In PJ Media, I discuss some who capitulated in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo jihad attack, some key Western leaders and media outlets immediately fell obediently into line, carefully avoiding saying anything about Islam or jihad that even the most terror-inclined Muslims would dislike, and thereby giving the Paris jihadis exactly what they wanted. Here are the most egregious capitulators:
1. White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
Earnest said Thursday that the U.S. was going to “redouble” efforts to get the message out about the true, peaceful Islam, as opposed to the violent, hijacked version. He noted that,
there are some individuals that are using a peaceful religion and grossly distorting it, and trying to use its tenets to inspire people around the globe to carry out acts of violence.
Imitating his boss, immediately after stating the problem, Earnest declared victory:
And we have enjoyed significant success in enlisting leaders in the Muslim community, like I said, both in the United States and around the world to condemn that kind of messaging, to condemn those efforts to radicalize individuals, and to be clear about what the tenets of Islam actually are. And we’re going to redouble those efforts in the days and weeks ahead.
This is a great idea. The White House should indeed redouble its efforts to explain what the Qur’an and Sunnah actually say. If it did this honestly, this would lead to a massive change in its foreign and domestic policies. What’s the downside?
But of course the problem with this is that the White House is enveloped in a fog of willful ignorance about Islam’s texts and teachings, and Earnest here is only saying that they’re going to redouble their efforts to thicken that fog, further shielding Muslims from any critical examination of how the teachings of the Qur’an and Muhammad incite violence.
It might seem odd to say that this plays into the hands of the likes of the Charlie Hebdo jihadis, who obviously don’t believe that Islam is a Religion of Peace. However, it is very likely that even though they don’t believe that, they want you to – for then you will be ignorant and complacent in the face of the advancing jihad, instead of preparing defensive strategies. Slander, remember, in Islam is “to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike.” Thus in pushing the Obama Administration’s rainbows-and-unicorns fantasy of a peaceful Islam, Earnest is protecting the religion from slander, which is just what the Kouachi brothers thought they were doing when they started killing people in the Charlie Hebdo offices.
2. Ron Paul
Libertarian leader Ron Paul on Wednesday brushed aside the jihadis’ claim to have “avenged” Muhammad and blamed France’s foreign policy for the Charlie Hebdo attack:
France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs in Libya, and they really prodded us along in — recently in Libya, but they’ve been involved in Algeria, so they’ve had attacks like this, you know, not infrequently. So, it does involve, you know, their foreign policy as well…. I put blame on bad policy that we don’t fully understand, and we don’t understand what they’re doing because the people who are objecting to the foreign policy that we pursue.
Paul and other paleocons such as The American Conservative are fanatically attached to the idea that Islamic jihad is all a reaction to the West’s foreign policy — so much so that they have frequently turned a blind eye to the jihadis’ stated agenda, and see the depredations of Western foreign policy where it actually played no part. The Charlie Hebdo jihad massacre was about cartoons of Muhammad, and the Islamic death penalty for insulting Muhammad. The West’s foreign policy regarding the Islamic world and the jihad threat is cartoonish, but that doesn’t make the Charlie Hebdo massacre about the West’s foreign policy.
Paul gives the jihadis what they want by blaming the West for the actions of the jihadis, thereby feeding the jihadist narrative of grievance, and making future concessions from the West all the more likely….
Read the rest here.