Over at PJ Media I offer my contribution to the New Diplomatic Style:
Michelle Obama’s #BringBackOurGirls hashtag, although taken up among the glitterati, has been ridiculed as emblematic of her husband’s weakness and lack of will in the face of Islamic jihad. This is, however, unfair not only to Mrs. Obama, but to Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes, Mel Gibson and the other noted human rights activists who have endorsed this campaign. After all, it is not the only Obama administration response to the kidnapping, forcible conversion to Islam, and sex slavery of these girls (in accord with Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 33:50, etc.). The administration has now announced that it is sending U.S. troops to help find these girls. Eighty troops. To Chad.
I am not in favor of Wilsonian “nation-building” military adventures in Muslim countries with no tradition of or desire for a pluralistic society that accords equal rights to women and non-Muslims, or for republican rule that would approve laws other than those mandated by Allah in the Qur’an and Sunnah. However, it would be hard to oppose an all-out effort directed toward eradicating Boko Haram – that is, the Party of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad – from the face of the earth.
That, of course, is not what Obama is doing. He is sending a tiny number of troops to a country the girls are not in, so as to engage in aerial reconnaissance to try to find them. But what does a kidnapped schoolgirl who has been forcibly converted to Islam and married to a jihadist look like from the air? U.S. officials know that these girls have been dispersed, which only emphasizes that this initiative is more about style than substance – just like Michelle’s hashtag campaign.
But if that’s what U.S. diplomacy looks like in the Obamanation, then let’s make the most of it. Here are six more hashtags that Michelle (and Rocky, and Han Solo, and Nino Brown) can use to declare their righteous indignation before the world:…
2. #StopHatingJews
Muhammad Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood’s general guide, had his day in court in Egypt last week, and strongly rejected charges that the Brotherhood had committed acts of violence against the Egyptian people. “We have fought only against the Jews,” Badie declared, “and Kamel Al-Sharif may testify about the conduct of the Muslim Brotherhood in the [1948] war in Palestine. We fought against the Jews. The Israeli strategic research institute wrote in a report: ‘Our greatest enemies in the world are the Muslim Brotherhood.’ This is an honor for us, yet now we are being accused of conspiring with Hamas against the Egyptian people. This is an absolute lie.”The idea that Badie would think that the Brotherhood’s making war against “the Jews” (not “the Israelis”) would be an exonerating factor, and that his accusers would take it as such, shows the depth and breadth of Islamic antisemitism. That is not surprising, considering that the Qur’an designates the Jews as “the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers” (5:82), but it certainly militates against the “peace process” that Michelle’s husband has been so ardently pushing, heedless of Palestinian intransigence, unilateralism, and taste for genocidal rhetoric.
Surely a well-worded hashtag would devastate Badie and other Islamic antisemites, and more than do the trick here.
1. #Don’tBoastOfConqueringUs
Recently video surfaced of Islamic jihadists from various countries fighting in Iraq as part of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Quoting the Qur’an and chanting “Allahu akbar,” they declared “to the tyrants and infidels wherever they may be”: “We say to you, as the Prophet Muhammad said: ‘We have brought slaughter upon you.’” Chanting, “We are Muslims! We are Muslims!,” they burned their passports – after one brandished a sword and exclaimed: “Know this, oh infidels: By Allah, we shall cleanse the Arabian Peninsula of you, you filth. We shall conquer Jerusalem from you, oh Jews! We shall conquer Rome and Andalusia, Allah willing.”
This declaration of Islamic conquest and slaughter flies in the face of the understanding of Islam as benign, tolerant and pluralistic that we must accept in the U.S. on pain of charges of “bigotry” and “Islamophobia.” They will conquer Jerusalem, Rome, and Spain, will they? Not if our hashtags have anything to say about it!
I shudder to think of the embarrassment and shame these jihadis will feel when they consult their Twitter feeds.
Read the rest here.