"The terrorism-or-democracy fallacy treats Islamists as “bad” if they blow up buildings in order to build a theocracy, but “good” if they compete in elections to build a theocracy. It prioritizes process over outcome and its logic suggests that we should have no objections to Hitler and Stalin if they had come to power as part of a pure democratic process. Or worse still, bet that democracy would moderate them. The lazy assumption that when the Muslim Brotherhood switched from the bomb to the ballot box, it did more than switch means, it also switched ends, doesn’t hold up. Not when examining the tactics of Islamists in power from Turkey to Tunisia to Egypt. Islamists are as violent in power as they are out of power. It isn’t disenfranchisement that radicalizes them. It’s their belief in Islamic rule that does. McCain and Graham, like most Western leaders, are unable to take the Islamist dreams of a revived Caliphate seriously. That is their undoing and ours. To them, the Brotherhood will become another political party and its Islamist agenda will mean little except a ban on liquor or a lower marriage age for little girls. They refuse to understand their enemies by contemplating the world of the present through the dirty glass of the Islamic lens." Sultan Knish (Daniel Greenfield) 8/16/2013. Excerpted from "Pining for the Brotherhood."
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 16:21:42 +0000
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