Tarring Muslims with a broad brush

Robert Spencer in a Jihad Watch report a while back wryly noted about the snot-nosedly Leftist journalist Spencer Ackerman that he "would have invited Josef Goebbels to oversee FBI training during World War II."

Then he quoted from the article that:

An internal FBI investigation into its counterterrorism training has purged hundreds of bureau documents of instructional material about Muslims, some of which characterized them as prone to violence or terrorism.

Then wryly remarked:

Good. Only the greasiest of Islamophobes would ever, ever have gotten the idea that any Muslims at all, anywhere, had any interest in violence or terrorism.

However, the report implies that what is of concern to the Bureau here (the same concern that motivates PC MCs everywhere in the West) is what may be called the "tarring with the same brush" problem, or the "lumping innocent Muslims in with the guilty" problem:

Discussing the many documents purged by the FBI from its training materials, it reports:

...the inquiry has uncovered and purged over 700 pages of documentation from approximately 300 presentations given to agents since 9/11 — some of which were similar to briefings published by Danger Room last year describing “mainstream” Muslims as “violent.”

Also note that the aforementioned description which Robert Spencer wryly skewered did not say what he characterized it to imply. Thus, Robert Spencer took --

...instructional material about Muslims, some of which characterized them as prone to violence or terrorism.

-- where it is only using the phrase "about Muslims" without qualification -- and turned it into

...the idea that any Muslims at all, anywhere, had any interest in violence or terrorism.

This latter locution is a negative qualification, by which "Muslims" without qualification -- which could be easily construed to be any given Muslim and hence, by logical extension, all Muslims -- is subtly transformed into "no Muslims at all" could possibly have any interest in violence or terrorism.

The overarching point here is that the Bureau, in having this concern -- what may be called the "tarring with the same brush" problem, or the "lumping innocent Muslims in with guilty" problem -- is only following the logic that is plainly articulated by something Robert Spencer solemnly wrote in 2006:

"Islam is more multifaceted than Nazism, and involves many beliefs, some good, some bad. You are comparing a huge 1400-year-old tradition over many nations with 12 years of Germany. If you met a Nazi in 1938, you would know what he thinks. But the fact is that when you meet a Muslim today you can have no certainty about what he thinks or knows. This does not mean that I think there is some sect of Islam that teaches indefinite peaceful coexistence as equals with non-Muslims; there isn't. But Islam has meant many things to many people at different times. There are Muslims that know nothing of what I am saying here. This is a fact that must be reckoned with."

All the Bureau has done is "reckoned with" the "fact is that when you meet a Muslim today you can have no certainty about what he thinks or knows" -- which was obviously not meant by its writer to mean that any given Muslim is sufficiently suspect to deemed potentially deadly; but, it appears, quite the reverse, for Spencer in that quote contrasts that situation with Nazis in 1938.  The fact that the writer of that quote has numerous times over the years -- including in this very article here! -- effectively contradicted his own logic articulated in 2006 does not vitiate the fact of the logic (nor redeem its deficiency). 

This is in fact another fact that has yet to be reckoned with.

Afterword:

Our ongoing predicament is that we can't tell the difference between the harmless Muslim and the deadly Muslim -- with the crucial corollary fact being that the deadliness in question is not minor but is a) extreme; b) international in scope and networking; c) difficult to predict; d) fanatically motivated; and e) metastasizing.

It's not my job to put forth a concrete framework for policy in light of this predicament. It's the job of the people who serve us citizens in the free West -- i.e., our politicians and all their agencies charged with protecting us, along with the news media who are supposed to keep the aforementioned civil servants on their toes to do the best job they can in serving their fellow citizens.

What I can do, and what I have been doing for years, is to articulate an argument based upon

1) the mountain of data that indicates that

a) Muslims are deadly to us and that

b) we cannot tell the difference between deadly Muslims and harmless Muslims

and

2) the logic which #1 leads us to, if we want to protect our societies. 

I'm not stopping anyone else from proferring their own suggestions for how to protect our societies given #1; nor am I stopping anyone from critiquing my particular suggestion (presented in excruciating detail in my essay, An Iron Veil). In fact, I'd love it if someone did present a reasoned counter-argument to it.

But the fact remains that Muslims themselves have forced us to tar them with a broad brush.  It's not the West's responsibility to try to salvage the majority of Muslims from this tar pit of their own doing.  It's theirs.  And as long as they aren't adequately doing anything about it, we should focus on our primary priority: protecting our societies.