Fitzgerald: They know. Don't forgive them.

"The government wants to 'avoid reinforcing and giving succour to the terrorists’ narrative by using language that, taken out of context, could be counter-productive,' a Foreign Office spokesman told The Observer." -- from this article

Yes, of course. Do not "reinforce and give succour to the terrorists' narrative." The terrorists' "narrative." Yes, it's MLA Time in the chanceries and corridors of power of the West, and we have a clash of "competing narratives." Put down your Palmerston and Clausewitz, pick up your Jonathan Culler and your Foucault and your...oh god, does it matter?

You see, as someone on this side of the ocean has said, "Islam is whatever Muslims say it is." If we just tip-toe around what Muslims have been saying it is for 1350 years, and demonstrating what they think it is for 1350 years, then the good Muslims, the Muslims who are so very good that they hate so very much all of the tenets of Islam concerning non-Muslims, and would in a minute, if they could, do away with that Believer/Infidel divide that is so central to Islam, why then eventually -- oh, give it a few hundred years, maybe a hundred if we're very lucky -- we lambs can sit down with their lions, now also lamb-like (though some of those little lambs do have a bleat that, if you listen closely, sounds very much like a roar) -- and all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.

So don't mention what is in the Qur'an and the Hadith. Stop picking on nice Mr. Muhammad by telling Infidels some of the things -- the many things –- that he said and did that do not correspond to the figure we must join in revering. For not to revere is to criticize, as Muslims see it; to criticize is to scorn; to scorn is to hate; to hate is to deserve hatred and therefore to merit being murdered. Take the links of that little non-isnad chain and wrap those around your neck, Western civilization, then -- as the British government advises -- jump from a height to the lower depths of self-abasement and squalor.

Yes, keep that "narrative" clean by hiding facts, changing phrases, doing whatever you can not to offend those Good Muslims we are all counting on. What is a Good Muslim again? A Good Muslim consists of all those Muslims who, though they are perfectly aware of what is written in the Qur'an and Hadith, perfectly aware of what Muhammad said and did, perfectly aware of the goal of Jihad, Jihad as a central duty of Islam, to push back and swallow up Dar al-Harb into Dar al-Islam, nonetheless remain Muslims, and work to prevent critical scrutiny or understanding -- but of course not "understanding" -- of Islam.

And some, such as those behind the suppression of this phrase “War on Terror” (an idiotic phrase by the way, but it is not being suppressed because of its idiocy, but because of the offense it might give to Muslims and the ideas it might give to Infidels), think that "if only" the "narrative" is changed, then Islam can be, as that commentator on this side of the ocean likes to say, "whatever Muslims say it is." No doubt we are expected to believe that these Good Muslims who know what the contents of Islamic texts contain are remaining Muslims only "in order to fight the system from within." Yes, that's it. They're working "within the system" to change it, rather than leaving Islam, like silly Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ibn Warraq and Ali Sina and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of the very best people born, through no fault of their own, into Islam.

"Narratives."

"Competing narratives."

The MLA and MESA Nostra and the American Political Science Association and the Foreign Service and the governments of the major Infidel lands together, fighting Islam the only way they apparently know how.

Forgive them, Lord. They know not what they do. No, they know. Don't forgive them.

Posted by Hugh at December 10, 2006 5:52 PM
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