There is no satisfying answer yet to the question in the title, Is the American Right Improving re: Islam? At times, however, we tend to think the Right are improving, but they have not tackled the fundamental hangup which stands as THEIR Achilles Heel.
Clifford May from Foundation for the Defense of Democracies illustrates one of the crippling thought hangups of the Right.
The War Against the Free World
By Clifford D. May, Scripps Howard News Service, July 28, 2005
America is not fighting a war against Islam. America is fighting a war against Islamism.
...bin Laden...[is]...a renegade, an enemy of Islam who brings shame to the faith. (Emphases mine)
Mr. May should know better than to try to cobble together some bogus differentiation between "Islam" and "Islamism," and try to peddle the notion that we are not at war with Islam. These snippets illustrate one of the severe thinking handicaps hobbling intellectuals on the Right. Bin Laden, in fact, magnificently represents orthodox Islam, the apocalyptic side of Islam. His is the real Islam, stripped of fundamental contradictions and "moderations," which the orthodox Muslims rightly call "hypocrisy."
It does not take much reading to come to realize that Islam is Islam, that Islam is as Islam has always been, and that there is just one Islam at root. All these pseudo-distinctions between Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Wahhabi, moderate, and any other are mere superficialities. Islam is what it says it is, and it has not deviated since 900 C.E. There is no "Islam vs Islamism." It is all Islam, and bin Laden is the real meaning of Islam, just as much as Khameini in Iran. Bin Laden does not bring shame to the faith; he brings glory to Islam in its authentic meaning, just as the mullahs of Iran glorify Islam.
And, yes, we are at war with Islam. From the Right, all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot make this "Humpty Dumpty" be what he is not. People die and suffer greatly because of the war with Islam. This is a war that Islam declared on us. The Right had no trouble at the time, nor now, knowing that we were at war with Japan and Nazi Germany, not selected individuals. The same truth applies to Islam. Why the reticence to identify the material provided by ones' senses?
Sometimes there are suggestions that some on the Right are improving. Michael Medved on his talk radio show will now at least interview people like Dr. Robert Morey and Victor Mordecai, experts who take very reasoned, hard-lined, and consistent positions against Islam, something Mr. Medved cannot yet do. Yet, he will now talk critically about Islam. A year or so ago, he was caught up so much in right wing political correctness, which in part takes the form of religious correctness, that it made him sound like Mr. May's comment. He inches now toward acknowledging that the war is with Islam, and the problem IS Islam. Michael Savage is the closest to naming the full truth of all of the syndicated hosts I hear, and Sean Hannity is the farthest away.
Where I live, we have a local conservative talk radio host in the afternoons who now speaks favorably of the need for profiling Muslims. It seems that the events of 7 and 21 July 2005 in London moved his thinking a little farther down the line and slightly away from his zealous religious correctness. He seems mute these days about terrorism arising from hijacked Islam, and the usual line that the politically correct spout.
Alas, however, political correctness on the Right still reigns. When Representative Tom Tancredo's remarks to a radio interview circulated, right wing talk radio hosts either were silent or went nuts condemning the congressman. They attacked their interpretation of what he said, not what the congressman actually said. The notion of even thinking about attacking the cardinal Muslim holy sites turned so many of these syndicated radio hosts rabid. Their religious correctness took over their thought processes and banished rational thought from their minds.
Then, even more disturbing, has been the response of the right wing, particularly right wing talk radio, to the events at radio station WMAL, 630 a.m., in Washington, DC. In July 2005, as we documented on this blog, talk show host Michael Graham spoke critically of Islam. CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) went into high gear to mobilize its claque to harrass WMAL into dhimmitude, into making WMAL kowtow and apologize. A few days later, Mr. Graham published an explanatory article on Jewish World Review. This article plus the harrassment by CAIR against WMAL and its advertisers produced the dhimmi response in WMAL, and Mr. Graham was suspended without pay. Mr. Graham's article contained one, really minor, historical error but was otherwise absolutely correct about Islam and its role in contemporary terrorism. Mr. Graham's replacement host, Geoff Metcalf, spoke about the formalized lying practices used by Islam, about which he was 100% correct, and he came under fire from CAIR.
CAIR had two purposes in its assault on WMAL. The short-range purpose was to induce a dhimmitudinous state of mind in WMAL directly, with expectations that the fright would ripple outward to scare other stations and their hosts out of criticizing Islam. The longer-range purpose was to shut down free speech, in essence, to abrogate the first amendment by having dhimmis censor themselves. These purposes go far beyond, but immediately they play into the hands of people like Senator Harkin who want to shut down right wing talk radio all together. The implications and ramifications are huge for America.
So, what has been the response of syndicated right wing talk radio to the WMAL situation? That's just what the problem is: there has been no response. These people, under the precedent of threat to their existence and to our free speech, have said little or nothing. I myself have heard nothing from Medved, Hannity, Limbaugh, Savage, Larson, or anyone else on local or national right wing talk radio [of course, something might have escaped my catching it, but, if so, it was fleeting and really "beneath the radar"]. Other than Diana West and World Net Daily, where are the right wing press and related media? Fox News? Nothing, and nothing could disturb me more--political correctness of the right has gotten their tongues. Better said, it has gotten their minds.
It is wrong to accuse the Left and the amorphous middle about succumbing to political correctness while leaving out the Right. The Right may be even more dangerous with their brand of political correctness. Look, even the President of the United States will not name the enemy we are dealing with in this nebulously named "war on terror." He will talk of the enemies having hateful ideology, but he won't name it. He is already talking like a semi-dhimmi.
Those Islamists engaged in this war from Islam against the West fully recognize how political correctness has so many in America paralyzed. CAIR and similar organizations use it against us all the time, with great effectiveness. We are letting our enemies turn us into a nation of dhimmis, in preparation for becoming an Islamic state.
Her words are so important, that this statement by Bat Ye'Or regarding making us mental dhimmis FIRST cannot be over-stressed:
Dhimmitude is characterised by the victim's siding with his oppressors, by the moral justification the victim provides for his oppressors' hateful behavior, and by the destruction of the victim's own self by a mental enslavement of love and admiration toward his oppressors. Willfully serving his oppressors, the dhimmi loses the sense of his own rights and humanity. He loses the possibility of revolt because revolt arises from a sense of injustice, and the dhimmi justifies the injustices done against him because he is utterly destroyed as a human being.
Yes, there are some inklings of improvement. With the publication of Robert Spencer's new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), the Right seem to be mobilizing. Even the National Review Book Service which dhimmied before CAIR to remove Fr. Menzies' book about Muhammad from its offerings, now pushes the Spencer book. So do Town Hall, World Net Daily, and NewsMax. Even the Conservative Book Club has made it a major selection. Not too long ago, pushing material critical of Islam was too much for too many on the Right--it was religiously incorrect. Time, bombings, and continuing slaughters might be turning the tide to the right. We can only hope.
From our perspective, the Right is still changing insufficiently in terms of quality and quantity. It's fundamental lesion is its militant blindness to seeing and naming the truth. Until it does, it is just another drayhorse in harness, pulling along with the Left, down the wrong road.
