HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)
California
August 22nd, 2010
2:48 am
Mr Kristof misses or avoids the tactical deftness of radical Islam, artificially pinning them down to a single position that enables him to make the point he so desperately wants to sell us. How about this, Mr Kristof:
1) If the mosque is built, radical Islamists will mine its presence for all the triumphalism an craftiness-credit that they possibly can. They love our tolerance, work it for all it's worth, and consider us fools for leaving ourselves so exposed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said upon his arrest, "I want to be tried in New York, with a New York lawyer." Could the point possibly be any clearer? Radical Islamists love our ethic of multicultural tolerance, and use it consistently as one jaw of the vise.
However, if the mosque doesn't go up, then: 2) radical Islam can sell their recruits the evidence that our claims of tolerance are meaningless, because we wouldn't allow a simple house of worship to be built.
They have their rhetorical engines all revved up, waiting for us to move. Whichever way we go, their arguments are already staked out, and they've got us coming or going.
So, why don't we just do what WE feel best about; trust moderate Muslims to search their souls and see that they'd do the same if the facts were reversed; and let the radical Islamists do what they always do--start with the conclusion that America and Israel must be destroyed, and work backward from there to condemn anything and everything we do anyway.
