The Real Foreign-Policy Failure

National Review ^ | 10/27/2012 | Andrew C. McCarthy

[Servant of the Cross]

Last week, Doug Feith and Seth Cropsey co-authored a very interesting and important op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, “A Foreign Policy Failure to Acknowledge the Obvious.” It is about President Obama’s denial of the Islamist threat. In it, they zero in on two “strategic misjudgments” the administration has made:

First is the refusal to accept that the terrorism threat is part of a larger problem of Islamist extremism. And second is the belief that terrorism is spawned not by religious fanaticism but by grievances about social, economic, and other problems for which America bears fault.

This is largely right. If it were internalized by a Romney administration, it would be a step in the right direction. Still, the essay goes awry in significant ways.

Let’s start with the authors’ intimation that “religious fanaticism” causes terrorism. To be sure, that’s a better explanation than the Left’s “blame America first” approach. Yet, it still misses the mark. The real cause is ideology, not religion. The distinction is worth drawing because, for the most part, Islamist terror is not fueled by Muslim zealousness for Islam’s religious tenets — for instance, “the oneness of Allah.” We Westerners recognize such beliefs as belonging to the realm of religion or spirituality. To the contrary, Islamist terror is driven by the supremacism and totalitarianism of Middle Eastern Islam — i.e., by the perception of believers that they are under a divine injunction to impose all of Islam’s tenets.

[Servant of the Cross]

Andy McCarthy is the foremost expert on the ideology of Islamic supremicism, which the world must fight against on every battleground. Long article, but worth the read.

[John Valentine]

The real cause is ideology, not religion. The distinction is worth drawing because, for the most part, Islamist terror is not fueled by Muslim zealousness for Islam’s religious tenets — for instance, “the oneness of Allah.” We Westerners recognize such beliefs as belonging to the realm of religion or spirituality. To the contrary, Islamist terror is driven by the supremacism and totalitarianism of Middle Eastern Islam — i.e., by the perception of believers that they are under a divine injunction to impose all of Islam’s tenets.

This is a distinction without a difference and one probably not worth quibbling about. For a Muslim, there isn't any real distinction to be made between Islam's "religious" tenets and it's "political" ones, or for that matter with its "hygienic" ones.

For a Muslim, the Five Pillars, the injunction to wage Jihad, and the instruction to shave the body between knee and navel, front and back, but not to shave facial hair are all requirements having the same primal source: they are the commands of God.

I suppose that it is true that some Muslims are more fanatic or less fanatic about one part or another of the spectrum of insanity that comprises their faith, but it is folly to think that it is possible for a non-Muslim to drive a wedge between one command of the Muslim almighty and another. That will always and only depend on the peculiar pathology of the individual Muslim adherent.

[Excellence]

Islam and Sharia are inextricably bound. To accord first amendment rights to Islam is to accord first amendment rights to Sharia. Mc Carthy, sadly, is delusional.