The American Spectator

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(Page 3 of 13)

p>I believe this is the real story behind the Cartoon Jihad. It has exposed the West as ultimately unwilling to defend its way of life against a frontal attack by the most barbaric elements in the world today. Perhaps this will change as the attacks grow even bolder and more deadly. All decent, freedom-loving people can only hope. br> -- Steven M. Warshawsky br> New York, New York /p>

I believe that Patrick Hynes makes a fundamental error in today's TAS offering, "The Politics of Religious Mockery." The underlying assumption in Mr. Hynes's piece that Western religions and Islam are in any way comparable is dangerously incomplete. To contrast the reactions to mockery of "believers" on either side of the spectrum is to grant the fundamentalist version Islam a spiritual status that it has not earned and does not deserve in the current millennium.

Islam has morphed into a fascist political ideology masquerading as a religion. While most of the trappings of religion are present in today's Islam, such as clergy, houses of worship, prayer, a central deity/prophet, a written set of principles and so forth, other aspects common in Islamic thought suggest that politics is more at its core. What genuine religion advocates murder, subjugation, conquest and total control of both its adherents and its opponents alike? What God would have his name chanted as masked men behead bound infidels or dance in the streets when others with whom they disagree suffer? These outrages are more identifiable with Man's quest for political superiority and have been played out numerous times in history. Thankfully, those who have tried to exercise power in this fashion have been stopped eventually. Aside from the Crusades, religious overtones were sometimes invoked by secular, would-be tyrants, but never has a religion itself played the would-be tyrant.

p>I harbor the hope that a significant number of Muslims worldwide would prefer to practice the spiritual portion of their religion in peace, if not harmony, with the West. However, the cognitive dissonance created by the willfully naive Western view that the fundamentalist/political form of Islam really is a religion and not a sham vehicle for world domination renders that harmony unlikely in the near term. Unless and until the West is willing to admit and act upon the threat posed by political Islam, all the respect, tolerance and forbearance due a legitimate spiritual point of view is wasted and maybe even suicidal. br> -- unsigned /p>

"...many on the left can't see the distinctions between peaceful Christian political activism and lunatic Islamist rioting and jihadism."

Patrick Hynes gives the left the benefit of doubt that they really do not deserve. In fact, the left's attack on "peaceful Christian political activism," as well as numerous other "enemies" of the left, is a conscious and fully informed demonstration of an ancient political fact: every demagogue needs his Jew.

Please, please, though it should not be necessary to so state, for the record, I am not drawing an equivalence between the travails of "peaceful Christian political activism" or other "enemies" of the American left with the Third Reich's implementation of the Endlosung upon European Jewry.

But the fundamental technique of (1) not offering a substantive solution, but rather (2) blaming a readily identifiable individual or group of individuals for whatever failures or disappointments or even opportunities for envy life occasions is the same. The "Christian Right" is damned by the left for determining the result of the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush, as if the dedication of organized labor, abortion rights groups, every manner of racial, ethnic or sexual victims group to secure the election of John Kerry was a priori laudable. If President Bush is not the focus of the hatred, it would be Dick Cheney. Or Don Rumsfeld. Or Halliburton. Or Wal-Mart. Or big oil. Or when the Democrats still controlled 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it was Newt Gingrich.

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