The Other Islam

Richard Holbrooke, former ambassador to the U.N. under a previous President, believes we need to understand the enemy. He says, “Unless people know whom we are fighting, it will be virtually impossible to win the war of ideas that is such a key part of this struggle.” It is more than a war on terror, he notes. But what does he suggest? Sit down for this one:

How about making it simple and specific: something like "the war against Osama bin laden and his followers"? And then create an all-out, no-holds-barred campaign to expose, ridicule, and destroy everything he and his ilk stand for - murder, horror, intolerance, disrespect for human life, and a false view of Islam.

The false view? In the same issue of the New York Sun, Mark Steyn remarks:

Only a tiny minority of Muslims want to be suicide bombers and only a slightly larger minority want actively to provide support networks for suicide bombers, but big majorities of Muslims support almost all the terrorists, strategic goals: for example, according to a recent poll, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under sharia in the United Kingdom. That's a "moderate" westernized Muslim: he wants stoning for adultery to be introduced in Liverpool, but he's a "moderate" because it's not such a priority that he's prepared to fly a plane into a skyscraper. [italics mine]

It appears that most Muslims share this false view, at least in such isolated backwater places like … England! Perhaps someone might give us a hint about the “true view” of Islam so that we may tell the Muslims who are clearly confused.

We, of course, should be open to an accurate description of the doctrinal differences between different types of Islam. More sophisticated commentators will describe the Islam of bin Laden as part of the Salafi tradition of Islam. Salafi basically means original Islam. Often, this is described as the Islam of Muhammad and the first four Rightly Guided Caliphs. The logical question that arises is that if Salafi Islam is the Islam of Muhammad what is the other Islam?

No doubt, the implication is that Salafi is only a literal following of the Koran and Hadith ... similar to that found in Londonistan (hat tip Gandalf.)