Naming the Enemy

Submitted by prof. paul eidelberg (Israel), Dec 10, 2008 at 08:28

As I have elsewhere documented via a variety of sources, it is misleading as well as a strategic error to use euphemisms when speaking of Islamic terrorism. I mean the following: "Islamism," Islamic fundamentalism," "extremist Islam," "radical Islam," "militant Islam," "political Islam," and even "IslamoFascism."

Henri Boulad, an Egyptian Jesuit, and a specialist in Islam, states in an article, "L'Islamisme, c'est l'Islam" ("Islamism is Islam"):

This statement [that Islamism is Islam] is perfectly consistent with history and geography, with the Quran and the sunna, with the life of Muhammad and the evolution of Islam, with what Islam says about itself. I reject the position of people—Muslims or Christians—who bury their heads in the sand like ostriches … refuse to see the situation objectively, or take their wishes for realities, on behalf of dialogue and tolerance.

Of course, naming Islam as the enemy exposes one to the canard of racism. It can also lead to violent backlash. But we are at war, and we cannot possibly win this war if we fail to identify the enemy.

Therefore, it is misleading to speak of "Muslim moderates." Granting there are such Muslims, but this is not strategically relevant in a time of war. (No doubt there were "moderate Nazis.") Many so-called Muslim moderates, as Pipes himself admits, are latent "extremists," and too many of them will succumb to the genocidal Islam of the Quran, a religion whose followers slaughtered an estimated 270 million "infidels" since the time of Muhammad.

The question is: How to name the enemy and control the passions that may result? But no war is won by means of moderation. At stake is America's survival and therefore the survival of civilization. We are confronted by the most ruthless enemy. Faced with this enemy, the effete humanism of liberal democracy is obsolete.

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