McCarthy gets it exactly right - and it’s beyond me why people who want to talk about the ‘problem of Islam’ do not talk about it in this utterly reasonable way - focus entirely on the political component active in Islam, avoid entirely the theological - now, what makes Islam so difficult a thing to deal with is the fact that its theological and political components are so intertwined - but reform minded Muslims, the ones you want to appeal to, understand this is the problem which is why you have to bear down on that problem - it’s the only way to deflect the left’s charges of racism and open up ground for reform minded Muslims to step forward. Yes, liberals are going to pound the racist rhetoric no matter what because that’s what their ideology is all about - which is why reasonable people have to pound equally hard on the political argument and assiduously avoid anything that seems to confirm the liberal nonsense - this made clear by the troubles Trump is having: his sloppy rhetoric on Muslims, his poorly defined arguments opened the door for activist judges to practice bad law and make him look like a racist fool. I tend to doubt that Trump is capable of learning from this mistake - but others must.
When the ‘president’ of Egypt spoke out and addressed precisely this problem - political islam - as being the defining problem undermining Muslim culture, Obama of course, as a progressive idiot, ignored him - Sisi was sounding too much like a reasonable Republican - but this kind of talk from reform minded Muslims is the very thing we need to embrace and encourage. Yes, Sisi, with his other issues, is not an easy man to embrace and may therefore be a bad example - still, this needs to be the goal. I’d say we should be dumping an Islamist like Erdogan and supporting reform minded Muslims in Turkey - Erdogan is a lost cause, not a friend of the West nor a reliable ally and is currently trying to establish an Islamist dictatorship in Turkey - I think we should be opposing this in the strongest terms possible - but that would require a leader who can attack political Islam as being incompatible with Western democratic values without sounding like a racist. Doubt that person is Trump - and that argument is definitely not going to be mounted by anyone on the left since such ideas undermine their ideology which now seems to be based entirely on non-white ‘identity’ - so who then? Because without a persuasive spokesperson stepping forward this problem will persist and no doubt worsen.
[on cue Erdogan urges Muslims in Europe to breed like bunnies so they can take the place over - he didn’t of course put it precisely in those terms but the intent was clear: unleash the demographic A-bomb and Islam will conquer the EU. I mean, the liberal elite in Europe are already willing to make significant concessions to Islamists - allowing Sharia courts to operate, enacting hate speech laws designed specifically to suppress criticism of Islam - what happens when Muslims make up 15, 20, 25 percent of the electorate? The ramparts will have been breached at that point and then you’re looking at a complete breakdown of political order I’d say as people who refuse to participate in this cultural self immolation push back - hell, you're already seeing that dynamic now and Muslims in the EU have yet to cross merely the 10% demographic line. Erdogan is quickly becoming a focal point in Huntington's long predicted clash of civilizations - question is are we witnessing a clever and insidious stratagem playing out or is this more a reflection of Erdogan’s despotic Islamist ego running amok?]
[another question re reaching out to reform minded Muslims - what if reform is impossible because the political and theological, purely faith based components of Islam are just too interdependent? This is an entirely and maybe even likely outcome of an outreach to reform minded Muslims - coming to the conclusion that real reform is impossible - so what then? To conservatives making the political argument against Islam liberals like to point out that Judaism too has a pronounced political component to it - not surprising since Muhammed created his religion by co-opting large chunks of the Jewish faith and holy books - but of course raising this point ignores the fact that Judaism has already been reformed by hundreds of years of forced assimilation into Western culture - lacking access to political power, Jews had little choice but to mute the political components of their faith and adopt Western norms - what would Jewish culture, Judaism, Israel look like today without that forced integration into the West? Might look a lot like political Islam. If so, is it unreasonable to say that without forced assimilation into Western culture the clash of civilizations is inevitable since multiculturalism views the ‘melting pot’ ethos which in essence forces assimilation a reflection of racism and white privilege and therefore not legitimate? Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me - although, at least on the domestic side of things - ie excluding worrisome foreign policy questions - I see this as being much more of a problem for Europe than the US at the moment]
