Toleration Conflation

The defenders of Islam on the Left are doing more harm to Western-Islamic relations than any jihadi beheading or car bomb can do.

Mark Steyn writes, that the philosophy of our Left is "When somebody points out certain features of Islam, go after the 'Islamophobe'."

It's this going after the so-called "Islamophobe" that is doing the harm. Our Left likes to insist that we should not wage war on an entire religion. Fair enough. But when somebody points out that certain members of that religion actually promote violence, celebrate violence, and carry out violence in a fashion so gruesome as to be sickening, these Western defenders of Islam insist that such a narrowly focused charge against the jihadis in question is, in fact, a slander against the entire Moslem religion.

So these Westerners bolster the jihadists' claim to speak for all Moslems by refusing to distinguish between the jihadis and Moslems.

These sensitive Westerners undermine the bulk of Moslems who'd rather not be lumped in with the jihadis by making criticism of the radicals seem like an assault on Islam. If the jihadis claim to speak for all Islam and Westerners insist that it is anti-Islam to criticize jihadis, how are moderate Moslems supposed to stand up against the jihadis?

And these so-called tolerant Westerners make it more likely for average Western citizens to draw the conclusion that all Moslems must be as crazed as the jihadi head loppers, since these average citizens are told again and again that speaking out against the jihadis is the same as speaking out against all Moslems. Why shouldn't the logical conclusion be that jihadis must really speak for all Moslems?

So if there is ever a war of civilizations between Islam and the West, it won't be because George Bush wages war on jihadis. It will be because "tolerant" Westerners refuse to admit we can fight jihadis without including average Moslems in the "enemy" column.