"How do you know that's real coffee?"

In a recent Jihad Watch notice about a couple of Muslims who were taken off a plane in Texas and then as a response have used the incident as a vehicle for two subtypes of Jihad -- the jihad of lawfare and the jihad of the publicity stunt -- we notice that our old friend "the Big W" crosses paths with our old nemesis "Angemon".

This isn't the first time Angemon has poked his infernal Bugs Bunny nose into the Counter-Jihad to ask a stupid rhetorical question of the Big W; I have recounted a previous time here on this blog in my posting The D word (ain't Decaf).

This time, after the Big W typed a thought you'd think any Counter-Jihadist worth his salt would find supremely unobjectionable (and would, in fact, give their thumbs up to) --

thebigW says
Sep 24, 2019 at 1:07 pm

a lotta terrorists didn’t have no beard, no towel on their heads, looked completely Westernized. so goin’ by their external appearance ain’t good enough. The fact they’re Muslim should be all we need to know to be EXTRA suspicious of them–an’ don’t get distracted if they tell you they “love America and Coca Cola and apple pie” 

-- Angemon just had to butt his rabbit butt in and deposit this rabbit turd:

Angemon says 
Sep 24, 2019 at 2:22 pm

“a lotta terrorists didn’t have no beard, no towel on their heads, looked completely Westernized. so goin’ by their external appearance ain’t good enough. The fact they’re Muslim should be all we need to know ” 

How would one know they’re muslims unless they admitted [SIC]? 

Angemon evidently meant "unless they admitted it" and left out the "it".  I.e., this genius is asking how can our law enforcement & intelligence personnel know if a Muslim is a Muslim unless that Muslim "admits it"!  The Big W had a scathingly apt retort:

thebigW says 
Sep 24, 2019 at 9:34 pm 

How would one know they’re muslims unless they admitted? So are ya sayin’ that all the census figures we have on population of Muslims in countries and total global are ALL based on each an’ ever one of them Muzzies “admitting” they were Muslim??? HA HA HA HA HA HA 

Now, when I first read this exchange several days ago, I hadn't seen if there were any further responses -- say, some more Einsteinian brilliance from Angemon, or (Jennah forbid) some other Jihad Watch regular stepping in supportively on the Big W's side.  Let's see what ensued, shall we...?

Well, I just looked, and Holy Toledo! Angemon doubles down on his weird fixation with a confused morass of odd logic all apparently marshaled in order to oppose the Big W's main point, which was, to remind our readers:

The fact they’re Muslim should be all we need to know to be EXTRA suspicious of them–an’ don’t get distracted if they tell you they “love America and Coca Cola and apple pie”  

Here's Angemon's response in full (brace yourselves, readers). What Angemon does here is essentially complicate the Big W's point with a tedious mess of sophistry:

Angemon says 
Sep 25, 2019 at 4:25 pm 

“So are ya sayin’ that all the census figures we have on population of Muslims in countries and total global are ALL based on each an’ ever one of them Muzzies “admitting” they were Muslim??? HA HA HA HA HA HA” 

Nice strawman, you braying jackass. My question still stands, despite your leftard/islamic fashion of trying to sneer it away. “The fact they’re Muslim should be all we need to know”. Very well – how would one know they’re muslims unless they admitted? According to you, “a lotta terrorists didn’t have no beard, no towel on their heads, looked completely Westernized. so goin’ by their external appearance ain’t good enough“. How are you going to tell who is a muslim and who isn’t unless they come out and admit it? Isn’t it beneficial to them to deny their religion in addition to looking Westernized? Why wouldn’t they deny their religion if they’re terrorists trying to cause as death and destruction as possible? 

P.S.: – to entertain your non-sequitur nonsense about muslims and census, and overlooking your ignorance of how census work, go ask around for the exact number of muslims, both in the US and worldwide. As Hugh Fitzgerald recently noted on another story, “While he has everything else wrong, I hope Imran Khan has his figures right. It is comforting to think that there are not 1.8 or 1.6 or 1.4 but, rather, 1.25 billion Muslims“. Muslims and organizations like CAIR inflate those numbers so good luck trying to identify the 8-million advertised by CAIR – you’d have to turn millions of non-muslims into muslims to reach that number. 

Now, my question again: how would one know they’re muslims unless they admitted? How do you propose to tell who is a muslim and who isn’t if you’re, for example, walking down a street in New York? You can’t answer it because you dug yourself so deep there’s no amount of ladders in the world to get you out. “A lot of muslim terrorists look completely Westernized so looks can’t be relied on. Wait, what do you mean, how are we going to tell if they’re muslims to begin with? What do you mean, terrorists who look Westernized to blend in aren’t going around announcing their religion?”. Foot, meet mouth. 

Perhaps some other day I'll pick Angemon's sloppy mess of sophistry apart piece by piece. For now, it would be apposite to just note two blindingly glaring things: 1) that what Angemon is evidently assuming is that the Big W's advice (viz., that [t]he fact they’re Muslim should be all we need to know to be EXTRA suspicious of them) is predicated on a perfect knowledge of the identity of all Muslims who exist (talk about a straw man!) -- rather than, obviously, only on those we do know exist (a knowledge which can always be fine-tuned and augmented with more and more intelligence); and 2) that Angemon is apparently assuming that the only way to attain that perfect ("exact") knowledge of all Muslims is if they "admit" it -- which, of course, is not the only way we determine who is Muslim; and Muslims could lie about that (what they "admit" or don't "admit") anyway, even if Angemon's point wasn't a red herring, as per my #1 above.

"Barista-Terrorista, make mine Caffeinated Decaf -- I need to get some sleep while I wake up to smell the coffee..."

Andrew Bostom, about whom I've written on this little ol' donut shop of a blog, as well as more copiously on my erstwhile flagship, The Hesperado, is an excellent resource for the Anti-Islam Movement (once it coheres into an actual entity, that is, hopefully some time before Muslims destroy the West), and that makes his asymptotic tics all the more remarkable (and depressing).

It's an interesting parallel, between the asymptotic Counter-Jihadist and the "Better Cop" Muslims who seem to be moderate and reform-minded.

A recent posting by Andrew on his blog describes Asra Nomani -- one of the better Better Cop Muslims (insofar as she gets closer to affecting genuine sincerity in her seeming moderation and has none of the disingenuously oily mannerisms of a Maajid Nawaz) -- as a "secular Muslim". Andrew may as well have introduced her as a "square circle" or a "married bachelorette".  The interesting parallel I alluded to may be expressed this way:

The asymptotic Counter-Jihadist manifests the following paradox: He appears to know enough about Islam to know about the stealth jihad -- which means he should be on guard and not be fooled by taqiyya (and, of course, he should know that the whole point of deceit is to try to be good at it, which would logically include any seeming displays of sincere moderation); and yet inevitably, every asymptotic Counter-Jihadist shows that they are, in fact, fooled by certain Muslims who are better than other Muslims at deceit (hence, "Better Cops").

The Better Cop, in turn, through her professed "secular" moderation, appears to be advocating a perspective and program that contradicts what we in the Counter-Jihad know about mainstream Islam. We know (or should know, by now) that all this nice-sounding moderation coming out of her mouth doesn't jibe with Islam, and in fact contradicts most of it in all the essential points. So why and how is she still self-identifying as a "Muslim"?

Indeed, my definition of a "Better Cop" Muslim is that they are identifiable as such not so much by what they say and do, than by the fact that they have fooled at least one important Counter-Jihadist.  Thus we have Frank Gaffney treating Zuhdi Jasser with undeservedly profound respect; Sam Harris partnering up with Maajid Nawaz; Andrew Bostom considering Asra Nomani to be genuinely "secular"; and so forth.

The parallel may be more sharply (and briefly put): The more that a Counter-Jihadist knows about Islam, the less he should trust any Muslim -- indeed, logically he should graduate to the epiphany that, on the macro level, no Muslim is trustworthy.  This would apply double (or trebly) to the Muslim who affects to be moderate or "secular", since there is no Islam that would not contradict such a moderate or secular stance.  The more moderate or "secular" a Muslim is, the more he or she is embodying that contradiction with his or her own Islam.  The problem is worse, not better, with the more palatable Muslims.  Counter-Jihadists like Andrew Bostom (and Robert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald) should know better; so why do they keep blurting out faux pas like calling Asra Nomani a "secular" Muslim?  What would be the reaction of Andrew Bostom, or Robert Spencer, or Sam Harris, or Hugh Fitzgerald, to an intelligent German Nazi who continues to self-identify as a Nazi, and who claims that they love Jews, claims that "true Nazism" loves Jews, and claims that Hitler was actually a Jew lover but has been "misunderstood" by "extremist Nazis"? We know what their reaction would be: This Nazi is either crazy or lying to us -- there is no 3rd explanation!  So why don't they apply the same logic to the square circle of the "secular" Muslims...?

One step forward, two steps back

Another September 11.

The Counter-Jihad Mainstream as usual is pointing fingers at the broader Western Mainstream for its failure, still, to wake up to the problem of Islam.

So, Robert Spencer puts up this headline on Jihad Watch today:

9/11 Commission top dogs say “terrorism needs to be prevented at the source,” ignore its source

Well, when the  Counter-Jihad Mainstream regularly invokes the term "political Islam" as the problem (see for example here, here, and here), rather than plain old Islam, are we that much ahead of the broader Western Mainstream...?

Over the years on my old blog, The Hesperado, I alluded to this trope many, many times.  For example, as I put it a little more than 2 years ago:

“ Robert Spencer, the éminence grise of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream (CJM), actually used the term 'political Islam' with a straight face.  That's how you know he's part of the CJM.  And he will remain so, comfortably and arrogantly, until enough of his civilian supporters call him on it (I wouldn't hold my breath on this).”  

A particularly good essay on this point (if I don't say so myself) I wrote a little more than 3 years ago:

Better Cops Watch, Cont.

The Counter-Jihad Mainstream dips its big toe ever so briefly into the shallow end of Paradigm Shift

By the term "Counter-Jihad Mainstream" I mean that this still minuscule, albeit growing, sociopolitical movement often called "the Counter-Jihad" has a "mainstream" which in many ways resembles the "mainstream" of the MSM -- soft on Islam and hostile to internal quality control & self-criticism.  Sure, the CJM is much tougher on, and much more literate about, Islam than is the MSM; but that doesn't mean the CJM doesn't have deficiencies in this department.

One of the bastions of the CJM is Jihad Watch and, as it's quite an industriously active venue, it's a good laboratory to study these deficiencies.

One deficiency I've written about and analyzed at length in previous essays on this blog and at my former blog (The Hesperado) is the failure to shift paradigms from "Islam is the problem" to "Islam is the problem and all Muslims enable that problem".  An incomplete list of my essays in this regard, but one which should get the reader started, may be found here.

Recently, a leading member of the Jihad Watch team, Hugh Fitzgerald, wrote an essay which, for the first time as far as I can tell, dipped a cautious toe into the dangerous waters of this paradigm shift.  Of course, Hugh, in his arrogance, writes as though what he's saying is perfectly sensible and hasn't been a controversial direction to take the Counter-Jihad, as evidenced by countless instances of various leaders of the CJM -- including his own esteemed colleague, Robert Spencer -- timidly shrinking back from drawing the logical conclusion Hugh in his essay articulates so matter-of-factly:

[Richard] Dawkins frequently claims that Islam is the sole object of his criticism, not Muslims, and those  who label Islam’s critics, such as himself, as “bigots,” are failing to recognize the distinction he makes between Islam and Muslims. Some may think Dawkins is too soft on the adherents of Islam, as he depicts them as victims of brainwashing; he claims endlessly that Muslims are the “greatest sufferers” from Islam as a way of justifying, quite unnecessarily, his criticism of the faith; over the past 1,400 years, on the receiving end of Muslim aggression and murder, many Infidels would disagree. Does one find fault only with the ideology of Nazism and give members of the Nazi Party a pass, as victims of brainwashing who do not deserve criticism?

Hugh goes on to explain why one should expand one's fault-finding from the ideology to its members, but for some strange reason fails to mention two of the most glaring reasons why it applies searingly to Islam:

Members of Islam -- i.e., Muslims -- are not merely, as Hugh says, choosing freely to belong to the faith that Dawkins calls the “greatest force for evil in the world today”; they are more importantly regularly defending it, either through sophistry in order to fend off criticism of Islam, or by actively promoting it.  The tiny number of Muslim "reformers" out there who affect to be criticizing Islam (but really, when one examines their rhetoric closely are only criticizing an artificial "Islamism" ingeniously in order to protect Islam) should be condemned no less than the garden-variety taqiyya more Muslims purvey, when they try to sell the idea that "Islam is peace" and "Islam does not condone terrorism" etc.  But I've noted many times how many in the CJM have soft spots for one or more of these "Better Cop" Muslims.

Secondly -- and closely related to my first point above -- the CJM should know by now that Muslims are not merely a problem because of the terrorism-slash-(pun intended)-jihad which a relatively small minority of them pursue in our present time, but also because of the impetus & goal of that terrorism/jihad, firmly ensconced in the mainstream Islam of all Muslims: the conquest of the world.  This goal of mainstream Islam will not be realized by Muslims solely through terrorism now, but through a coordinated strategy of terrorism plus deceit, where the deceit is a diverse combination platter of tactics, primarily consisting of Muslims lying and pretending that they and their Islam have nothing to do with the terrorism and the expansionist, supremacist jihad that is its guiding framework & context. 

The CJM should know by now that the only reason Muslims aren't simply waging frank warfare against the West (as they did for the first millennium after they stormed out of the Arabian desert, from the 7th century clear through to the 17th century) is because Muslims (correctly) perceive themselves as far too weak relative to their enemy (the West).  What this means is that innumerable, and largely indistinguishable millions of Muslims among their total population in its complex and alarmingly kinetic diaspora post-911, expanding into the West in unprecedented numbers, are pursuing various forms of stealth jihad to lay the ground over many decades for the day (I estimate 100 years or so) when they feel they will be able to take off the mask and pursue jihad more honestly against us.

This is why the Counter-Jihad -- whose primary programme should be to try to wake up the West about the problem of Islam -- needs to undergo the paradigm shift I mentioned at the beginning.  Hugh's essay -- so far an anomaly in the Counter-Jihad Mainstream -- is probably more like too little, too late, than a sign of hope.