Will the "clerks" wake up?

Submitted by Fred Baehr (United States), Aug 9, 2014 at 15:13

I am reasonably well educated. Enough to know I don't know that much about much. But, from 9-11 on I have studied up on Islam. My findings are pretty dismal. I have found Islam to be a repressive medieval ... within the modern body politic. Some of my friends think I "hate Muslims" which is quite wrong. As with the Mormon church, I despise the church, but not its members. If I knew any Mormon suicide bombers, or if there were any, it would further degrade the church in my eyes, as it has in the case of Islam. In my opinion the jihadi groups are valid Muslims following the prophet, as well as being vile murderous criminals following the prophet, who was himself a vile murderous man.

But Dr. Pipes hopes these trepidations of ISIS will wake up our progressives and professors to the truth that seems so obvious to some like me. My own experience of these last 12 years tells me different. Our intellectual "betters" are as mired in their own faith as all the rubes they denigrate and faith knows no reason and doesn't need any. So I think we will still be informed that ISIS has little to do with the beautiful "religion of peace", that they are "hijackers" and "misunderstanders" of Islam, that the reasons for all the trouble are American foreign policy and the horrors of poverty and want we have created as we have run roughshod over the earth for the last 75 years. We all know the beat. Forgive my pessimism, but progressivism is a new religeon, and no more subject to reason or evidence than any of the old ones. Nothing will sway the followers of Zinn and Moore, or Chomsky and Stone from their lofty ideals and somehow the jihadis have become the victims in the ideology.

If the western powers were to wipe out ISIS we will be hearing about all the "innocents" and all the barbaric crimes they have endured at our hands, just like in Gaza now. Somehow in progressive thought conformity and solidarity still trump critical thinking when it comes to defending the "west", and the prevailing opinion is: don't do it. I hope I am wrong again.

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