Our Prejudice

Prejudice is an obstacle to understanding and most people abhor such injustice. However, shouts of prejudice, when used as a means to cut short any investigation, are manipulative tactics of intimidation. Islamic apologists, who want to exploit the ignorance of Americans, resort to this tactic to establish a wall of protection that pre-empts a critical examination of the Islamic religion.

They just don’t want you to learn the truth about Islam. You can sense the hysteria whenever someone presents an extensive examination of the ideology and historical record. As the negatives mount, instead of trying to refute the evidence, apologists resort to angry name-calling: “racist, prejudice, bigotry, hate!” Such tactics of intimidation are an admission that Islam can’t be defended.

A recurring pattern of intimidation, however, works. Slowly a taboo is established that prevents the critical examination of Islam. What results, ironically, is prejudice – a positive prejudice. Today we see a positive predisposition to view Islam as benign. This isn’t a result of knowledge – most people are still ignorant about Islam – but a pre-judgment. It is this prejudice that we have to work against.

Such blindness can be lethal. During the 1930s apologists downplayed the threats of communism and Nazism. I’ve discussed, more than once, the willful blindness, during the 1930s, to the horrors of communism. I’ll talk about the problem many had facing the threat of Nazism in a future post but most intelligent people know the history in a general sense.

In many ways, Islam is similar to the totalitarian threats of the 20^th century but until recently Islamists lacked the financial means and military technology to commit the atrocities on the scale that we’ve seen by secular illiberal ideologies. After being defeated by Israel in conventional wars, Islamists have temporarily resorted to covert attacks that invigorate their spirit (“our success is a sign from Allah”) and motivate recruitment while technological means are being acquired or developed. They openly state that their goal is to defeat and conquer the West. A nuclear destruction of a Western city is their Holy Grail – the ultimate sign from Allah.

While Islamic apologists are busy condemning a fictitious negative prejudice they call Isalmophobia, Muslims have created the most extensive hate-movement since the 1930s. The polls showing over 90% express hatred of American and Jews lead some self-deprecating Western commentators to ask “why do they hate us?” as if we did something to earn that hatred. It’s extremely hard for many to see such hate-filled people as the hate-mongers they are. Yes, some of that hate is manipulative, but there is a core group of virulent hate-mongers that seek our destruction. And the general culture of hate and paranoia feeds the virulent and vicious among them.

The growth of this movement is little understood. A typical victim psychology has gripped Western commentators who seek hope in the illusion that it’s our fault and we can change it. Yet, it continues to surprise everyone by its worldwide growth from the Middle East to the Philippines, to Nigeria, and to the clerics who openly preach these doctrines in London.

Israelis were shocked that after Oslo there weren’t just one or two suicide bombers but, at its peak, a steady stream of daily attacks that seemed endless until the wall was built. Over the "Oslo decade" a whole generation was indoctrinated with the Islamist virus. Even leftist Israeli propagandists, like Benny Morris, who wrote volumes as a revisionist historian (see The Oslo Syndrome), admitted that he hadn’t figured on the influence of Islam. “So there is something else here, something deeper that has to do with Islam and Arab culture … There is a deep problem in Islam. It’s a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn’t have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game.”

Americans and Iraqis are shocked that aside from pockets of resistance, continuous streams of jihadists attack Iraqi citizens on a daily basis. Few can face the broad revival of Islam as a vibrant warrior ideology originally practiced by Mohammad. "It must be something we did," say the apologists. Yet, secular dictators only hid this growing movement. Even Saddam had to admit the power of the revival by the creation of a massive mosque-building program. Philosophy – religious or secular – has a way of reasserting itself in the long-run unless refuted and replaced by a secure and sound alternative.

Today we face a hate-filled supremacist ideologically-driven movement with imperialist designs. Like the 1930s, our blindness virtually guarantees its growth to the point that it will take massive death and destruction before people face the evil in our presence. Prejudice – even a positive prejudice – is a loss of contact with reality that leads to fatal consequences. We must wake up; we will wake up! The only question is before or after the next major atrocity. We have to fight to insure that it sooner rather than later.