On the Contrary re: the Muslims

Dinesh D'Souza is a respectable guy with very solid conservative credentials. Recently, however, he's been the object of derision (to say the least) because he has made remarks which undermine the "kill all the Muslims" Company line espoused by the usual suspects.

Crisis magazine interviewed him.

DD: In talking about “liberal” Muslims, we have to distinguish between the old and new liberalism. Classical liberalism—the idea that we must have the freedom to vote or to assemble or be religiously tolerant—has wide support in the Islamic world. You can look at the Pew studies or the World Values Survey for confirmation of that. Muslims can accept the old liberalism.

On the other hand, we have the new liberalism of a Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, or Michael Moore. This brand of liberalism has almost no support in the Islamic world. You can find isolated individuals like Salman Rushdie, but they have no constituency among Muslims.

[Well, GrannyNan, Hildebeeste, and Moore are icons of the atheist/materialist wacko Left, and are certainly not enjoying huge support from the average American.]

The Muslim world is divided between the radical Muslims and the traditional Muslims. Both groups are religiously and socially conservative. The main difference between the two is that the radicals support violence as a way of striking out against America, while traditional Muslims do not. However, the radicals have been very successful over the past decade in recruiting traditional Muslims into their ranks. So no long-term victory in the war on terrorism can work unless it finds a way to put a wedge between traditional Islam and radical Islam.

That makes sense.

BSP: I don’t think it’s going too far to say that most conservatives and faithful Christians would agree with 90 percent of the Islamic critique of America’s liberal culture. Given this, what can we do to help win this war? We may have more common ground than we thought.

DD: I would say three things. First, don’t condemn Islam as a whole. The clash-of-civilizations idea has a grain of truth in it, but it is both tactically and morally wrong. In fact, it plays right into bin Laden’s hands. He wants to construe the war in exactly those terms.

If you dismiss Islam as being inherently violent or say the Prophet Mohammed is the founder of terrorism, then you’re pushing the traditional Muslims into the radical camp. This is a foolish thing to do, even if what you’re saying is true.

The clash-of-civilizations thing had something to do with the, ah, nasty patch back when the Muslims grabbed Jerusalem and a bunch of Spain, too. But going on:

There must be something going on in Islam today to make it an incubator for violent fanaticism.

While rejecting Islamic theology, Christians and conservatives can find common cause with traditional Muslims on issues of morality—particularly in the foreign sphere and in the United Nations. Traditional Christians, Muslims, and Jews can help promote traditional values on the international stage.

True fact; the Roman Catholic Church has worked VERY well with the Muslims at the UN to squelch the Hildebeeste/GrannyNan (etc.)-type initiatives on global abortion, e.g.

I'd certainly rather believe D'Souza than his critics, whose War!!! Blood!! Vanquish!! screeches are not only tiresome, but impossible to execute.