Michael, I agree totally. There is a cognitive dissonance when it comes to Progressives and Islam. I believe it is because of many factors, the chief one being hatred of Christianity and the West in general. Also from decades of conditioning that European civilization is evil but the cultures of “people of color” are inherently good. Even when honest people point out the evil that they do, well that’s ok, because their customs are “quaint.” That’s why it’s ok for Mexican-Americans to belong to an organization called “The Race” (La Raza) which was founded by Jorge Vansconcelos, an early fan of Hitler, but Southerners should not feel pride in striking the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy. Completely hypocritical.

As for Behar and Goldberg, I will gladly hold the coats of Jihadis when they force them into burqas. It would be condign punishment.

But we see uber-liberal politically correct ‘leading women’ who escaped repression going back and doing journalism and reporting on the whole horrifically repressive thing and getting it aired.

Maybe it’s part in parcel of the theme Fr. Hans mentioned earlier — this denial that a thing has essential qualities. Making it sort of ‘fart joke’ level discussion to discuss what a thing says for itself. The only acceptable discourse is ‘what that is about in context’. So in that world the constitution is a living breathing document — it means what we say it means because we do the living and the breathing but without the obligation to probe what the constitution’s actual provisions are, or if doing so only en passant to please those who need old style word content anchors.

So they don’t probe what Islam says for itself, instead they notice people from Islamic places can be of excellent character and so think observations about the content of the religion is ‘really about’ some essential racial / ethnic / national origin bigotry. But the ‘words mean things’ old school types can’t just leave it alone.

I’m just guessing. All clear as mud to me really.

Iskandra, your note reminds of one of my favorite essays, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Live Not by Lies.

These women are living in denial. They have to live there in order not be seen as traitors to the progressive march toward an unattainable utopia.

Many people live in denial of the truth because they would have to give up many of their long cherished beliefs and would no longer be a part of the “intellectual elite.” To be pro-choice one must lie to one’s self that a baby is not being killed when it is aborted. To be pro-gay marriage one must lie to one’s self that two men or two women can have a marriage in the same sense of the word as a man and a woman. To accept and celebrate a religious political system (Islam), one must lie to oneself that it is a religion of peace when overwhelming recent and historical evidence is contrary to that position.

If they denied it was a religion of peace then they would be bigots and haters. So they choose to live in a lie in order to belong to the elite, “enlightened,” pseudo-intellectual cause.

I admit to Michael’s puzzlement about this apparent extreme support by these politically active women given Islam’s repressive ideas about women. What’s up with that anyway? Whoopi and Joy seen only through a gap in the cloth for the eyes? I don’t think so.

The question of Sharia Law, jihad, the ummah, etc. and the place the actually hold in modern Islamic thought needs to be seriously debated. Then we might be able to say authoritatively whether the 9/11 folks and the terrorists are extreme or not.

Until then unless a Moslem rejects Sharia Law as in an way normative or desirable in the United States one should not trust him. Along with a specific rejection of Sharia Law in the U.S in both English and Arabic along with an equal rejection of violent jihad, the subjugation of the infidel, etc, etc. Without those rejections, Islam has no place in the civil life of the US. Any Muslim running for public office who does not make a clear, direct statement on the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution over Sharia Law in both English and Arabic, should be disqualified from standing for election. Of course the question then becomes can a Muslim do that and still be a Muslim?

It amazes me that women who are so vocal about ‘women’s rights’ don’t hit on Islam all day every day. There is simply no place for women as any sort of equal in any Islamic society anywhere now or in history.

If Goldberg and Behar had treated a Muslim man with the disrespect they showed O’Reilly, their guest BTW. They’d be dead. Of course, they would have been beaten or jailed long before now if they were in a Muslim country and dared to speak their minds.

I notice that the whole demonizing of the opposition to the current liberal drivel spewed by the likes of the pelosi’s, bidens, et al. is a very infantile way of debating the issues. Their methods are tantamount to a child covering his ears and yelling at the top of his voice so the ideas of the opposition cannot be heard. What’s scary is that this ilk is leading the country.

Islamophobia in the United States will end only after there will have been no Muslim terrorist activities throughout the world for several years.

Sometimes I run across something that is well stated, crystal clear, short and to the point, and irrefutable in the correctness of what it says. This is one of those times. As I read along I thought about how quickly hatred and fear of the Japanese and the Germans dissipated after WWII.

Thank you, Fr. Jacobse, for giving this a little more air time.