"Many Europeans feel that a confrontation with Islamism will give the Islamists more opportunities to recruit--that confronting evil is counterproductive," says Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born, former Dutch parliamentarian whose outspoken opposition to Islamism (and to Islam itself) forced her repeatedly into hiding and now into exile in the United States. "They think that by appeasing them--allowing them their own ghettoes, their own Muslim schools--they will win their friendship."
A second factor, she says, is the superficial confluence between the bugaboos of the Chomskyite left and modern-day Islamism. "Many social democrats have this stereotype that the corporate world, the U.S. and Israel are the real evil. And [since] Islamists are also against Israel and America, [social democrats] sense an alliance with them."
But the really "lethal mistake," she says, "is the confusion of Islam, which is a body of ideas, with ethnicity." Liberals especially are reluctant to criticize the content of Islam because they fear that it is tantamount to criticizing Muslims as a group, and is therefore almost a species of racism. Yet Muslims, she says, "are responsible for their ideas. If it is written in the Koran that you must kill apostates, kill the unbelievers, kill gays, then it is legitimate and urgent to say, 'If that is what your God tells you, you have to modify it.'"
And the corollary of liberals' appeasement is their attack on those who actively confront terrorism.
Update - 8:56 pm EDT: An anti-war protester in Manchester, England is the perfect example of the Chomskyite-left/modern-day-Islamism confluence: Anti-War = Pro-Hizballah
Update - 10:06 pm, ET: When I write of the liberal attack on those who actively fight terrorism I am referring to the New York Times publishing a highly classified intelligence document, the National Intelligence Estimate, and politicizing its findings. As R.A. Allen of Security Watchtower puts it, "we are led to understand [by the NY Times] that the significance of the NIE is to be considered in terms of its political consequences."
For instance, the Times' Mark Mazzetti writes the NIE finds "that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks." But does he consider that had the US not invaded Iraq that the same could be said of Afghanistan? No. Does he consider the possibility that had jihadists not been busy destabilizing Iraq they would be waging jihad somewhere else? No. Destabilizing other Muslim countries? No. Jordan? Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? No. No. No. Who's to say that Pakistan nukes and Saudi oil have not fallen to the jihadists because they're busy fighting the great Satan in Iraq? Who's to say that Musharraf and the Jordanian and Saudi Abdullahs are alive precisely because we are in Iraq? Certainly not Mazzetti.
There is another side to this that Mazzetti has not considered. It is articulated in a must read response to Mazzetti by the Democracy Project (hat tip to RA Allen): "While it may be that the risk of terrorism has increased following the invasion of Iraq because of increased Islamic support for terrorism, it may also be that if we did not invade Iraq the risk of terrorism would have increased even more because terrorists would have perceived us as weaklings."
Update - 11:01 pm ET: Andrew Cochran: "White House and DNI Negroponte should ask the members of the 9/11 Commission to independently review the NIE and release an unclassified version or summary of the report as soon as possible."
Update - 11:27 pm ET: What does a 9/11 memorial in Arizona have to do with a NYT article on the National Intelligence Estimate? They are the poles of liberal appeasement. The AZ Memorial represents the left's failure to confront radical Islam. The New York Times NIE article represents the left's anger at those who do.
AllahPundit has photos of the controversial inscriptions in the Arizona memorial here and lawhawk takes a look at other 9/11 memorials here.
