By Daniel
Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com
The great paradox of the War on Terror is
that we are fighting an enemy that doesn’t
exist. We are told incessantly that there is
no such thing as a Muslim terrorist.
There
may be a tiny minority of violent
extremists, but they are only a tiny
minority of no importance whatsoever. And
yet we’ve been at war with this same
infinitesimally tiny minority for decades.
This tiny minority has killed thousands of
Americans. It has the support of entire
governments in tiny countries like Pakistan
(182 million), Iran (77 million) and Syria
(22 million). We are told that this tiny
minority is no way representative of the
world’s billion Muslims, and yet it’s hard
to find a Muslim country that doesn’t
support or harbor a terrorist group.
We were told that the problems was their
governments, but the Arab Spring showed us
that democratic elections lead to
governments that are even more supportive of
tiny minority of extremists who are somehow
taking over entire countries.
Everything we’ve been told is obviously a
lie. And the best evidence comes from the
liars themselves.
The media is howling that a bunch of
cartoonists in Texas were irresponsible for
sketching Islam’s dead warlord because they
should have known that Muslim terrorists
would come to kill them for it. But if the
media is right and Islam is a religion of
peace, then why should they have anticipated
a terrorist attack?
And if Islam isn’t a religion of peace, then
the media has been irresponsibly lying to us
and the cartoonists have been risking their
lives to warn us of that lie.
The talking heads on the television insist
that the cartoon contest was irresponsible
because there were bound to be “some
crazies” who would “take the bait”. But if
Islam is no more violent than any other
religion, shouldn’t it be just as
statistically likely that some Christian or
Jewish crazies would attack one of the art
exhibits, plays or musicals ridiculing and
blaspheming against their religions?
Weren’t museums and galleries exhibiting
“works of art” like Piss Christ or Shekhina
provoking and baiting those Jewish and
Christian crazies? And since there are more
Christians than Muslims in America, isn’t it
statistically far more likely that there
should have been far more Christian terror
attacks targeting blasphemous exhibits?
We can only conclude that there is a much
higher proportion of “crazies” among Muslims
than among Christians. How much higher? 78
percent of Americans identify as Christians.
0.6 percent claim to be Muslims. Only 0.3
percent appear to be Sunnis, who are
responsible for ISIS and Al Qaeda attacks.
There is indeed a tiny minority of
extremists in America. It’s known as Islam.
What keeps the lie alive is another paradox.
Call it Schrödinger's Jihad. The more famous
Schrödinger's Cat is a paradox in which a
cat in a sealed box with poison that has a
50 percent chance of being released is in an
indeterminate state. It is neither dead nor
alive until someone opens the box.
In Schrödinger's Jihad, the Muslim terrorist
is in an indeterminate state until some
Western observer opens the box, collapses
his wave function and radicalizes him. The
two Muslim Jihadists were in an
indeterminate state until Pamela Geller and
Bosch Fawstin and the other “provocateurs”
suddenly turned them into terrorists in a
matter of days or weeks. It didn’t matter
that Elton Simpson, one of the Garland
terrorists, had already been dragged into
court for trying to link up with Jihadists
in Africa.
Every Muslim is and isn’t a terrorist. He is
both a peaceful spiritual person who is
eager to embrace our way of life and a
violent killer who can be set off by the
slightest offense. Like the cat in the box
that is neither dead nor alive, he is both
violent and peaceful, moderate and
extremist, a solid citizen and a terrorist.
He does not choose which of these to be or
to become; we decide what he will be.
The Jihadist paradox is that the Muslim
terrorist is always defined by what we do,
not by what he does.
Islamic terrorism does not exist
independently of the Western observer. It is
not a Jihad with deep historical and
theological roots within Islam, but a
reaction to our interactions with Muslims.
Obama insists that talking about Islamic
terrorism ‘summons’ them into being. By
admitting the existence of Islamic
terrorists, we ‘radicalize’ Muslims. Even
the words ‘Islamic terrorism’ creates
Islamic terrorists who otherwise wouldn’t
exist.
The real threat is not from the terrorists,
it’s from the truth.
When we tell the truth, people die. The
truth turns Muslims into terrorists while
the lies soothe them back into
non-existence. Underneath all the academic
terminology is the dream logic of wishful
thinking. If we believe that Islam is a
religion of peace, it will be a peaceful
religion, and if we accept the reality that
it’s violent, then it will become violent.
Islam does not define itself. We define it
however we want. Our entire counterterrorism
policy is based around the perverse ostrich
belief that Islamic terrorism is a problem
that we create by recognizing its existence.
If we ignore it, it will go away.
The lies about Islam are sustained by a deep
conviction among liberals that the “Other”
minorities are not real people with real
beliefs and cultures, but victims in a game
of power played out in the West. Islamic
terrorism, like gay marriage or Global
Warming, is just another step in the
progressive pilgrim’s progress. It’s a
problem that we caused and need to atone for
in our cosmic karmic journey.
Westerners are privileged observers who have
power while those minorities they observe do
not. The duel between the Western left and
right is taking place outside the box to
determine what will be in the box once it’s
forced open, while the oppressed minorities
are in a state of indeterminacy in the box.
The Schrödinger's Jihad paradox has many
other adjoining boxes. Some are filled with
dictators and criminals. If the progressive
observer can open the box and find the root
cause, out comes a good person; if the right
opens the box, then out will march the
terrorists, drug dealers and warlords.
The other side of the rhetoric about
oppression and colonization, of punching up
and punching down is the conviction that
those at the bottom do not have free will or
agency. If the mugger chooses to mug, rather
than being driven to it by poverty, if Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union gleefully chose
conquest instead of being forced to it by
Western imperialism, and if the Muslim
terrorist is not a helpless victim, but an
abuser, then the moral imperative of the
left’s worldview collapses in a heap.
If Muslims are real people who are at least
as capable of imperialism, racism, slavery
and destroying the planet as any Westerner,
and who have been doing all of these things
a lot longer, then leftists would have to
accept that they are tearing down the most
progressive civilization on the planet on
behalf of ridiculously reactionary
civilizations. Not only would they no longer
be the privileged observers in control of
the future, but they would have to see
themselves as destroyers of what is left of
the future.
The left refuses to blame Islam or Muslims
because that would mean admitting that they
are people.
Schrödinger's Jihad is a child’s toy box for
overgrown children who view Muslims as
social justice dolls and terrorist action
figures instead of people as flawed and
complicated as they are. The left refuses to
take Islamic theology seriously because it
is incapable of understanding different
points of view.
It approaches Islam as a race, rather than a
religion, because it refuses to delve into
what its beliefs are. Instead it chooses to
see Muslims as blank slates to be filled
with its ideology, as indeterminate patterns
that can be reshaped into whatever they want
them to be. It does not want to know what it
says in the Koran, because that ruins its
wonderful fantasy of Muslims as an oppressed
race, rather than a creed.
Lies
that are based on what we want to be true
are the hardest to disprove. A lie that is
tied into identity cannot be touched without
destroying the entire identity of an
individual or a movement.
The lies about Islam run into the heart of
what the left is. To the left, everything is
indeterminate and everything can be
reshaped. Existence flows from power and
power is pitted against progress. By
destroying that which exists, they can bring
their dreams to life. The dream is stronger
than reality.
The left doesn’t really believe that Muslim
terrorists exist except when we bring them
to life. The real animating force behind Al
Qaeda was George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. The
true power behind ISIS is Pamela Geller or
the Pentagon. The Westerner opens the box
and the Muslim terrorist comes out. When
Western civilization as we know it is
destroyed, then the left believes Muslim
terrorism will end. Kill the observer and
the cat never existed. Destroy the dreamer
and the nightmare dies with him.
The truth is more dangerous than the
terrorists. Terrorists can kill the body,
but truth can kill the dream.