The Response Options
Yesterday , I quoted extensively from Andrew Sullivan’s blog on the “religious roots of today’s era of terrorism ”. Today, he had a follow-up with many good points. He seems to feel that many flinch at the prospect of calling Islamic terrorism what it is because they fear the world may go Nazi on the Muslims. Actually a fear of the world going all George W. Bush on the Muslims is a more valid fear: “I think it’s perfectly possible to agree with that analysis of what is going on, while disagreeing on what to actually do about it. There’s this tendency to conflate a willingness to recognize some core illiberal parts of Islam as the problem with an invade-occupy-and-torture strategy of the last administration. But the two are easily separable. ” An all-military approach won’t work: it’s been tried and not only did it not work; it also added fuel to the terrorist recruiting fire. Reforming them from outside is not possible (how can the hated, lowly kafir point out anything to imp...