The left's willful ignorance of radical Islam

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend

By Arnold Ahlert Saturday, March 12, 2011 On Thursday, a local talk radio host who, like many Americans, was dumbstruck by the left’s hysterical reaction to Peter King’s Congressional hearings regarding Muslim radicalization, decided to read a list of terror plots to which this nation had been subjected since 9/11. It took him more than half an hour to do so. No doubt most Americans are under the impression that liberals oppose these hearings because they’re “racist.” For the typically brainwashed, see-no-evil foot soldiers of progressivism, that’s probably true. Not so for the progressive intelligensia. What they see is someone shining an unflattering spotlight—on their allies. “It feels to me as if there is a real anti-intellectual move on the part of a significant part of the Republican party….the current Republican party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives. They’re very fundamental Christian, and I wouldn’t even call it Christian, it’s this weird evangelical kind of move[ment] . . .The Republican party has been hijacked by this group,”[They weren’t just] “Islamophobic, but xenophobic—they believe in right-wing, middle-America, gun-toting . . . I mean it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people…people like to make snap judgments…that all gays are after your children, that blacks are going to stab you…”No doubt a lot of Americans would be shocked to think that progressives would be aligning themselves with radical Islam. But then again, most people have no idea who progressives consider a far greater threat to America than the mass murderers of jihadism. Here’s a clue: The spokesman? National Public Radio’s Ron Schiller, talking to two “Muslims” he thought were interested in donating five million dollars to NPR. Muslims who ostensibly belonged to the “Muslim Education Action Center,” a group whose fake website said was dedicated in part “to spreading acceptance of sharia around the world.” A group the two fake Muslims claimed was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the most virulent Islamic groups on the planet. Fortunately, it was a sting operation engineered by James O’Keefe who appears to have a genuine knack, as a similar sting against ACORN revealed, for getting progressives to destroy themselves with their own words. National Public Radio’s Ron Schiller revealed the utter bankruptcy of the progressive mindset More importantly, Ron Schiller revealed the utter bankruptcy of the progressive mindset. It is the one which sees one’s fellow Americans as so beneath contempt, that an alliance with people who would destroy the nation becomes a “necessary evil.” Again, if this particular mindset sounds familiar, it’s because it embodies one of the centuries-old traditions of Arabic tribalism: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Progressives who have criticized Congressman Peter King for holding hearings on Islamic radicalization are those whose capacity for self-delusion is boundless. It is a delusion which was temporarily disrupted when Americans were leaping to their deaths from eighty stories above Lower Manhattan, or staggering in horror through dust-choked streets, or staring in disbelief as the two largest towers in New York City collapsed into rubble right before their eyes. But soon after, and ever since, those forever obsessed with “why do they hate us,” re-wraped themselves in their multicultural- and morally relative-inspired mantles of America-loathing denial. They began to re-assert their odious worldview, convinced that every Islamic effort to destroy America was “George Bush’s fault,” and that “fundamental Christians,” “weird evangelicals,” “gun-toting,” and “seriously, seriously racist” Americans were the real “scary” people who needed to be stopped. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The eighteen-acre ditch that scarred New York for ten years? A multicultural misunderstanding. Hate-spewing, jihadist rhetoric emanating daily from American mosques and madrassas? Right-wing Islamophobia. Ongoing attempts by Islamic jihadists to kill Americans? Lone wolves. Surging anti-Semitism on college campuses—including Brooklyn College’s “Israel Apartheid Week” (anyone want to guess what the same college administrators would say to a “Palestinian Apartheid Week”)? Academic freedom. Muslim radicalization occurring in our prison system? Religious expression. Congressional hearings on all of the above? A racist circus. And so they will be characterized as such by those who are so much smarter than the rest of us. So smart that a couple of them (Betsy Liley, “senior director for institutional giving” at NPR also came with Schiller) were willing to “do lunch” with two guys who might have had America’s worst interests at heart if they were the real thing. So smart that the stingers’ desire to spread Sharia Law, or their affiliation with one of the major perpetrators of worldwide terror, didn’t mitigate Schiller or Liley’s desire to get a five million dollar donation for NPR one iota. Donation? Try blood money. One can only wonder what head-snapping, jaw-dropping expression of Islamic terror would be sufficient to wean progressives away from such a distorted wordview. What would it take to change the minds of those for whom bashing Christianity is virtually reflexive, even as they remain apologists for radical Islam? 9/11 didn’t do it. Neither have the seventeen thousand terrorist attacks worldwide since 9/11. A nuclear cloud over an American city? I used to believe there was some sort of threshold, but as I watch the left’s reaction to these hearings, I’m beginning to sense a profound level of arrogance. It is an arrogance based on the idea that progressives consider themselves so morally and intellectually superior, that anything which challenges their worldview—including reality—can be twisted until it conforms with progressivism. As such, all terrorists can be “poor,” despite the fact that many of them are from well-to-do circumstances. They can be “uneducated” despite having attended America universities. They can be “oppressed,” even as it is their fellow Muslims who oppress them. It can be Western society which is “immoral” even as Muslim children are taught to hate Jews and strap on suicide belts to kill them, stone women to death for “adultery” (read rape), and treat all non-Muslims like second-class citizens—when they’re not busy killing them. The West is at war with radical Islam The West is at war with radical Islam. And quite frankly, considering the willful denial of so many people in this administration—from the Director of National Intelligence, James “the Muslim Brotherhood is secular” Clapper, to Homeland Security Secretary Janet “the system worked” Napolitano, from “overseas contingency operation” to unnamed “insurgents”—we have no idea how extensive domestic radicalization has become. Only an idiot—or a progressive—wouldn’t want to know. Better to label the whole effort racist and avert one’s eyes. Better to believe that all religions are equally radical, or at least that Christian terror is equivalent to Muslim terror. Better for progressives to blindly align themselves with jihadists who would destroy this nation—and then progressivism itself, once the need for useful idiots was over. Seventeen thousand terror attacks since 9/11 should be ignored? At what point does willful ignorance become collaboration?