BrianGarst.com

Following his speech in which he quoted a historical critic of Islam, the Pope has been under constant assault from radical Jihadists. But Mike Lee of ABC insists that Westerners are “likely making some wrong assumptions about modern Islam.” The implication being that all this crazy talk about violence should be ignored as not a part of Islam.

When the Qatari Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi called for a Day of Rage this Friday in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks about Muslims, it might have sounded like a call for street violence.

But if there is trouble Friday, and there could well be, it will not be because of language but because of what some people choose to do after they have answered the call for “Yaum al Ghadab.”

Political manipulation of protest crowds is not a uniquely Islamic idea. It happens in the West, as well.

Ah yes, what a nice bit of moral equivalence. The West does the same thing, so you can’t be mad at the Jihadists! But like most attempts at equivalence, Lee misses the point. The problem is not that some people manipulate crowds, the problem is that the crowds are entirely ready to be manipulated and to carry out violence on behalf of their religion.

Lee then asks, “But why do Islamic leaders use what many Westerners regard as inflammatory language?” Stumped? Don’t worry, he then proceeds to answer his own question. “Because it is not inflammatory, at least not in the context of Islamic culture,” he shamelessly equivocates.

Of course it isn’t, Mike. There’s nothing informatory about saying the Pope and the West are “doomed”.

And this Somali cleric?

“We urge you Muslims wherever you are to hunt down the Pope for his barbaric statements as you have pursued Salman Rushdie, the enemy of Allah who offended our religion,” he said in Friday evening prayers.

“Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim,” Malin, a prominent cleric in the Somali capital, told worshippers at a mosque in southern Mogadishu.

If “the context of Islamic culture” is sufficient to render such a statement as not inflammatory, one can’t help but wonder about Islamic culture. Of course, we know that’s not true. This statement is inflammatory even under the context of Islamic culture, but not under the context of Islamic Jihad. The problem with the Mike Lee’s of the world is that they want you to believe that the Jihadists make up such a small percentage of Islam as to be practically non-existent. A nuisance to be swatted at with minimal effort. The Mike Lee’s and other apologists spend their every waking hour whitewashing the Jihadists outrageous behavior because of their overblown sensitivities to a vocal minority of touchy Muslims.

Pretending there is nothing rotten within Islam, as so many within the West are wont to do (and as nearly all non-Jihadist Muslims, the majority, do), won’t make it go away. The simple fact of the matter is, we are at war with a medieval ideology. What we’re seeing is a clash of eras, not of cultures. The war is that of modernity versus the middle ages.