Confronting the Ultimate Enemy - Islam itself

Submitted by Ron Thompson (United States), Jul 21, 2016 at 13:09

I agree that the most likely near future is that Europe will finally wake up to the mortal
threat in its midst. If the form of this wake-up is "far" right parties, what else can be expected,
if the so-called sophisticated parties and elites have so uniformly been blind to the growing
threat, than that cruder forces will fill the terrible vacuum of leadership?.
Here are a few questions and arguments which should perhaps have long since
been considered:

Is Islam itself the ultimate source of Islamic terrorism and Jihadism? In other words,
being strongly against "radical" Islam implies, wrongly and misleadingly, that there
is some other 'mainstream' Islam that preaches something very different form the
'radicals'. There isn't..

If Islam is the ultimate enemy, what sort of arguments should be made to try and
bring about the collapse of its legitimacy in the eyes of the non-Muslim world, and
among many Muslims [see below]? This does not mean tactical alliances can't be
made with some Muslim regimes and leaders, since many of them have the same
deadly enemies we do, and where else can they turn?

Hundreds Of Millions! - while an ideological war against Islam does not mean a
war against ALL Muslims, it does mean to highlight and discuss what Hundreds of
Millions of Muslims believe and support - totally against women's rights and in favor of
mandatory funereal clothing, the death penalty for criticizing or leaving the religion,
for being homosexual, etc, etc. Indeed, for Americans and Europeans to have seriously
absorbed the supposed values of the US and Europe over the last 250 years, and
NOT to expressly oppose Islam seems to suggest a complete waste of education!
Discussion of whether Islam is either a truly terrible or hopelessly weak religion.
That is, if ISIS killers and Iranian theocrats are Good Muslims, it's a terrible religion -
if it's really a peaceful religion, it is hopelessly and pathetically weak against all the
violence done in its name.

Christianity which was harsh and horrible for many centuries (although killing
in its name ended almost 400 years ago, after 1648), always had many voices of
great temperamental diversity in its scriptures, as does Judaism. Islam, on the other
hand, is very largely the product of ONE mind, heart, and personality - and that
one man far more like Stalin and Hitler than Moses, Jesus, Paul, any historical
Rabbi, or far that matter, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, or the authors of the
Upanishads. In other words, Mohammad is by far the worst of all the
Cultural Founding Fathers of the human race.
One of the latest sources of confusion is all the talk of individual, 'lone wolf',
mentally disturbed killers. But this ignores the question whether Islam naturally
targets the disaffected, alienated, pathology-prone. As one noted Protestant theologian
said decades ago, "religion is good for good people, and bad for bad people". So
one can guess what he would have said of a bad religion and what type of person
it would appeal to for its converts and true believers..

(And finally) How can we know what latent opposition to Islam and its awful
commandments there is in the Arab and Muslim world if we don't finally break
the taboo against criticizing the religion directly? I share the paradoxical view
that taking on the religion directly would mean a far shorter war against Islamic
terrorism than continuing the refusal to consider targeting the ideology directly,
as was done vs Communism.
We must stop fighting with one hand (self-tied) behind our backs.

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