Operation ‘Bad Apples’

Today’s post will take a brief flight of fancy, as I invite the reader to imagine a West of the (hopefully near) future that will have grown not only some testicles, but also some key cerebral lobes. This new—or actually old—West we imagine would, collectively, come up with an Ultimatum and publish it for all the Muslim world to hear in no uncertain terms.

One month prior to that, the West would issue a communiqué to the Muslim World, an advance notice, so to speak, of the Ultimatum to come:

Communiqué to the Muslim World

We will take it on good faith that the Muslims who are wreaking havoc and misery and mass-murder in various locales all around the globe, and who are continuing to plot more and worse of the same, are a relatively small minority of ‘bad apples’. We will also take it on good faith that most Muslims, yourselves included, are good people who share our intolerant disgust of these ‘bad apples’. Furthermore, we will take it on good faith that most Muslims, yourselves included, are reasonably intelligent people who can understand the volatile and metastatic danger these ‘bad apples’ pose not only to the West, not only to the rest of the non-Muslim world, but to the Muslim world itself. And finally, we will take it on good faith that most Muslims, yourselves included, can appreciate that it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to distinguish the ‘bad apples’ from the majority of good, peaceful Muslims—so difficult and complex, in fact, that we are left with no other recourse but to contemplate various actions that would have unfortunate and possibly tragic effects, including ‘collateral damage’ of various kinds, on many otherwise innocent Muslims.

We have therefore determined that the best option, chosen from among a tragically limited set of choices forced upon us by the ‘bad apples’ we all abhor and the complexity of their interpenetration among their brothers and sisters in the larger ‘barrel’ of the Umma, is an Ultimatum which we will respectfully, yet sternly issue to all leaders and representatives and participants of the Muslim World, one month from today.

One month later, the West issues the following Ultimatum (the contents of which had been kept top secret up until its disclosure) to leaders of the Muslim world:

Ultimatum to the Muslim World:

Pursuant to the communiqué we delivered to you, the Muslim World, one month ago, we the West now and hereby inform you that we will give you precisely one year to root out, ostracize, punish and nullify your ‘bad apples’. After that year is up—from precisely 12:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time of the first day following the passage of one year forward into perpetuity, if there occurs one more terrorist attack by Muslims that takes the life of one non-Muslim or more anywhere in the world, or if there is uncovered merely the plot to do the same—we will immediately initiate a tandem operation of launching nuclear missiles to strike every major and secondary city throughout the Muslim world, from the southern Philippines all the way to Morocco and everywhere in between, including Mecca and Medina.

During this year, we will not respond in the terms of our Ultimatum to Muslim terrorist attacks as long as they remain under a certain threshold of degree (to be articulated in our Addendum)—but, of course, we will reserve the right, during that year, to respond with appropriate force, possibly including the type of response stipulated in this our Ultimatum, to any terrorist attack that rises above that threshold. We will set that threshold high, and it will even, generously, exclude the kinds of typical Muslim terrorist attacks we have already seen in the world (even including 911).

Again, you have exactly one year from the moment this is published and disseminated on [insert date and Greenwich time here] by electronic communications to all Muslim leaders and clerics and news organizations listed on our initial, previous communiqué one month ago, in which we gave you forewarning of this Ultimatum. We hope you will be able to nullify your ‘bad apples’ by then.

Good luck, Muslim World—and Godspeed!