Meet the Reverend Terry Jones, asymmetrical warrior. It appears that pinpricks can produce chain reactions in the Islamic world. The threat may be termed asymmetrical because Islam is more vulnerable to theological war than Christianity (or for that matter Judaism).
As the youngest of the major religions (apart from Sikhism), Islam must defend its historical narrative more fiercely than the older religions. Islam never withstood the withering criticism of Enlightenment scholars from Spinoza to the Jesus Project determined to discredit sacred texts. And because the Koran is not a human report of God's word, like the Christian and Jewish bibles, but rather the "uncreated word" of Allah himself, any challenge to its authority cuts at Islam's credibility. The fact that Islam has established neither a Magisterium in the Catholic sense, nor an authoritative tradition like that of Orthodox Judaism, leaves it decentralized, divided and fractious. . .
Russia has more urgent reasons to sow discord in Muslim countries, and centuries of experience in doing so. Simply because America has committed its reputation and resources to stability in the Muslim world, Russia has an interest in promoting the opposite. Russia views the world as a chessboard, in which pressure on the flanks increases its control of the center of the board. Moscow's on-again, off-again deal to supply Iran with an advanced anti-missile system, for example, represents a bargaining chip that it can use with Washington for a variety of purposes.
There is a deeper Russian interest in fostering Muslim weakness, though. Before mid-century the Russian Federation likely will have a Muslim majority. . . .
But back in the U.S., the liberal elite wants to reach out to Muslims. James Taranto, September 16:
The real problem here is that the liberal elite has responded to 9/11 in a totally inappropriate way. When the only tool you have is a hammer, the cliché goes, every problem looks like a nail. To American liberals, every problem looks like the civil rights struggle, the original one of which was their last real moral, cultural and governmental success.
That is why the liberal elite sees 9/11 less as a national security challenge than as an imperative for a kind of affirmative action aimed at ensuring that "inclusiveness" extends to Muslims. . . . And of course it is what Americans everywhere see in the obnoxious plan to build a fancy 15-story mosque adjacent to the site of an Islamic supremacist atrocity.
But whereas white Americans collectively had a great deal to atone for in their historical treatment of blacks, it is perverse and offensive to suggest that 9/11 leaves Americans with an obligation to atone to Muslims. . . .
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