By David Harsanyi
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
After a meeting with the National Security Council to
discuss the Orlando massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in American history,
Barack Obama was angry. He’s more impassioned than we’ve ever seen him. He was
speaking from the heart. He’s lashing out! Because you know what really grinds
his gears? Republicans.
“That’s the key, they say,” Obama said, eviscerating the GOP. “We can’t defeat
them unless we call them radical Islamists. What exactly would using this label
accomplish? What exactly would it change?”
A lot, actually.
As a matter of realpolitik, perhaps it makes sense to
avoid the phrase “radical Islam.” We don’t want to offend the Mullahs,
theocratic sheiks, oligarchic princes, Arab strongmen, and future junta leaders
of the Middle East. We need to work with these people, after all. What should
bother you, though, is that Obama constantly tries to chill speech by
insinuating that anyone who does
associate violence with radical Islam—which includes millions of adherents—is a
bigot. This is a president who also intimates that anyone who is critical of
everyday Islam’s widespread illiberalism—for example, all nations where
homosexuality is punishable by death are Muslim—is also a bigot.
It’s not as if Obama shies away from lecturing people
about faith. Saying the words “radical Islam” is a step too far, but bringing
up events from the year 1095 to create a tortured moral equivalence is just
fine. Not only has Obama implored us to avoid critical rhetoric about Islam,
but he demands that Americans (secular apostates like myself included) act as
if all faiths are equally tolerant of our lives. This is the president who
tells the world that “the future must not belong to those who slander the
prophet of Islam.” Can you imagine Obama going to the United Nations General
Assembly and declaring the same for Jesus Christ?
Nor has Obama hesitated to lecture Christians, who
supposedly use religious freedom as an “excuse” for “discrimination,” to evolve
and abandon their antiquated ways. After years of propaganda equating
evangelicals with Islamic fundamentalists (who aren’t the true adherents of
Islam, according to pundits who’ve probably never read a single book about the
faith), many liberals make no distinction between the two anymore. For them,
supporting the idea sex-specific bathrooms is only a small step from massacring
gay Americans. This is what denial of reality can do to a society. You can see
it all manifesting in liberal punditry.
Obama isn’t a secret Muslim, and, regardless of what many
people tell me, I’m sure his intentions are good. But abdication of the most
obvious truths allows demagogues like Donald Trump to appear to be brave
truth-tellers. Blaming all Muslims is as dumb as pretending this terror has
nothing to do with Islam. One absurd position just reinforces the other.
“We have a proposal from the presumptive Republican
presidential nominee to bar all Muslims from immigrating to America,” Obama
explained, claiming that those kinds of ideas do the terrorists’ job for them.
I’m sure that Trump’s rhetoric on this matter is highly counterproductive. But
if you’re willing to murder scores of innocent people in the name of Islam
because a blowhard U.S. presidential candidate has an immigration proposal you
dislike, that’s a you problem and an Islam problem before it’s a Trump problem.
Also, the idea that we have a president more willing to accuse the GOP nominee
of instigating terrorism than he is willing to accuse radical Islam is a
problem for all of us.
Exempting Islam from discourse is to place Muslims
outside the norms of American debate. This is a luxury no other political
philosophy or theology enjoys. Obviously, this helps us make events like this
about gay marriage or guns or whatever liberal agenda item can be squeezed from
tragedy. That would be fine if we weren’t also asked to ignore the actual
problem.
Islamists use planes and bombs, and sometimes guns. You
can believe all the things you want about the NRA, the availability of “weapons
of war,” and Christian homophobia, and still believe that Islamic terrorism is
a unique movement that threatens us in a way that the random madman opening
fire in a theater does not. Liberals love to point out how rare
Islamic-inspired violence is—let’s ban white men! But they fail to point out
that we spend billions every year to stop terrorism. If we didn’t, we’d be in
for yearly 9/11s.
By the way, don’t you wish Obama would get this worked up
about the FBI, which allowed Omar Mateen to slip away from two
investigations—one of those, reportedly, because he blamed his actions on
Islamophobia? Law enforcement sources now say that Disney notified the FBI that
Omar and his wife may have been casing the amusement park back in April. Maybe
there was nothing actionable for FBI. So rather than suggesting we undermine
the Fifth Amendment and Second Amendment, maybe it’s time to ask why the
billions of dollars we spend fighting terrorism are failing.
Mostly, though, I’m not sure why a peaceful Muslim would
not appreciate being set apart from Islamists by the president. “Radical Islam”
distinguishes between extremists and moderates. Other than allowing liberals to
accuse anyone who brings up theological problems of being Islamophobic, what
other purpose does ignoring this distinction achieve? The president has yet to
explain.
No comments:
Post a Comment