National Review: Religious Extremism by Any Other Name

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The Geller Report has noted the left’s insistence that crimes with no Islamic motivation be labeled as “terrorism.” The desire to distance acts of jihad from the religion of Islam reflects either an ignorance of the literal interpretations of Islam or an intentional desire to deny the truth of what literal Islam says. In the wake of the New York City Halloween jihad truck attack, Mona Charen at the National Review ponders why, all these years after September 11, 2001, “The Left seems blind to the link between ideology and violence.

[T]he Left suffers from a crippling blindness about the link between ideology and violence. Oh, they can see it well enough when the ideology is white supremacism. And in their fevered imaginations, they saw even mild Tea Party protesters as a dire threat. On college campuses, activists conflate speech they don’t like with violence. “Hate speech is violence,” they say. But what they cannot process is that ideas rule the world, and given the powerful human inclination toward cruelty, ideologies that justify violence are deeply malignant.

The New York attacker apparently entered this country in 2010 and over the past several years became radicalized by ISIS propaganda he watched online. His phone reportedly contained 90 videos including instructions for bomb making, and pictures of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. If this man (I try to avoid naming mass killers in this column) had been a recent convert to Buddhism or Christianity, his religious convictions would have been a matter of zero interest to anyone but him because those religions do not justify mass killing. Yes, Christianity once did justify holy war. And when it did, it was dangerous. My Jewish ancestors, pillaged and killed by Crusaders, would attest to that if they could. But it hasn’t been the regnant ideology of Christianity for more than 700 years. That doesn’t mean some Christians don’t still commit crimes in the name of faith, but those who do — killing abortionists, for example — are extremely rare.

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People love violence but also want to believe in their own virtue. That’s why ends-justify-the-means ideologies are so dangerous. The Communists taught that they were inaugurating a new and more benevolent world, and if some kulaks and bourgeois capitalists were liquidated in the process, it was all in a good cause. The Nazis promised that they were purifying humanity — eliminating the pollution. There is nothing so liberating to the sadists among us than to be offered the fig leaf of good intentions.

So too with Islamism. It differs from the religion of Islam in its conspiracy-mongering, its belief that sharia law should prevail, and its thirst for martyrdom. It promises the monsters among us that they are doing nothing less than God’s will by acting out their most vicious fantasies. If all of the world’s more than one billion Muslims were Islamists, there would no peace anywhere on the planet. In fact, according to estimates by Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, only about 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide are radicals. Some two-thirds of Muslims in Nigeria and Lebanon, for example, say that they are very concerned about Islamic extremism in their own countries — which suggests that at least that many, and probably more, are not extremists themselves.

That’s still leaves room for a hundred million Islamists or tolerators of Islamism. Most, thank God, will never become suicide bombers or truck killers — the latest jihadi craze, as recent attacks in Nice, London, and New York illustrate. It is not bigotry to notice that the virus of extreme religious intolerance is virulent in Islam today.

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AlgorithmicAnalystD
AlgorithmicAnalyst
6 years ago

Ban Muslim immigration.

Mahou Shoujo
Mahou Shoujo
6 years ago

The democrats, socialists and muslims all have foundations of lies. The problem for them, which they always try and lie their way out of, is that as they start with basic presumptuous theoretical lies, which when faced with the reality of their actions demands more elaborate lies, the whole concept they are preaching falls apart, which results if them trying to prop it up with even more lies. With the rapid spread if information, the cracks get bigger as the lies are repeated. The liars can’t figure out why they are being treated as the liars they are. Then there is the lame stream media, who haven’t figured out they would make moore money if they implied the truth.

Mark Steiner
Mark Steiner
6 years ago
Reply to  Mahou Shoujo

Yes Mahou – the key word is “foundation”.

Dennis
Dennis
6 years ago

Impressive article, but what it fails to say is that all of those faiths, other than Islam, would have affirmatively, vocally and actively expressed their indignation and rejection of any conduct used to justify harming others in the name of their faith. Although, based on the numbers quoted about those Muslims who reject acts of terror in the name of their faith, what shocks me the most is what I do not see or hear. I should see/hear every Islamic world leader, every or the most prominent Imams, the Islamic media and the Islamic public screaming out their rejection of any conduct that is used by the terrorists to justify their crimes against innocents, but do you even hear a pin drop? I haven’t heard that outrage or any scathing rejection of that abhorrent conduct, and until it becomes actual and apparent, I see the lack thereof as continual reason to fear the faith that calls itself Islam. When all is said and done, that is the simple truth.

Dean
Dean
6 years ago
Reply to  Dennis

The first paragraph started out well than we get to the second paragraph where he falls into the usual trap of conjuring up some kind of mysterious “radicalization” occurring since he entered the US. Why? The fundamentalists that are many among the Muslims actually worship Muhammad who instructs killing the infidels and offers the greatest rewards in heaven for those that do, the martyrs. Therefore they are radicalized since youth in their Mosques, homes and schools and are only activated into action by any number of means later. An overwhelming public outcry and opposition to the codification within Islam of primitive sixth century Arab customs, beliefs, prejudices, superstitions and practices is necessary to stop it, and the same must apply as a litmus test to anyone seeking to immigrate to the US. .

mztore
mztore
6 years ago
Reply to  Dean

It amazes me how they are only “radicalized” when (or should I say after) they hit the U.S.A. as this is a country so full of mudslimes one can’t avoid it./s

Dean
Dean
6 years ago
Reply to  mztore

Simply amazing how frequently today’s moderates suddenly become tomorrow’s jihadist. It’s like they are radicalized into mass murderers by the internet overnight, wow. We should ban the internet, social media and rented trucks, but definitely not anyone who worships Mo.

PatriotlizD
Patriotliz
6 years ago

I don’t get this “other” religion of “Islamism” separate from Islam???? Who invented that?
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