It’s Islamism, Stupid

advances the heartening thesis that Islam needs to be divorced from Islamism. It also pulls no punches in condemning the Obama administration’s unwillingness to identify Islamism as being the driving force behind terrorism and empowering terrorists and terrorist organizations and regimes. She is both articulate and informed in her belief that the divorce is both necessary and doctrinally feasible. Would that it were so.

Her second paragraph nails the maddening stupidity of the Obama policy of Islamism denial:

Her opening paragraph is also right on target except, unfortunately, for the last clause.

The Charlie Hebdo massacre demands that we at last acknowledge that the secular pluralistic democratic world is imperiled by Islamism, the dastardly impostor of Islam.

She also nails it by pointing out that even if the Islamism disconnect of the Obama administration is meant to shield Islam, it has just the reverse effect of “sheltering it within Islam’s bosom”:

estimates commend violence and supremacism.

But certainly addressing Islamism, the ideology based, mistakenly or not, on the Koran is a necessary first step. As Ahmed forcibly notes, “Owning the narrative is key in any ideological battle.”

would now win the presidency of France. She has derided French President Francois Hollande for being unwilling to target Islamism as the ideology propelling violent jihad, “France, land of human rights and freedoms, was attacked on its own soil by a totalitarian ideology: Islamic fundamentalism.”

The bottom line is not whether or not Islam can really be divorced from Islamism, it is strategically important to target Islamism as the ideological driving force and justification for violent jihadists. It is not just a drones in the air and boots on the ground war it is also an ideological war. If Islamism is not discredited as the violent, inhumane theo-fascist ideology it is, then no matter how many terrorist cells are destroyed it will breed more and more jihadists committing gruesome acts of horror. It is reported that ISIS has now taken to beheading educated women.

The reason why there are Islamists is because there is Islamism. The reason why there are Islamo-fascists is because there is Islamo-fascism. There would have been no Marxists without Marxism. There would have been no Nazis without Nazism. How hard is that?