Jihad Watch Problem #3: Addendum

Since the time I posted my preceding note about Jihad Watch Problem #3, Spencer has made two more editorial remarks that exemplify it:

1) Where is today’s Radio Free Europe, beaming anti-jihadist broadcasts into the Islamic world? Who would dare to establish it? [link]

2) It would be refreshing if Karzai addressed and explained such matters [how kidnappings are “un-Islamic”], and perhaps thereby convinced some of the Taliban that their actions were contrary to Islam, rather than simply asserting that this hostage-taking was un-Islamic without explaining why. [link]

Comments:

#1: While an anti-jihadist Radio Free Europe would probably do no harm, it is foolish to think it would do sufficient good to make any substantive dent in the global problem of Islam. Keep in mind that this would be Westerners (with the help of apostate Muslims whom most Muslims hate, along with a smattering of those extremely rare birds, the apparently truly reformist Tasbih Sayyeds and Magdi Allams of the Muslim world) crafting and beaming propaganda to the Muslim world. It is already foolish enough to think that the tiny minority of truly Westernized reformist Muslims could make a significant dent in the Muslim world, much less an Occidentally originated Radio Free Europe. In fact, the main—or even the only—thing we need in this regard is a Radio Free West beamed not to the Orient, but to ourselves: to the West. I.e., it is the West that needs to be educated about Islam, and it is only the West which still has hope—however slender PC Multiculturalism renders that hope—of being educated. Money, time and energy should not be wasted on the practically impossible task of trying to reform Islam while too many elements coming out of the Islamic orbit are trying to horrifically mass-murder us when they are not trying to subvert our values and institutions in other more subtle ways.

As for #2: Is Spencer merely being rhetorical here, as he has similarly been so many other times over the years, when he calls for Karzai to explain how kidnappings are “un-Islamic”? Or does Spencer really think it is possible to argue thus, Islamically? Spencer never comes clean. It is time for him to do so. Surely Spencer has studied Islam long enough to know if there is a way to argue thus, Islamically. If he believes it cannot be done, he should say so, once and for all. We are all adults. We can take it. In fact, it is his duty to do so, officially and formally, in a Jihad Watch and/or Front Page article. For, if he believes it cannot be done, but continues to be coy about it, he is perpetuating the myth—in practical, not necessarily theoretical or abstract, terms—of a viably “moderate” and reformable Islam. And such a myth perpetuated is actually serving to put off other avenues—also continually left unexplicated by Messrs. Spencer and Fitzgerald—of dealing with this most exigent and deadliest of problems of our time.