Islam is the problem, according to Infidel753

On the whole, I think he’s got things right, with some caveats.

For instance,

The ferocious belligerence of Islamic belief is widely thought to make it an immutable trait, almost like race; once a Muslim, always a Muslim, with only freakishly-rare exceptions.

This leads many Westerners to cling to the hopeful myth of "moderate Islam" -- the myth that Islam is, or can be re-interpreted as, a "religion of peace" which has been hijacked by "extremists" such as al-Qâ'idah and the Taliban.

As I explain here, this is a delusion.

In contrast to Christianity or Judaism, there can be no moderate, tolerant Islam; non-fundamentalist Islam is a contradiction in terms.

Such a concept will always fail because it is inherently dishonest.

The nature of Islam and its sacred texts explicitly rule it out.

But of course the same could be said for liberal Christianity’s flagrant defiance of actual texts and the historic Christian faith.

Liberal and moderate Christianity – “non-fundamentalist” Christianity in the relevant though not exact sense – are also fringe elements existing in defiance of history and logic.

The difference between East and West, between Christendom and the Land of Islam, is not that the Muslims are old-fashioned supernaturalists sticking to the stories of their sacred texts and the Christians post-Enlightenment skeptics completely incredulous, say, of the virgin birth of Jesus or his resurrection.

It is that the Christians gave up on their own intolerance and violence out of sheer exhaustion and anemia from all the bloodshed of the wars of religion of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries.

And a few among them such as the Baptists and the Quakers even turned their eyes from the traditions and history of Christianity since Constantine and looked back at the actual texts of the gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles along with the theological texts from earlier times and found no license there for Christian domination of the state, Christian theocracy, intolerance, or religious war.

The Muslims, of course, have no such pacific past to look back upon for new lessons to encourage them to change their 8^th Century ways, just as the Infidel says.

And this is right, too.

It would be nice if Islam could someday evolve into something moderate and humane.

But its founder and primary sources rule out that possibility just as flatly as the reality of Hitler and Mein Kampf rule out the possibility of a moderate and humane Nazism.

The Infidel illustrates an important point.

It’s entirely possible to share much of the diagnosis of the Islamophobic right of Europe and America without accepting their war-mongering assessment of the political situation or their political prescriptions for foreign or domestic policy.

And it is certainly possible to do so without going nuts over Obama and the Democrats.

On the other hand, the implication is that the “solution” is not replacement of bad Islam by good Islam but conversion away from Islam, altogether, to Christianity, to Buddhism, to Hinduism, to Sikhism, or to outright atheism.

That is, so far as there is a “solution” at all, it’s just what Ann Coulter said and was fired for saying, back in 2001.

Mass conversion.

Nothing else.

And I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that, if I were you.

Nor, of course, would I join her in urging we try to force it on them.