Obama's 'dialog' with Islam?

Amir Taheri:

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At one point, his advisers talked of convening a White House summit with Muslim leaders. When that scheme was exposed as fanciful, they recommended that he attend the Islamic Summit Conference, convened once every three years. But that, too, has turned out to be problematic - so now they talking of plans for "a major address in an Islamic capital."

But what does Obama wish to say in this dialogue?

"The message I want to send is that we will be unyielding in stamping out the terrorist extremism we saw in Mumbai," Obama told The Chicago Tribune last Tuesday.

Note that the American president-elect mentions Mumbai - and not the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington or scores of others carried out by Islamic terrorists against Western targets.

Note also that he talks of "terrorist extremism," not "Islamic" or even "Islamist" terrorism.

The reason, of course, is his desire not to ruffle Muslim feathers. And herein lies the fundamental weakness of his position.

If the terrorism we saw on 9/11 and many other occasions has nothing to do with Islam, then why bring up the issue with Muslim leaders rather than Buddhist monks? Alternately, if this type of terrorism does have Islamic roots, why not give it its proper designation?

In fact, Islamic feathers need to be ruffled if we are to defeat Islamic terrorism. Muslims should be told that they've been too complacent in recognizing the threat.

To be sure, not all Muslims are terrorists. But virtually all terrorists are Muslims. Nor do they live on another planet: They are recruited, trained and sheltered in Muslim countries. Individual Muslims and Islamic charities finance them; Islamic governments provide them with passports and safe havens. The media regimes in most Muslim countries (often state controlled) propagate the very themes that sustain the terrorist ideology in its different versions.

What Obama ignores is that Islamic terrorism isn't limited to suicide attacks against the "infidel"; it also comes in the form of terrorizing ordinary Muslim citizens into conformity with rites and rules that should have no place in a civilized society.

The vast majority of the victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims. They would resent an American leader who tries to ignore or relativize the broader reality of Islamic terrorism in the name of political correctness.

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The people who are responsible for the attacks are not going to join Obama in any dialog and throwing shoes at him would be the minimum violence they would engage in if they were in the same room. As the shoe thrower demonstrates there is more emotion than reason still existing in the Muslim world. At its extreme, it is made up of religious bigots who are as amenable to dialog as the KKK. This religious bigotry extends to other Muslims who do not agree with the weird religious beliefs of the terrorist. The terrorist are more emotionally immature than the shoe thrower, but there will be no reasoning with them and the Muslims that Obama can reason with are already on our side.

What Obama is demonstrating is the invalid belief that we can settle all disputes with dialog and reason. There are just some people who are beyond words.

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