Islamic Extremism: The Ultimate Oxymoron

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

  In a recent article on the MichNews site, Jim Kouri writes about Terrorism:// Saudi Arabia and Islamic Extremism.  This article also appeared on the site of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and on numerous other sites.  Unfortunately, the author, Jim Kouri, is a useful idiot by buying into the “politically correct” but most absurd oxymoron in the news today.  If self-proclaimed Muslims are extremists we are supposed to accept them as Muslims, but automatically and by definition they are not Islamic.

  Those who associate Islam as a religion with the evil actions of Muslims are posing a barrier to the understanding of traditionalist thought, because to confuse a religion with the criminal elements of its self-proclaimed adherents is to deny the existence of the religion and, in fact, of wisdom in every religion. The practical result is to brand religion as the cause of injustice and violence, rather than as it cure.

  Most of those who buy into this form of semantic or mimetic warfare probably are innocent of what they are doing, which is why in similar cases with Communist sympathizers they were called “useful idiots,” a phrase that I believe was coined by Lenin. They are serving the cause of the professional Islamophobes while believing that they are innocent of the Islamophobes’ not-so-hidden agenda.

  This distortion of Islam poses a major problem in the modern world.  It is easy to counter the open enemies of Islam, but how do we counter the extraordinary harm caused by its friends who do not know what they are doing?  Perhaps Jeremy Henzell-Thomas, who was head of FAIR (the equivalent of CAIR in England), and, in my view, is the most effective counter-terrorist in the world today, can help us address this mounting challenge.

by courtesy &  2005 The American Muslim  republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.