The Trump campaign against radical Islam doesn't pull any punches.  And why should it?  We're talking about a religion that has tens of millions (or more) adherents who'd love to blow the United States off the map.  (That's after Israel, of course.)

However, according to Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post, it's Trump and his advisers who believe in “civilizational conflict.”  (Presumably after the analysis offered in Samuel Huntington's book, The Clash of Civilisations.)

Diehl says Trump's appointee, Stephen K. Bannon, speaks in terms of a “long history of the Judeo-Christian West's struggle against Islam.”  Michael T. Flynn, the incoming national security adviser, is also in favor of “a world war against a messianic mass movement of evil people.”

Indeed, Flynn has got the measure of things. He once wrote:

I don’t believe that all cultures are morally equivalent, and I think the West, and especially America, is far more civilized, far more ethical and moral.

Jackson Diehl thinks such “Islamophobic” words are counterproductive.  That such words cause – rather than solve – problems.  But is systematically lying about Islam a successful policy?  Are there fewer Islamic terrorists today than there were twenty or even ten years ago?  Are Muslims, as a whole, becoming more moderate?  Is there a Muslim “reform movement” spreading across the world or even in Europe and the U.S.?

So let's start telling the truth about Islam, as Flynn and millions of others are attempting to do.

Jackson Diehl lays his own cards on the table when he says François Fillon’s book, Conquering Islamic Totalitarianism, is an example of what he calls “anti-Muslim rhetoric.”  Diehl even has a problem with the suicidal Islamophile Angela Merkel.  He said she “felt obliged to strike an anti-Islamic pose last week, proposing a crackdown on the minuscule number of German women who wear a burqa”.

Jackson Diehl also has a big problem with Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, whom Trump supports.  Did Diehl prefer the Muslim Brotherhood regime?  You know, the movement that has traditionally persecuted and bombed the Christian Copts of Egypt?

So Jackson Diehl endorses the leftist theory that if only Muslims were freed from Western-backed dictatorships, then they'd embrace democracy.  That's a barefaced lie!  There are a small number of Muslim democrats dotted around the world.  However, most Muslims have a problem with, for example, al-Sissi's regime (in Egypt) not because it's a dictatorship, as Diehl argues.  They have a problem with it because it's not Islamic enough!  Yes, there is a massive movement in the Muslim world fighting pro-Western autocracies.  But it's not fighting for Western democracy or secularism.  It's fighting for sharia law and Islamic totalitarianism, hence the title of François Fillon's book (which Diehl castigates).

We can never win this “civilizational conflict” if we keep on insisting that Islam itself is blameless and that only some of its adherents are to blame.  How many white swans do we need to see before we can say, “All swans are white”?

Jackson Diehl finishes his story of blameless Islam by turning a positive into a negative. He writes:

Trump’s aim will be to quarantine and repress the region and its religion. The worst foreseeable outcome is that he will succeed.

So Diehl wants yet more Islamophilia and thus more suicidal diplomacy (or sanctimonious interfaith).  That is, he wants more of the same.  And more of the same simply means more Islamic terror in Europe and the United States.

It has been weakness, Mr Diehl, that hasn't worked so far, not strength.