Equating Islam with Terrorism Will Lead to Terrorism

World | Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 9:36:43 am PDT

The Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan addressed yet another “inter-faith” conference today, and announced that “equating Islam with terrorism is dangerous.”

Because it will lead to ... uh ... terrorism.

“It is a great pity that we see incessant attempts to authenticate and unify Islam and terrorism. The doctrinal substance of Islam is distorted. This repulses a big chunk of Muslims who cannot help but be offended by such treatment of the Quran,” said Kazakhstan Foreign Minister M. Tazhin, addressing the conference, Common World - Progress Through Diversity.

“Anti-Islamism is a danger with negative consequences not only for the Muslim community but also for Western countries themselves,” Tahzin warned.

The amazing thing about these kinds of statements, which are issued almost every day by one Islamic leader or another, is that the people who say them have no apparent recognition that they’re tying themselves into a rhetorical knot.

We’ve had a special Yahoo news feed in our drop-down RSS menu for several years now, a search for the word “terrorism.” (You can set up a custom Yahoo RSS feed for any search term, a nice feature.) Over time we’ve seen serious news articles on this subject slowly dwindle away and be replaced by a non-stop stream of this kind of illogical Islamic apologia.