According to the ideology of our current rulers, religion is good. Multi-culturism is also good. Therefore, as expressions of culture, all religions are good. Not only that, they are all good to a precisely equal degree. It is impossible for one religion to be “more good” than another religion. As a caveat of this, nothing done in the name of or on behalf of religion can be bad. If someone murders your children and tells you they did it because of their religion, they’re simply the victims of an unfortunate misconception. If religion inspired something bad, than the law of the conservation of religious goodness would be violated. It therefore follows that such people are delusional, and don’t actually understand their own religion.
In keeping with these truisms, White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan has done Moslem terrorists the honor of redefining the word “jihad.” In the process of explaining the “real” nature of their religion to them, he recently enlightened them with the knowledge that all those hours they spent in the Madrassa memorizing the Koran were in vain. Thanks to careful reading of the New York Times, he is now able to inform them that their understanding of “jihad” is flawed. When they blew all those people up, they were the victims of a terrible imposture. Bringing his profound theological expertise to bear, he sets them straight:
Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.
Thus spake Imam Brennan. In order to fact check the presidential advisor and newly minted Islamic scholar, I consulted Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, circa 1968. It is one of those wonderful old massive dictionaries that used to be mounted on lecterns in the better libraries, and was published by the great ancient ones long before the dawn of the era of political correctness. It defines “jihad” as follows:
1) A holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty. 2) A bitter strife or crusade undertaken in the spirit of a holy war.
Note the guileless use of the now forbidden term, “crusade.” I thought that was particularly charming. It is not recorded that anyone at the time, Moslem or otherwise, objected to the above definitions.
The definition of the word Jihad is up to anyone’s individual decision, as religion is a personal matter just like morals. Unfortunately we cannot know what a man thinks inside his head just because he calls himself a Muslim. Maybe Mr. Brennan wants to address those Muslims who view Jihad as an inner struggle and not a holy war – I’m sure those Muslims exist. And even though I was deeply suspicious of the so called appeasing of muslims before I now think that this approach is the right one. Not because it is appeasing but because it offers a dialogue to those who are at least marginally open to it. The others don’t want dialogue anyway – so they just have to be incapacitated.