For most of those who believe there is a problem of Islam, they seem to have a dim apprehension that violence is a part of that problem. But how is Islamic violence a problem? There are two ways it would be a problem:
1) Currently and in an ongoing manner, Islamic terrorists are killing people in order to try to destroy the West (in order to make Sharia supreme)
2) The current and ongoing terror attacks are not meant to destroy the West now, but rather to initiate a long "jihad of attrition" -- combining sporadic yet growing terrorism with increasing penetration of millions of Muslims into the West -- that will slowly, over a long period of time, transform the West to a state where Muslims will finally take off their masks because they will be able to destroy it violently (in order to make Sharia supreme).
The first one, #1, has a "soft perspective" and a "grim perspective". The soft perspective of #1 is that, sure, there are some nasty "Islamist extremists" doing terrorism here and there, but a) they don't represent more than a tiny minority of world Muslims; so that b), their goal of destroying the West is highly unlikely to happen, and we will be able to manage the problem in the long-term by continuing what we're doing now. I.e., the problem is not systemic, nor is it metastasizing.
The grim perspective of #1 doesn't make the rosy assumptions of the soft perspective; but rather errs on the side of... grimness, to (tentatively) conclude that the problem is, in fact, systemic and metastasizing -- and thus involves many more Muslims than merely a "tiny minority" who are assumed (by the soft perspective) to be going against the Islamic norm of the "vast majority" of Muslims.
I'd say most in the Counter-Jihad subscribe to the grim perspective of #1 but haven't really given much thought to the prospect of #2, which doesn't have a "soft" side; it's just plain grim. So basically they think that there are a whole lot of Muslim extremists out there -- many more than the comfortable deniers exemplified by the soft perspective of #1 -- but they haven't thought about what the Islamic end game must be, and what strategies Muslims would be pursuing for the long-term. This majority in the Counter-Jihad, thus, seems to have an incoherent jumble of negative emotions & thoughts about the problem of Islam: sometimes they sound like they think Muslims can take over peacefully, just by "Sharia Creep" and steady demographic aggrandizement in the West. And even while they indulge this assumption, the Counter-Jihad majority continues to call attention to and decry terrorism -- yet never apparently connecting the two logically. One wonders what exactly they are worried about when it comes to Islam.
If that isn't bad enough, when I have told them I think the full, grim effects of the problem (from the perspective of #2) probably won't unfold for another 100 years (give or take a few hundred beheadings), the typical response I get is of Chicken Little panic: "WHAT!!?? WE WON'T LAST THAT LONG!!! THE SKY IS FALLING NOW!!!!!!!" But again, they seem unable to articulate precisely what this "sky falling" in the very near future entails, vis-a-vis Muslims and us.
Let's take a closer look at #2 (my position):
2) The current and ongoing terror attacks are not meant to destroy the West now, but rather to initiate a long "jihad of attrition" -- combining sporadic yet growing terrorism with increasing penetration of millions of Muslims into the West -- that will slowly, over a long period of time, transform the West to a state where Muslims will finally take off their masks because they will be able to destroy it violently (in order to make Sharia supreme).
If that is the case, Muslims aren't pursuing this modus operandi of more or less biding their time (in conjunction with terror attacks below a certain threshold now and again) for no good reason, but only because they are forced to. And the obvious reason why they are forced to is because of the superiority of their enemy (mainly, the West). They realize the West can't be brought down merely with a concatenation of terror attacks -- because of the West's comparative military superiority. Furthermore, unless they are blithering idiots (and it's tempting for those "in the Counter-Jihad" movement to denigrate Muslims as stupid, but that's a reckless temptation that underestimates the fanatical intelligence cultivated in Islam), Muslims also realize that, if they tried to "bet everything on one hand" and pull out all the stops by initiating a generalized mayhem of jihad wherever they are in the West, the West would at that point finally wake up to the danger and be able to definitively disable them, likely permanently.
As I noted above, from my sense of taking stock of "the Counter-Jihad" over the past decade plus (example, my "Taking the Temperature of the Counter-Jihad" series), its analysts (whether in the Leadership or part of the Civilian Readership) don't seem to have a view coherent enough position even to delineate where they fall along this division; let alone whether they proffer a third alternative. One thing is clear, they hardly ever show signs of appreciating #2. They thus have, as best we can piece together (since they never actually have a conversation about the nuts and bolts of this issue in these terms), a confused sense of #1 that splits off into variants; but none of them clearly making sense in terms of clarifying precisely how Islam is dangerous to us -- which, of course, is intimately connected to how dangerous one considers Islam to be.
Note (Friday, November 22):
A day after I published the above essay, I realized that my #2 point hadn't fully articulated its gist. The original version was this:
2) The current and ongoing terror attacks are not meant to destroy the West now, but rather to initiate a long "jihad of attrition" -- combining sporadic yet growing terrorism with increasing penetration of millions of Muslims into the West -- that will slowly, over a long period of time, transform the West to a state where Muslims will be able to destroy it (in order to make Sharia supreme).
But what I realized was missing were two crucial factors of that future process: (i) when Muslims will "finally take off their masks because they will be able to destroy" the West; and (ii) that this future destruction will be "violently" (obviously meaning more violently than theretofore -- with no more need [or at least much less need] of taqiyya and its various modes of dissembling peacefulness).
The reader can see I already made the changes to the two instances in which I quoted #2.
Further Reading:
An apropos posting I wrote a couple of years ago on The Hesperado, my former blog:
The Psychology of the Counter-Jihad Softy
Indeed, I noted just now that in the comments section of that posting, my comment to a reader touched on the very issues my posting here today deals with. I wrote back on January 20, 2017:
We also need to understand what "enemies" in this context means, in terms of their willingness and concrete ability to not only pop up at random with violence against us, but also infiltrate in myriad subtle ways so as to enable far more horrific attacks on us in the future -- after decades of economically and infrastructurally and psychologically destabilizing attacks (and fear of attacks) have had their effects, at some future date (I estimate approximately 100 years, give or take) reducing us (the entire West) just enough to be brought down by bigger, more concerted attacks into general breakdown.
Thus, even if a Counter-Jihadist Softy may understand generally what you say about all Muslims being potentially/actually our enemies, their soft perspective will minimize the "enemy" part to merely a static stance of actual/potential enmity in a vague way, not the metastasizing enmity it actually is -- motivated, inspired, and guided by the blueprint of fanatical hatred and infiltration encoded in Islamic texts, tradition, history, and culture.
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