Stardate 20021126.1208

(On Screen): Islamic culture continues to be an object lesson for the moral bankruptcy of multiculturalism. The basic idea is that other cultures may well be far different than ours, but they're equally valid and we have no right to judge them or their people by our own standards.

That's an abdication, and the problem is that now that we are actually beginning to watch what is happening in places where Islam actually gains political power, it's invariably really, really ugly. It's entirely possible that strains of Islam exist which are tolerant, peaceful and valuable, but Islamism as a political movement is ultimately cruel and barbarous.

It's bad enough that they want to execute women for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. But multiculturalism faces a profound contradiction of having to defend the validity of Islam's own rejection of any concept of multiculturalism. Anywhere that Islam assumes political control, it ruthlessly stamps out all dissent, all diversity, and in particular any semblance of religious freedom, and does so using the harshest possible methods.

Most of that repression flies under the radar, and can be missed (or deliberately ignored). But there are now two high-profile cases in the news where people have been condemned to death for heresy.

There is, for example, the case of a woman in Nigeria who, while writing a relatively unimportant newspaper piece about the upcoming Miss World contest, which was originally scheduled for Nigeria in early December, made the offhand comment that the Prophet would probably have married one of the contestants. It's not at all obvious why, but this was interpreted as slander, and it set off rioting in the parts of Nigeria where Islam dominates (with extreme prejudice). Hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded later, the Miss World contest decided it would rather have its contest in London.

Now a Fatwa has been issued against Isioma Daniel; she's under the same sentence of death as Salman Rushdie. It's unlikely to be carried out; she's probably not going to be killed. That's because she's fled Nigeria and gone someplace far more tolerant, where Islam doesn't have significant political power and where diverse opinions are both tolerated and encouraged.

She fled to the US; the nation that is routinely vilified by multiculturalists, the nascent fascist police state (to hear some tell it). When the chips were down, she knew where she could be safe.

Her peril is imminent murder by any devout Muslim who takes the duty of this Fatwa seriously. (Few American Muslims will, of course, which is part of why she'll be safe here.) Hashem Aghajari, on the other hand, is in prison in Iran and faces execution.

He had the temerity to state that he thought that Muslims should not blindly follow religious leaders, that they should think for themselves. He's rotting in a prison cell now in Iran.

He refuses to file an appeal of his conviction or sentence; it looks as if he's decided to become a martyr in hopes of inspiring an anti-theocratic backlash which could lead to revolution. The theocratically-dominated judiciary would love to have him appeal; then the appeals court can defuse the whole situation and look merciful by letting him off with a lesser penalty (like dozens of lashes), but he's not giving them that opportunity. He's a very brave and principled man, and if they actually do execute him I will mourn.

Muslims have no such power here in the US. Many, perhaps most, don't even want it. But even here there are Muslim groups who would use the power of government to suppress free speech if they could, and absent that will use any other kind of intimidation available to them. Alan Dershowitz wrote an editorial which was printed in Israel which advocated a quite radical, and even brutal, policy of retaliation against Palestinians as a way of giving suicide bombers a huge disincentive to carry out their tasks. It's certainly a matter of debate whether his policy is a good one. (For one thing, the likelihood is that each of the villages whose destruction had been preannounced would be heavily booby-trapped by the time the Israeli soldiers showed up to raze them.) But our governing principle here in the US is free speech, diversity of opinion and lifestyle, and at least some Muslims here in the US don't like it. And they don't like Dershowitz's idea, and they don't like him.

But rather than arguing against his points, they're trying to punish him for even talking.

"As attorneys, we're sworn to uphold all laws," Sareer Fazili, a member of the group's board of directors, told the Boston Sunday Globe. "There are treaties that prohibit collective punishment. What he called for was no due process, no judge and jury, and that mass reprisal take place."

And there's also the First Amendment, which protects our right to freedom of expression. Evidently that's not something that he feels any obligation to uphold, at least when the speaker is a Jew and is saying negative things about Arabs.

This war is, ultimately, cultural. It is a war between us on the side of liberal democracy and all it stands for (diversity, secular government, freedom of thought and expression, religious freedom, privacy, self-determination) and a strict strain of Islam which has as its goals uniformity, suppression of all dissent, harsh persecution of all non-believers, theocratic government under Sharia, and conformance of all people to the arbitrary dicta of self-selected holy men under threat of death, torture or dismemberment. Everywhere that it has gained unrestrained and unopposed power that has been the result: in Afghanistan, in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, and in northern Nigeria. It is brutal, medieval, vindictive, ruthless, harsh; it is vile beyond the ability of words to express. It is almost perfectly designed to maximize misery in its population. And the greater its temporal power, the greater its cruelty and the greater the horrors it inflicts on the people in its grasp.

There is no middle ground here and the war will be fought everywhere. No compromise is possible, and there can be no neutrals; either they win or we do. Either they give up their ambition and learn tolerance, or we'll be forced to destroy them. For if it comes to that point, rather than surrender the US can and will unleash terrible weapons capable of levels of destruction never seen before in history. If we are not able to survive any other way, as an absolutely last resort we can and will kill most of the world's Muslims in a conflagration of biblical proportions.

If they force us to decide between them and us, it's going to be them, and as many of them as necessary.

The majority of the world's Muslims, who are (or at least claim to be) more tolerant, will have to choose sides. They cannot remain silent; they must begin to speak and act forcefully one way or the other. I would hope they would choose our side, and speak out on behalf of the ideas of diversity and freedom and tolerance, and argue for Islam as a religion but against Islam as a political movement and form of government. But to remain apathetically silent is to consent to let the extremists speak on behalf of Islam collectively and to characterize the struggle as being against all of Islam. To stay silent is to permit the extremists to control how Islam is perceived by the non-Muslims of the world. If the moderates do not publicly denounce these excesses, then their silence will be taken as consent – and it will be consent.

This war can only end short of ultimate disaster through the internal reform of Islam, and the defeat of the extremists and elimination of their power and influence within Islam itself. No one is better placed to institute that reform than the moderate Muslims, and no one has more to lose if such reform fails.

If moderate Muslims remain silent, they risk having this war change from being against the extremists to being against all of Islam, for that is the goal of the extremists.