Cute kittens born every day on Jihad Watch

Yet again, Spencer on Jihad Watch couches his editorial remarks in the framework of expectation: the expectation, that is, that Muslims anywhere should—and therefore can—step up to the plate and begin the process of a reform relevant to our self-defense needs.

Another kitten to add to the litter of years on Jihad Watch:

With regard to a recent news story out of the UK about a Muslim convert who embarked upon a militantly jihadist career, Spencer observes (emphasis in bold mine):

Here again an increase of interest in and commitment to Islam apparently coincides with involvement with jihadist activity. The implications are many, and American and British Muslim groups that profess moderation ought to be the first to be examining them. But of course, instead they are still engaged in denying that any such correlation exists, despite a superabundance of evidence to the contrary.

Now, the reflexive defender of Spencer might wish to object that the “But of course” clause that immediately follows the bolded sentence sufficiently qualifies it and renders its explicit expectation innocuous—if not, indeed, turning it around to make it rhetorically undermine such an expectation.

Such an objection, however, would ignore at least three facts:

1) Spencer is on record establishing that he is firmly not anti-Islam and not anti-Muslim

2) Spencer is on record firmly convinced of the putative fact that millions of Muslims are harmless and that therefore on that basis one cannot and should not make the blanket statement that “Muslims are only loyal to Islam” (never mind that Spencer, when he objected strenuously to this blanket statement by a Jihad Watch reader, implicitly, and ultimately incoherently, conceded the implicit claim of that reader’s uniform condemnation of Islam as a bad thing to which loyalty imputes a bad thing—a condemnation which Spencer then felt obliged to reject, evidently forgetting that according to him, Islam is not necessarily a bad thing to be loyal to!)

3) #1 and #2 would be irrelevant and meaningless if Spencer really believed that we cannot sufficiently tell the difference between harmless Muslims and dangerous Muslims: He must therefore think it is possible to tell that difference, sufficiently—no matter how “unlikely” he likes to put it in his weaselly and gingerly terms that ultimately serve no purpose but to keep him suspended in his untenable position of refusing to take a stand—and that such a possibility puts a sufficient number of Muslims rising to the challenge of his repeated expectation also in the realm of viable possibility.

(For a fuller treatment of this problem, see my recent 4-part series, Robert Spencer: Soft on Islam?)

I now believe this equivocal stance of Spencer’s is not only misguided; it positively serves to perpetuate a climate that will help to hinder the rational ruthlessness we need to cultivate for our exigent pro-active self-defense. We need to wrap our minds around the fact that any sufficiently viable Islamic reform is impossible, and we need to mobilize our actions accordingly.

I will be damned if I wait until after one of our cities is nuked, before I expect this baseline epiphany of our influential analysts.