Opinion The end of the War on Islam

Islam Imamate

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A interesting opinion piece on the fading relevance of Islam related issues and the War on Terror in the wider discourse.

Why America's decade-and-a-half freakout over Islam is over
As multiple Presidents took pains to reassure us, America never actually went to war with global Islam. But given the rhetoric gushing out from much of the American press and American society for a decade and a half, you could forgive someone for thinking we had. During the years between 9/11/2001 and the fall of ISIS in 2017, Islam was the chief bogeyman of conservative America and much of the foreign policy establishment. It wasn’t just conservatives who spilled a lot of ink over Islam either — the entire New Atheist movement basically broke with the Left over the issue. Anxieties about Islam were decidedly mainstream — the cover of TIME Magazine on June 30, 2003 read: “Should Christians convert Muslims?”.
But what’s really weird is how quickly all of this seems to be receding into memory. Islamophobic attacks have fallen at a rapid clip since early 2017. A recent poll found that only 20% of Americans (and 34% of Republicans) now want to ban immigration from Muslim countries. Other polls have also found that anti-Muslim sentiment is now strongly unpopular in America. Islamophobia is far from dead, but it’s no longer widely accepted, and it no longer feels connected to a wider anxiety about geopolitical conflict.
But I think it’s worth asking why the perception of a conflict between the U.S. and global Islam has receded. I see several reasons — some unambiguously positive, others more ominous.
Here's his reasons in bullet points which you can read more on in the article
  • The U.S. won the War on (Islamist) Terror
  • The Right found other people to worry about
  • ISIS discredited jihadism
  • The Middle Eastern Stately Quadrille
  • The War on Islam shifts elsewhere

I think he has a point, you can notice it even here in the War Room. Before the withdrawal from Afghanistan there were barely any threads related to Islam. Even after it feels as if the perception of the event wasn't really filtered through the same "WoT" lens, if anything Afghanistan and the clusterfuck over there is emblematic of American fatigue with the WoT. So many people are deeply cynical about the real motivations behind the WoT that they're less likely to buy into the kinds of talking points that were once the norm in the discussion around such issues.

As he points out other countries have taken on the mantle. You've got authoritarian countries like China and Burma with heavy crackdowns on their Muslim minorities which they justify with reference to WoT terminology. And with the recent Islamist murders in France combined with the crackdown on Muslims and their institutions it seems to have intensified even in other Western democracies. But here in the US few seem to care anymore.
 
Islam is the religion and lifestyle mandate of the future.
It is the duty of every acolyte to promote and further the promulgation of Islam at whatever cost.
The goal is not to 'assimilate and co-exist', it is to demand the world adheres to the tenets of
this godly, chosen practice of worship of Allah, in his beneficence and holy wisdom.
Allahu Akbar
 
It was never a war on Islam, but a lot of Muslim leaders and some liberals painted it as such, so that Muslims around the world can be rallied, so that the West can be intimidated and pressured to temper criticism of Muslim countries, groups and leaderships and the religon. It's like how BDS and criticism of Israeli policy is branded as Anti-Semitic.

Americans, like every other nationality, are primarily concerned about domestic issues. Occassionally people would talk about Islam and Muslims, usually after a high profile attack, but then everyone kinda forgets it quickly and goes back to bitching about domestic issues and GOP/Dems.

Well before the Afghanistan pullout , the focus was on the virus and BLM. Americans tend to be very much concerned about the here and now, and lose interest in subjects rather quickly. Afghanistan was barely brought up before the withdrawl. No one really talks about Iraq now. No one talks about Israel / Palestine now, because it has been a few months since the rocket barrage from Hamas and bombing of Gaza by Israel. People stopped talking about Libya long before the Afghan pullout.

if there was a massive attack in the West by Islamists, there would be a sharp uptick in interest in the warroom regarding Islam. But after a few weeks everyone will essentially forget it and we will go back to bitching about BLM, Dems, GOP, Wokeism, SJWs, Biden, Vaccines etc.. Even talk of BLM seems to have petered-out a bit, from its heyday last year.
 
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The media has just gotten better at gaslighting people about islamic terrorism.

But you can't change what is in your holy books and that is the prime rationalization for Islamic terrorism.

https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=9&verse=29
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

We may not be at war with islam, but islam is at war with us.
 
I guess compared to the religion of “woke”, (LGBTQ /BLM, drag queen story time, give hormone blockers to your kids, pro-vaccine passport type people) ... Islam is not that bad.
I've noticed that this sentiment is not that uncommon among the right, that at least Islam ain't as bad as the radical progressive worldview. To me that was a sign of the change in the tide since it was usually the right that was most vehemently anti-Islam.
 
MBS has cracked down on the Saudi clerics funding jihadist imperialism. There was a certain level if violence that western leaders were willing to tolerate, and ISIS went so far past the rubicon that the status quo ended.

My 2 cents
 
When it comes to Europe, they have generally accepted that massive waves of Islamic migration is rather unpopular and a threat to the union in general. Right wing populism and their views on bolstering up the borders is on the rise and are now finally being accepted as common sense.

Islamism is viewed as a threat where it makes sense and it has calmed down where it hasn't. I have said this repeatedly about Trump but one of the issues that really propelled his anti-illegal immigration campaign was the cluster fuck that was the migration crisis in Europe. People saw what was happening due to the Syrian civil war and how it affected Europe and the idea of building a wall looked really attractive. In America it was a boogeyman but it helped fuel that sentiment of border security. In Europe it's still perceived as an issue because it threatens their project and they know it.
 

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It was never a war on Islam, but a lot of Muslim leaders and some liberals painted it as such, so that Muslims around the world can be rallied, so that the West can be intimidated and pressured to temper criticism of Muslim countries, groups and leaderships and the religon. It's like how BDS and criticism of Israeli policy is branded as Anti-Semitic.

Americans, like every other nationality, are primarily concerned about domestic issues. Occassionally people would talk about Islam and Muslims, usually after a high profile attack, but then everyone kinda forgets it quickly and goes back to bitching about domestic issues and GOP/Dems.

Well before the Afghanistan pullout , the focus was on the virus and BLM. Americans tend to be very much concerned about the here and now, and lose interest in subjects rather quickly. Afghanistan was barely brought up before the withdrawl. No one really talks about Iraq now. No one talks about Israel / Palestine now, because it has been a few months since the rocket barrage from Hamas and bombing of Gaza by Israel. People stopped talking about Libya long before the Afghan pullout.

if there was a massive attack in the West by Islamists, there would be a sharp uptick in interest in the warroom regarding Islam. But after a few weeks everyone will essentially forget it and we will go back to bitching about BLM, Dems, GOP, Wokeism, SJWs, Biden, Vaccines etc.. Even talk of BLM seems to have petered-out a bit, from its heyday last year.

Bullshit. The whole media went full on crusades after 9/11. It was literally on TV 24/7. Islam this, Islam that. What are you going to say next that those Iraqis bombed themselves to oblivion too...US has created this world and now it's trying to blame somebody else for their incompetence. US linked religion of Islam to terrorism while they were terrorizing those they labeled as such. And guess what? Nobody is in prison for those wars.
 
I've noticed that this sentiment is not that uncommon among the right, that at least Islam ain't as bad as the radical progressive worldview. To me that was a sign of the change in the tide since it was usually the right that was most vehemently anti-Islam.
There because they're religious too. They actually believe you when you say concert or die.
 
I've noticed that this sentiment is not that uncommon among the right, that at least Islam ain't as bad as the radical progressive worldview. To me that was a sign of the change in the tide since it was usually the right that was most vehemently anti-Islam.

Speaking of radical, would you be ok with your daughter being 'circumcised' if you lived in say Somalia.
 
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