Odd oversight at Jihad Watch

• • •

The main function and value of the site Jihad Watch (which is its singular excellence) is its incessant ticker-tape reportage of the deeds and words of various Muslims around the world manifesting a systemic problem in Islam -- a problem that is increasingly impinging upon the rest of the world.

As part of this reportage, there is the important subcategory of the West's continuing myopia to that systemic problem in Islam, on which Jihad Watch has also been regularly reporting. Within this subcategory, we have seen the rare exceptions of various Western leaders and analysts showing glimmers of an awareness of the nature and dimensions of that systemic problem. And those rare exceptions Jihad Watch also notes, regularly -- and all the more so when they are significant. (Indeed, Jihad Watch for many years now has showcased a kind of election or awards ceremony, in which readers vote on who is the "Dhimmi" and who is the "Anti-Dhimmi", both nationally and internationally -- Dhimmi meaning a non-Muslim who more or less voluntarily submits to the dictates of Islamic rules: an acutely ironic term for modern Westerners who are not (yet) under the rule of Islam but who, out of a deluded PC MC "respect" for that monstrous culture, adopt attitudes tantamount to the dhimmitude of Westerners of yore in the context of lands conquered and occupied violently by Muslims.)

Anywho:

It's been about 72 hours now since on the morning of November 15, Lawrence Auster's blog -- which isn't even an anti-Islam blog per se but rather is geared to a dizzingly hectic punditry about Everything Under the Sun Including the Kitchen Sink (entries there include, amid a kaleidoscopic swirl of Emergent News, e.g., musings about how politicians who drink out of water bottles in public are manifesting some kind of symptom of a broader pathology in "liberal" society; or making disapproving pronouncements on the supposedly improper fashion attire of various female politicians; etc.) -- first reported the refreshingly bracing chutzpah of an American politician (a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, Rick Womick) who said, in public and unequivocally, that he doesn't want Muslims to serve in the U.S. Military, because he doesn't trust Muslims.

Let's pause to inspire that breath of fresh air, deeply with eyes closed and mouth smiling.

Now exhale.

And, Womick gave a good reason for that distrust: the Islam which Muslims follow explicitly enjoins them to consider as an enemy of Islam anyone or any polity which finds itself fighting against a Muslim land. And Rep. Womick rationally concludes that in such a cultural context -- based upon holy texts and innumerable clerical sermons and rulings over the years and decades and centuries -- one cannot trust American Muslims to not wig out and start killing their own fellow American soldiers, as has already happened at least twice (to which we would add the countless plots by American Muslims, who didn't happen to be in the military at the time, to mass murder Americans on the basis of the fact that Americans, by being part of a polity that happens to be at war with a couple of Muslim countries (actually, at war in order to help the supposed Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims within those countries from the Tiny Minority of Extremists who are attacking them), are ipso facto legitimate targets of what we would consider mass murder, but which Islamic law considers simply killing the enemy in wartime (and that time of war is indefinite, in the view of Islam).

Anywho:

As Auster noted, this is the first time an American politician has made a public statement this refreshingly bold about the problem of Muslims.

So why hasn't Robert Spencer seen fit to note it on his own blog devoted to the problem of Islam and to the problem of the problem (the problem of the West's myopia to the problem of Islam)? Indeed, it should have been noted prominently on a blog like Jihad Watch.

Is it because Spencer perhaps disapproves of Womick's position, as going too far against Muslims in general -- against whom Spencer avowedly claims (see my essay immediately below) to have no problem? Or is Spencer leery of being contaminated by the potential fallout from catching Womick's cooties, lest the wrath of the PC MC mainstream come down on Womick and all associated with his crime of bigotry? That doesn't sound all that brave for a person who has often in the past enjoined others to stand unflinchingly tall in the face of the PC MC mainstream's unfair vilifications of those who would dare to condemn Islam. Is it because Rep. Womick somehow fell afoul -- perhaps socially and utterly unrelated to anything political -- of Spencer's hip-joined Partner-in-Anti-Jihad, Pam Geller (a search on her site, Atlas Shrugs, yielded zero hits for "womick")? Or is it because Spencer has long made it a policy of studiously avoiding Lawrence Auster -- even, as with his erst friend Andrew Bostom -- to the point that he doesn't want to be in a position to have to give a hat tip to Auster?

Who knows what goes on in the Gentlemen's Club.

Whatever the reason, somehow I doubt it's just because of a simple oversight. And it's an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise fine record of the primary raison d’être of Jihad Watch: its reportorial function in the still inchoate Anti-Islam Movement.