Quoting a book review by J. Peter Pham in National Review, 31 Dec 2005:

Historian Robert Conquest recently pondered why so many of his fellow scholars had been for so long incapable of grasping the true nature of the Soviet regime. He concluded by blaming “a clerisy that has hardly heard of opinions other than those appearing to be…the acceptable expression of concern for humanity” and that has demonstrated “a strong tendency to silence those who disagree with one or another of the accepted beliefs.”

Can you think of an issue about which people pretend that there exists no “other” side, or that anyone who says, “Wait, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here, this evidence here suggests otherwise,” is a lunatic, or out to destroy humanity, the world, decency, puppies?

It’s so easy to slide into this kind of closed-mindedness. I believe what I believe, and I think I have good reasons for it. I enjoy finding other people who seem intelligent and well-spoken who share that belief. But from there it’s only a lazy little slip over into “ALL people who are intelligent and well-spoken WILL share this belief; everyone else is an evil slug.”

I suspect many readers not only thought of a great example of such narrow-minded idea bigots, but also assume that most smart, “good”, and well-informed people would agree.

So, for instance, if you believe “Bush lied, kids died” is an accurate and pithy explanation of the current conflict in and over Iraq, you thought “stupid/evil neocon warmongers”. If, on the other hand, you think “Global warming is a Commie plot”, you thought “stupid/evil Gore-cult worshipers”.

But the point I’m trying to make here is that if I (or you) begin to think that nobody in their right mind could disagree with my example “clerisy of narrow minds”, then I’ve slipped into the same mindset, thus joining one myself.

p.s. - I know that I’m a card-carrying member of about 14 different “clerisies” myself. But I’m working on escaping. Are you?

OK, yesterday I complained about the lack of response from Muslims denouncing the continuing worldwide bloodbath of Islamic violence. Well, here’s one Muslim voice explicitly denouncing the spreading rot of violent extremism in the Islamic world. (Tip to The Corner for the link). The article, by Abdel Rahman al-Rashed (GM of the Al-Arabiya news channel), opens with this:

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

And further down:

But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing.

For it would be easy to cure ourselves if we realise the seriousness of our sickness. Self-cure starts with self-realisation and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture.

Well-said. While public statements of outrage from prominent Muslims is only a beginning requirement to eliminating the stain of terrorism from Islam, it’s hard to imagine it being put much better than this. So, that’s one. There should be many, many more. I urge interested readers not to hold their breath waiting for this sort of thing on Al-Jazeera, however.

As usual, Mark Steyn is all over this. After a quote from the al-Rashed article (above), he writes:

But, as with Nicolson’s prettified prose in London, the question remains: So what? What are you going to do about it? If you want your religion to be more than a diseased death cult, you’re going to have to take a stand.

UPDATE: Slings’n'Arrows points out what a golden opportunity American Muslims have in Chicago this weekend:

Thirty thousand American Muslims gathered together in one city. This sounds to me like a perfect opportunity for them to stand up and condem in one loud, collective, clear voice Islamic terrorism in general and specifically the latest outrage.

UPDATE: Dr. Ameer Ali, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, speaks out strongly against the Breslan slaughter:

“They call themselves Muslims, but they are not Muslims. People can say in the name of Jesus they go and do some dastardly act, and then do we call them Christians? It’s exactly the situation that we are facing.

“To go and commit this barbaric crime in the name of Islam, that is what I just can’t accept. They are not in the fold of Islam, these people. They have to be condemned. They are the traitors of the community.”

Again, well-said. That’s two. Keep’em coming!

Here I am, holding my newborn, while sub-human thugs in Russia are killing children. I can’t really say anything printable about this specific atrocity. So instead, I’ll quote the simply perfect, dead-on comments of Ralph Peters’ NY Post article (my more temperate comments follow):

Slaughtering the innocents violates a universal human taboo.

Or a nearly universal one. Those Muslims who preach Jihad against the West decided years ago that killing Jewish or Christian children is not only acceptable, but pleasing to their god when done by “martyrs.”

It isn’t politically correct to say this, of course. We’re supposed to pretend that Islam is a “religion of peace.” All right, then: It’s time for Muslims to stand up for the once-noble, nearly lost traditions of their faith and condemn what Arab and Chechen terrorists and blasphemers did in the Russian town of Beslan.

He goes on to say that “Islam has been a great and humane faith in the past.” Fair enough; but I think it’s fair to ask whether its periods of humanity and peace were the aberrations, or its periods of bloodthirsty and violently aggressive expansionism, with radical elements like Al-Qaeda spewing forth pure evil into the world? Modernity, with its obsessive lust for moral equivalence, and its almost total fear of commitment to any principle, repeats endlessly the mantra that “Christian armies were just as bad during the Crusades.” Leaving for those better qualified than I the question of whether this is factually true, I would question its relevance.

The difference, as I see it (sadly, again and again), is that while people proclaiming to be Christians have no doubt done a great many bad things under its banner, Christianity as a whole has rejected militarism and violence as religious practice. That is, what violence is carried on in the “Christian” (or “Judeo-Christian”) West is carried out by people who may be ‘Christian’ in a cultural or religious sense, but they are not carried out by Christians qua Christians; their violence is not an inherent part of that Christian observance. Catholics and Protestants in Ireland may blow each other up, but the dispute is basically a secular, political one; it’s not that either group believes that it is incumbent upon them, as good Catholics/Protestants, to slay all the infidel Protestants/Catholics in order to rack up free virgins in the beyond.

Peters goes on:

If Muslim religious leaders around the world will not publicly condemn the taking of children as hostages and their subsequent slaughter — if those “men of faith” will not issue a condemnation without reservations or caveats — then no one need pretend any longer that all religions are equally sound and moral.

Magnificent. But I don’t think it’s enough to make public statements of outrage, though this is an absolute requirement. In the Arab world (which, let’s face it, has an unavoidable and systemic overlap with the Muslim one), what one says publically seems to means exactly zero. It’s what you do that matters; or more precisely, what you are known as doing. So talk won’t get it done. It’s way, way past time for Muslim leaders to “clean house” in their own mosques and schools, or else there will no longer be a reason for anyone, least of all the non-Muslim world, to carry on with what will then be an obvious pretense.

Wahhabism may indeed be a mutant, aberrant strain of the Islamic faith. But if so, it’s time, far past time, for the loudest, longest, and most violent actions against these vile and godless swine (terms I’ve chosen carefully) to come from “mainstream” Islam, whatever that is. Is anybody out there?