It was August 20 of last year (2018) when I finally decided -- after the catastrophic shipping accident of my beleaguered battleship, the H.M.S. Hesperado (which ran aground after more than a decade of rough sailing off the treacherous shallows of the Two Mainstreams, while its captain went down with the ship, mulling a pair of ball-bearings in his hand) -- to “re-enter through the side door” -- i.e., to re-start an anti-Islam blog, here on this parcel of lagoon sand, as far away from my shipwreck as possible.
As I recouped and resettled here, I wasn't at first quite sure how to proceed. I had a vague sense that I didn't want to embroil myself in the kind of deep analysis and meticulous documentation that characterized the old blog, but other than that, I wasn't clear on what I was doing here, exactly, other than exorcizing the same old demons that have haunted me since my first rude shock in the months after 911 (which I alluded to briefly in a recent Daily Decaf shot, Conservatives for Islam). I have realized that perhaps my true métier in this regard is not so much the primary problem (P1 = Islam), nor even the secondary problem (P2 = the problem of the Western mainstream dealing ineptly with P1), but rather the tertiary problem (P3 = the problem of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream dealing ineptly with both P1 and P2): the problem of the problem of the problem.
Hence my new blog name -- “The Daily Decaf ” -- where the “decaf” denotes the insipid inadequacy of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream, tending to serve up a watery, decaffeinated swill in place of the strong coffee we should be waking up to.
One of the main ways the Counter-Jihad Mainstream does this is by its seemingly studied avoidance of taking the bulls by the horn of the problem of Islam -- as the following problematic complex:
The problem of mainstream Islam (Islam, the whole Islam, and nothing but Islam) and, by logical extension (especially given the related problem of taqiyya & stealth jihad), the problem of all Muslims.
Not only will you never see the problem framed this way by anyone in the Counter-Jihad Mainstream, you will routinely see various subtle ways of wriggling out of this or even ways of subverting it.
(Of course, we haven't yet nailed down what exactly the problem of Islam is; that's another kettle of fish (or bucket of eels) for another day, which I got into recently here on the Daily Decaf, in my posting titled More thoughts for a rainy day and coffee: "The Counter-Jihad is grinding its gears...")
Anyway, speak of the devil, we have a recent juicy plum in this regard from the éminence grise of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream Leadership, Sir Robert Spencer:
I don’t generally use the word “Islamist” myself, as it is too often used in order to establish some artificial distance between aggressive, violent, imperialist and supremacist political Islam and a supposedly benign ordinary Islam. But in every other respect, Said Shoaib and Hamed Abdel-Samad say in this important interview things that I have said for years: that Western politicians who make pronouncements about Islam are naive and ignorant, that charges of “Islamophobia” are used in order to mask an insidious agenda, and that Islamic supremacists and jihadis aim to destroy Western civilization, as the Muslim Brotherhood stated in a captured internal document. Are Said Shoaib and Hamed Abdel-Samad “ignorant Islamophobes”? Are they “racist bigots”? Or do they speak unwelcome truths that are no less true for being unwelcome?
Spencer's deployment here of the Big Print Giveth, Small Print Taketh Away tactic is breathtaking in its audacity (or is it obtuseness?). In the very same sentence, he is virtue-signalling first to the Counter-Jihad Mainstream how robustly tough he is by refusing to use the dysphemism “Islamist”-- and in the very same breath he deftly virtue-signals to the broader Western Mainstream (which the Counter-Jihad Mainstream is supposed to be opposing in this specific battlefield (viz., the problem of Islam) of the War of Ideas) by defining his alternative to that dysphemism as just another Allahdamned dysphemism, “political Islam”! Did Spencer honestly think the reader would be fooled by that crop of preceding adjectives -- “...aggressive, violent, imperialist and supremacist political Islam...” -- into thinking he wasn't in fact just substituting one dysphemism for another?
Hold on, Mr. Daily Decaf -- my readers may object -- how do you know Spencer meant it this way? A fair question, and one I can easily dispatch using Spencer's own words in previous writings of his.
For example, as I discussed in a recent Daily Decaf posting, Spencer wrote this:
There are indeed Muslims who are “driven by an ideology” and other Muslims who “practise their own religion in their own way with their own family and their own friends,” that is, Muslims who are bringing Sharia to the UK and advancing the cause of political Islam, and those who are not.
Or how about this:
Sisi’s regime isn’t perfect. Muslims are still brutalizing Christians in Egypt, and the government has done little to protect this despised and defenseless minority. At the same time, Sisi is a bulwark against political Islam in the Middle East. With Turkey rapidly re-Islamizing and the Islamic State still in the picture, that is important. So after the Obama administration’s unwavering support of the Muslim Brotherhood, this is most welcome.
Or this one, (titled with breathtaking chutzpah (or obtuseness?), Why We Don’t Need Words Like ‘Islamist’ -- previously discussed by moi in an old essay of mine here on the Daily Decaf), where Spencer deployed pretty much the same Ol' Switcheroo as we noted at the start above:
Several factors make the question more complicated: one is that many analysts use the term “Islamist” to mean an adherent of the tenets of political Islam. And certainly, as Raymond points out in his piece here, some term is needed for such people: for example, a follower of Mubarak in Egypt would likely be a Muslim but not an “Islamist”: i.e., not a proponent of Sharia rule. But because of the baggage that is attached to the word “Islamist,” and the misleading way it is used in order to deny or downplay the violence, hatred, and supremacism that is in core Islamic texts and teachings, I generally use “Islamic supremacist” instead for the adherents of Sharia and political Islam.
No Robert; it's not as complicated as you'd like to make it. What complicates it is your attempts to tie yourself into analytical knots trying to have your cake and eat it too -- i.e. your simultaneous attempts to seem robustly opposed to Islam on a unicycle whilst juggling the plates of adroitly avoiding a forthright condemnation of Islam straight no chaser, the whole kit & kaboodle, no ifs, ands, or Goddamned buts.
Capisce?
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