Thinking about Islam

Gregory Davis, author of the new World Ahead book Religion of Peace?: Islam's War Against the World, has an editorial in Human Events today calling for a new framework on the part of the West when it comes to thinking about Islam.

Davis makes a key point here -- and one that is ironic for reasons that I will explain:

When Western leaders and opinion-makers pontificate on Islam, they invariably engage in a futile effort to force Islam into their own conceptual categories. But Islam is neither a nation, nor a party, nor a religion in the conventional sense. Islam is rather a tribe whose members share spiritual, social and political ties that transcend conventional political boundaries... We are at war with an alien power with no regard for Western principles; an enemy that seeks nothing less than our submission or destruction.

Advocates of "multiculturalism" have long opposed the concept of an intellectual canon written primarily by dead white males on the basis of their claim that all cultures are equal and it is impossible to analyze or evaluate the merit of another culture as an outsider. And to some extent the multiculturalistas have prevailed in many important Western institutions, especially academia and the media (e.g. the Beeb).

But -- as Davis asserts -- this approach is being abandoned when it comes to Islam, which is instead viewed through the left side of a Western prism that veils the ugly reality. This is why we opted to publish Davis's book; he's not afraid to speak the unpleasant truth, and everyone in the West needs to hear it.