The two Mainstreams still talking past each other...

Today, Robert Spencer quoted a Muslim cleric:

“Allah has ordered Muslims to take up weapons and has ordered the use of weapons against unbelievers” 

Then Robert opined, showing he just doesn't get the Problem of the Problem:

In the West, we’re constantly told that only greasy Islamophobes believe that Allah has issued any such order. Has Khabeebur Rehman Qazi been listening to greasy Islamophobes? How is it that he came to misunderstand his peaceful religion so drastically?

The “Problem of the Problem” I refer to is the problem not of Islam, but of the Western Mainstream’s inability to grapple with the problem of Islam. A good deal of that inability is the Western Mainstream’s habits of demonizing critics of Islam.   

So what Robert doesn’t get here is that the Western Mainstream has more arrows of red herrings up their sleeve (to mix metaphors) than merely the one Robert cited.  For example, the Western Mainstream would likely retort that this particular Muslim cleric only represented the Tiny Minority of Extremists who don't reflect the Islam of the vast majority of Muslims Who Just Wanna Have a Sandwich.  And the reason why the Western Mainstream tends to deploy this particular red herring arrow from its quiver is due to its concern that the vast majority of Muslims not be “tarred with one brush”. 

Then, in that context, the Western Mainstream will pull out another red herring and rhetorically ask the critics of Islam why they insist on reducing Islam to the twisted version of these Tiny Minority of Extremists.  When the critics of Islam respond that they are not twisting Islam, but actually showing how mainstream Islam accurately reflects what these so-called “Extremists” are preaching, the Western Mainstream will double down on their concern for the majority of Muslims, that they not be tarred with the one brush of extremism.  Of course, the Western Mainstream isn't coherent on this point, because it can't really disprove the fact that mainstream Islam accurately reflects the Islam of the so-called Extremists (al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIS, etc.). Nevertheless, what they are implicitly falling back on is the apparent, and massive, fact that most Muslims aren't ostensibly doing or saying anything bad, and seem to be a diverse collective of largely unobjectionable peoples.  For the Counter-Jihad Mainstream to engage the Western Mainstream at this level would mean to join a conversation that faces the Problem of Muslims (which of course presupposes that any “Problem of Islam” is only a problem to the extent that Muslims put it into practice).

And what does the Counter-Jihad Mainstream have to respond to this concern?  In my experience over the years, I have seen them either avoid the question, or actually agree that they are “not against Muslims, only the ideology Islam” (i.e., that there is no Problem of Muslims per se).  As long as the Counter-Jihad Mainstream avoids engaging the Problem of Muslims head on, it will be contributing to the lack of contact with the broader Western Mainstream; and as long as that contact is put off, our war of ideas on this most exigent issue will never gain traction.

Further Reading:

Essays on the two Mainstreams