West: Call It Like It Is
Charles Johnson
Fri Jul 6, 2007 at 7:39 am PDT • Views: 278
Here’s Diana West on the suicidal blindness of Western elites: Call it like it is.
Q: Who is winning the really important war of ideas — the one between the West and itself? A: Not the side that understands jihad as a foundational Islamic institution.
This is nothing new. From September 11 onward, the yeoman effort of elites has been to wrench “Islam” away from all acts of jihad. But now, particularly after the London and Glasgow attacks, their efforts have achieved a deeper level of denial, and, worse, broader consensus.
The new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, has directed ministers to omit “Muslim” when discussing (Muslim) terrorism. And forget the generic “war on terror”; even that pathetic phrase is off limits. (This has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Brown’s unctuously stated goal to make Britain “the gateway for Islamic finance.”) The new Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith (love that “i” ending) refers to British Muslims as “communities” — maybe a prelude to not mentioning them at all. Both have done the “perversion of a great faith” dance to enlightened applause, taking cues from the unpublished “EU Lexicon,” which reportedly nixes such “offensive” phrases as “Islamic terrorism.”
British literary lions couldn’t agree more. Philosopher John Gray and historian Eric Hobsbawm recently said on British television that even the word “Islamist” was “unfair” because “it implied a strong link to Islam.” Never mind the link is doctrinally accurate. Better to accommodate mortal threat without identifying its Islamic roots. Instead of defending their nations — for starters, stopping Islamic immigration and, with it, the progression of Islamic law into Western societies — our elites have decided to pretend Islam isn’t there at all.
Frank says: