PrintOctober 1, 2010
Sharia Law: The Key to Linguistic Rearmament in the War against Jihadism
The struggle against the jihadists is fought both on the physical battlefield and in the war of words. On the physical battlefield, we win easily. In a shootout between predator drones and bolt action rifles, the good guys win every time. However, in the war of words, we've allowed ourselves to be outgunned. We are reluctant to criticize any behavior by Muslims, no matter how outrageous, for fear of being called certain bad words such as Islamophobe, hater, and racist. It's high time we strap on our body armor and start shooting back.
Consider the term "Islamophobe." The payload of this verbal barb has two parts. The "Islamo-" part refers to a supposedly harmless foreign religion, and the "-phobe" part refers to an irrational fear. Liberals and jihadists wish to classify us as unsophisticated rubes, xenophobes. Users of this moniker should be corrected -- forcefully and quickly. We are not "Islamophobes," but we can be called "Shariaphobes." The first refers to a religion; the second refers to a legal system.
Sharia Law is a target which the liberals cannot defend. After all, without Sharia Law, Islam would be a harmless religion -- almost benign. Even though liberals might not mind that Sharia Law treats Christians and Jews like garbage, atheists, polytheists, and pagans are treated even worse. And how could any liberal defend the way it treats women and homosexuals?
Another important verbal barb is the term "hate." Liberals will often scold Christians by telling us that it's against our rules to hate. We should politely suggest that their ignorance of Western religions is matched only by their ignorance of non-Western religions: Christians are certainly allowed to hate; we just can't hate people. Historically, Christians have hated a lot of bad stuff. Take for instance slavery and Jim Crow laws.
However, the best example of hateful foreign laws would be the Apartheid laws of South Africa. Once liberals use the word "hate," ask them whether they hated the Apartheid laws of the 1980s. If they answer yes, then ask them: if Apartheid was hateful treating non-whites as subhuman, why isn't Sharia Law hateful for treating non-Muslims as subhuman? Furthermore, you can remind them that South African whites never crashed planes into skyscrapers or attempted to export their laws to Europe or America.
Since Sharia Law was the moral justification used by Mohamed Atta on Nine-Eleven, Americans are more than entitled to fear Sharia Law. Are we not perfectly justified in hating Sharia Law with the same passion the Mr. Ahmadinejad hates Jews? Just at the Iranian president is an anti-Semite, shouldn't patriotic Americans be "anti-Sharia-ites"?
Finally, consider the word "racist." This implies that we, "evil white racists," are now harassing Arabs, not on the basis of their outrageous behavior, but purely because of their slightly darker complexions. We should remind them that under our laws, people are held accountable for their actions as individuals regardless of membership in any ethnic or religious group. We call this equal protection under the law. This is exactly the opposite of Sharia Law. Furthermore, one should suggest (as politely as possible) that if Muslim immigrants find it unbearable to live under a legal system in which they are not given special privileges, they are free to leave.
We can also remind our liberal friends that the poison of Sharia Law crosses ethnic and national boundaries. Some of the world's most vicious jihadists are from Chechnya in the Northern Caucasus Mountains. We must ask our liberal critics how it is possible for American white racists to bring themselves to "hate" these genuine Caucasians.
