already, some "heretical" sects, such as the follower of Ahmad.
Last point: this is the second time that Islam has been taken over by its most radical fundamentalist wing. The first time, centuries ago, led to the persecution of Islam's then fine scientific community and all the relative free thinkers whose evolving thought would have allowed a movement toward the modern world.
Instead, Islam collapsed, falling behind Europe in terms of cultural advancement of all kinds: political, economic, scientific and the rest.
This happens because religion is there to help us deal with human consciousness and religions evolve as the people evolve within the context of their religion, eventually forsaking child sacrifice or the stoning of adulterers. Sometimes great forward leaps are necessary, usually accompanied by social unrest and even war.
The ones who can make the leap do so, but the "reverters", in this case, the Ft. Hood shooters, many of the suicide bombers, those who carried out the WTC attack, are educated, even steeped in Western values, but unable to turn against their own core religious identity, choose death for themselves and as a way to take us along with them, as a kind of inclusive suicide.
And, all this, as is the case in the Ft. Hood shooter, enabled by those who choose not to see the danger because the "inconvenient truth" requires too much work, is too embarrassing, and/or will distance them from too many friends, co-workers or institutions that they value being part of.
This will continue until a critical mass of people who get what violent Jihad derives from and who come to actively oppose it, providing support for others as well.
This question of the indifference of the police to death threats coming from Islamists is really the most important question one could ask. I mean, yes, yes, we who have access to reason can get what Islam is about, but this wholesale betrayal of our fellow citizens when they most need us, a moment in which the handwriting on the wall is there for all to see, what is this about?
I compare it to the passive abuser in child abuse, the other parent whose passivity enables the active abuse of the child.
Same question: why?
I don't know that I nor anyone else will be satisfied with my answer because passive enabling is very much an evil and the willingness to be part of that is inherently confusing. Nevertheless, I will try.
The way I see it guilt-mongering and fear of being alienated from important, cherished, even necessary social groups are at the heart of it. Even abject cowardice to confront the evil-doer happens far more often than we imagine. Yes, we all are especially surprised that moral cowardice might be the reason that law enforcement, for example, fails to act. After all, courage of all kinds is a prerequisite for the role.
As a result, real aggression, rational aggression, that could be used to protect the victim is off the table as a response. The commitment is to a kind of smother-mother "Big Nurse" ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") approach that we see almost everyday around us at work and in our family life where loyalty to certain individuals and attitudes trumps coherent choices.
I recently broke off a friendship with someone I respected a lot over this. He really could not countenance admitting that there was something inherently wrong at the basis of Islam and tried to control my posts at an article he had written to avoid the controversy. He is an officer with real combat experience, but he sentimentally chooses to ignore a real analysis of Islam because that meant having to go farther against his mindset of "openness" than he would have been comfortable with.
In the words, as I saw in my friend, this choice, the passive enabling, the ignoring of the threats against Spencer and others is due to the weight of the enormous about-face that many today would have to undergo.
Understanding Jihadism is the real "inconvenient truth" that the West has to confront, and too many simply prefer to make it "your problem" because you "caused a disturbance" and now you have to deal with it.
All that passive enabling of abuse goes on instead of realizing that "all religions are not created equal" in their relationship to democratic political culture.
I know I resisted this understanding to some extent based on knowing and working for quite a few Muslims whose Americanization seemed to be complete and who were absolutely humane with me.
I could say the same for the Italian communists I knew in Italy. They were very warm, humane people incompatible with anything Stalinist, but their own Jihadists, the Italian Red Brigade who kidnapped and executed Aldo Moro, the Italian prime minister, were a shock that combined with the other shocks (Stalinism itself!) and forced Italian communists to come to realize that they had to renounce the fundamental principles of Marxist-Leninism to become acceptable to Italian voters and, actually, to be acceptable to themselves and their own ideals.
Once they had done that, the ex-communists combined with the left-wing of the old Christian Democratic party, and Massimo D'Alema got to be the first Italian ex-communist prime minister of Italy.
If there is not a general and widespread renouncing of violent Jihad, the essence of the incompatibility of Islam and Western political culture, then some kind of social civil war will come to be with tremendous unforeseen consequences. The renunciation is possible and has been done by some sects of Islam already, some "heretical" sects, such as the follower of Ahmad.
Last point: this is the second time that Islam has been taken over by its most radical fundamentalist wing. The first time, centuries ago, led to the persecution of Islam's then fine scientific community and all the relative free thinkers whose evolving thought would have allowed a movement toward the modern world.
Instead, Islam collapsed, falling behind Europe in terms of cultural advancement of all kinds: political, economic, scientific and the rest.
This happens because religion is there to help us deal with human consciousness and religions evolve as the people evolve within the context of their religion, eventually forsaking child sacrifice or the stoning of adulterers. Sometimes great forward leaps are necessary, usually accompanied by social unrest and even war.
The ones who can make the leap do so, but the "reverters", in this case, the Ft. Hood shooters, many of the suicide bombers, those who carried out the WTC attack, are educated, even steeped in Western values, but unable to turn against their own core religious identity, choose death for themselves and as a way to take us along with them, as a kind of inclusive suicide.
And, all this, as is the case in the Ft. Hood shooter, enabled by those who choose not to see the danger because the "inconvenient truth" requires too much work, is too embarrassing, and/or will distance them from too many friends, co-workers or institutions that they value being part of.
This will continue until a critical mass of people who get what violent Jihad derives from and who come to actively oppose it, providing support for others as well.