Jihadism loves a weak horse, as no less an authority than Osama Bin Laden reminded us, if we care to listen. What we owe the memory of violent Islam’s many recent victims is to acknowledge the very real war that made them its casualties and respond accordingly.
Those with heads still below the clouds and feet firmly on the ground – or simply with heads not in the sand — should be readily able to accept several fundamental truths about Islam and the West.
First, we are at war. The enemy is a soldier, not a criminal.
Second, the enemy and his motives and methods are in plain sight, not remotely a mystery. What inspires them might be incomprehensible to any sane observer, but the bitter fruits of that inspiration are clear as day.
Third, there are ways to respond other than through vapid hand-wringing, hand holding, candle-lit vigils and impotent head-shaking.
Fourth, it is not too late to act, despite decades of poor decisions in the West.
These truths are clear to me, though plainly not to everyone. There is a broad lack of will to recognise this escalaing war and, more culpable than even that, a refusal to identify an enemy, other than dressing him in palliative euphemism. Why this is so, take your pick. Academics have sought to instill an unshakable deference before “the other”, also infusing with reflexive horror the very thought of standing up for, or even recognising, the existence and virtues of Western values, especially Judeo-Christian ones. There is also queasiness at the thought of being called to fight a war in an age of comfort, endless distractions and, let’s be blunt, spinelessness. Top off that list with a simple lack of understanding of how to fight back and then, to complete the recipe, add the mandatory dash of “tolerance”, which apparently means we must tolerate the intolerant and intolerable.
The sneering green Left likes to brand all who dispute global warming as “climate deniers”, which is funny when you think about it because temperatures have flat-lined for almost 20 years, the IPCC admits its models have been hopelessly out of whack, and every Flanneryesque prediction of doom by roasting or melting inevitably falls on its face. There is nothing there to deny, in other words, except rent-seekers’ press releases.
But Islam’s propensity to inspire murderous assaults, well that is very much “there”. Blood on the streets of Manchester, London and, as of last night, the Melbourne suburb of Brighton, attests to that. Yet here, where the evidence of a palpable threat is beyond dispute, a virulent denialism flourishes. Often it is encouraged and abetted by those most loud in their climate alarmism. The infamous episode of Q&A, in which junketeering warmist Lawrence Krauss cast aspersions on whitegoods by way of dismissing Islamic butchery, provides a priceless example:
TONY JONES: Lawrence, we see that Trump is stepping back from some of his positions. Will he step back on…? He’s obviously got within his administration people who are serious climate science deniers.
LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Yes, he certainly does.
So let us start, first of all, with the Kraussian doctrine of dismissal by diminution. “More chance of being hit by a falling fridge than by terrorism,” the great mind pronounced. Tell that to a Coptic Eqyptian, buddy. True or not — and it most certainly isn’t – you are still left with the fact that such logic is irrelevant and, ultimately, entirely meaningless.
Then there are those who simply cannot see any evil whatsoever in Islam. This is the Religion of Peace™ brigade, the ones who insist the threat starts and ends with those “lone wolves”. They swear there is nothing to see here, shrink from appending the label “terrorist”. That would be simplistic stereotyping, don’t you know. More than that, describing someone as a terrorist poses the obvious question: to what end are little girls being blown up and Saturday night revellers knifed? The answer is so obvious denialists cannot utter it, nor will they sit silent and let others do so. The person who speaks the self-evident truth must be torn down, blitzed with a Twitter storm, made the object of ridicule and shunning.
While it seems hardly believable anyone would think this way, many political “leaders” find it convenient to pay lip service. The protagonists of this line cast the enemy as a “criminal” and support only law-enforcement responses. How long might World War Two have lasted if every Luftwaffe pilot downed over Britain were to have been put on trial, with attendant costs and delays. Fortunately, in those days, the ability to recognise a war and discern its foot soldiers had yet to be eroded by cant and cowardice.
Whether belief in the caliphate or a tendency to jihadism is the core business of any or all forms of Islam or merely the whacky obsession of the very few doesn’t matter in practical terms. There are people with certain beliefs who are eager to kill us, that is what matters and, just at the moment, the only thing that matters. Seemingly, many of their co-religionists either agree with the killers, support them actively or passively, give them cover in the Muslim enclaves in Paris, London, Brussels, Manchester or wherever.