Common sense and clear thinking from Spengler in Asia Times (thanks to rickb):
Western polemicists felt at home on the moral high ground against communism, along with president Reagan. But they are tongue-tied before radical Islam, fearing to offend a religion with more than a billion adherents. Inadvertently they give credibility to the radicals. It is difficult to assess what proportion of today’s Muslims are “radicals”, because neither the world’s Muslims nor the West has a clear definition of what is radical and what is not. Vitriolic sermonizing is so commonplace under the eyes of “moderate” regimes, for example Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, that the label of “radical Islam” has worn thin.
In reality, the West sooner or later will have to draw a bright line between “radicals” and “moderates”. Under the circumstances there can be nothing in between. Islam’s encounter with the West leaves room for nothing but radical jihadists on the one hand, or radical reformers. Islam is expansionist by construction and political by its original design. It is a fact of history that jihad, by which I mean specifically the propagation of the faith by violence, is a mainstream tradition. Even communal prayer in Islam has at its center the alignment of the individual believer to jihad (Does Islam have a prayer?, May 18). …
The problem actually is quite simple. To advocate jihad today is the hallmark of the radical Islamist, and it is there that the West must draw a line in the sand. But to repudiate jihad in turn implies radical revision of the religion’s mainstream, and that is the hallmark of the radical reformer.
Like other religions, Islam has reached a point in world history – or rather world history has caught up with Islam – such that it must undergo a fundamental change. By way of comparison, the Catholic Church accepts separation of church and state as well as religious tolerance, but it did so only after the likes of Count Camillo Benso Cavour in Italy stripped the papacy of temporal rule over anything but the square mile of the Vatican City. …
Enemy is radical Islam
In short, the West must give the Islamic world a clear choice as to who is with it, and who is against it – words that President Bush has used but with muddled meaning. That would change the character of the intelligence war utterly. It may be harder to define who is friend and foe today than it was in 1981, but by the same token, it will be far easier to tell friend from foe once the West carves its criteria in stone. …
If Washington were to make repudiation of jihad a condition for friendship with the United States, the demand would have unpredictable and destabilizing consequences for the Islamic world. Just as the race of Sovietologists viewed Reagan’s determination to destabilize the Soviet Empire with horror, the whole profession of Mideast studies would rear up in horror against such a stance. But wars are won by ignoring the fat and complacent commanders of garrison troops, and forcing the burden of uncertainty on to the other side (Ronald Reagan’s creative destruction, June 8). Decisive intelligence stems from destabilization of the opposing side, through defections and similar events.
Bravo.