Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Creating a New Narrative in Terrorism
Why would you want to avoid calling terrorism "Islamic" when it is Muslims committing the violence?
Because if you give it a different name, islamist or whatever, you give the western moderate Muslims a path of action, a narrative to invoke, that will separate them from the extremist members of the community.
Remember to win this conflict we must win the loyalty and support of the majority of the Muslim world. Alienating them will not achieve this. This is a basic fact is ignored by most of the anti-politically correctness crowd when they cry about surrender to Islam.
It was Bill Posner that got me on this rant.
The EU's ostrich-like approach is stupid and dangerous for the way it ignores the very real fact of Islamic terrorism, but it is also linguistically ignorant since the phrase "Islamic terrorism" carries no implication that all Muslims support terrorism or that Islam is particularly associated with terrorism. By the same token, "Christian opposition to gay marriage" does not imply that all Christians are opposed to gay marriage or that Christians are particularly associated with opposition to gay marriage. If one must be politically correct, one should start from a correct understanding of the language at issue.
Yet again another American thinks he can lecture Europeans on terrorism. Hey punk, ever heard of the IRA, ETA, Algiers, Red Brigades, Bader-Meinhof, Corsican Separatists, and Black September. What are these? Terrorist group that have been active in Europe. Europe knows how to deal with terrorists. They have been doing it for years while you have been in a peaceful la la land. Do not lecture them on the threat of terrorism when your nation is making every newbie mistake in the book.
Because if you give it a different name, islamist or whatever, you give the western moderate Muslims a path of action, a narrative to invoke, that will separate them from the extremist members of the community.
Remember to win this conflict we must win the loyalty and support of the majority of the Muslim world. Alienating them will not achieve this. This is a basic fact is ignored by most of the anti-politically correctness crowd when they cry about surrender to Islam.
It was Bill Posner that got me on this rant.
The EU's ostrich-like approach is stupid and dangerous for the way it ignores the very real fact of Islamic terrorism, but it is also linguistically ignorant since the phrase "Islamic terrorism" carries no implication that all Muslims support terrorism or that Islam is particularly associated with terrorism. By the same token, "Christian opposition to gay marriage" does not imply that all Christians are opposed to gay marriage or that Christians are particularly associated with opposition to gay marriage. If one must be politically correct, one should start from a correct understanding of the language at issue.
Yet again another American thinks he can lecture Europeans on terrorism. Hey punk, ever heard of the IRA, ETA, Algiers, Red Brigades, Bader-Meinhof, Corsican Separatists, and Black September. What are these? Terrorist group that have been active in Europe. Europe knows how to deal with terrorists. They have been doing it for years while you have been in a peaceful la la land. Do not lecture them on the threat of terrorism when your nation is making every newbie mistake in the book.
