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Monday, August 30, 2010

Tolerating Terror

Andy McCarthy offers a test for distinguishing between moderate adherents of Islam and extremists: Simply ask them whether they agree with the Obama State Department that Hamas is a terrorist organization. If they refuse even to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist group, much less condemn them for it, they are implicitly condoning terrorism and can hardly be considered "moderates." It's not unlike someone refusing to condemn the KKK lynchings during the Jim Crow era. One would have to wonder why someone couldn't bring himself to renounce such atrocities.

It turns out, by the way, that when Feisal Rauf, the promoter of the Ground Zero mosque, was given this test he failed:
During a WABC radio interview, Aaron Klein three times pressed Rauf to admit that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Rauf bobbed and weaved in classic Islamist style. “I’m not a politician,” he replied, as if only politicians trouble themselves over whether terrorists are terrorists. “I try to avoid the issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.” Avoid the issues? You don’t say!
I'm reminded of the young college student who, at a David Horowitz lecture, stood up and, sounding very reasonable, asked for a clarification about something Horowitz had written. In the course of his response Horowitz asked her if she would condemn Hamas. She refused. He then cited the statement by a leader of Hezbollah who said that he hopes all Jews return to Israel because it'll save Muslims the trouble of hunting them down and killing them. They can just kill them all in Israel. Horowitz asked the young lady whether she agreed with that statement, and her immediate, straightforward reply was that she did. Pretty chilling:
Surely there are pious, peaceful Muslims who are aghast at this young student's reply to Horowitz and who will not hesitate to speak out against terrorism and violence and those among their co-religionists who employ it, but unless they rise up and seize their faith back from the extremists and those who abet them, non-Muslim Americans will more and more come to think that the concept of the "moderate Muslim" is really just a myth. When all one hears are the radical voices it's inevitable that one begin to think that radicals are the mainstream.