In my previous posting, (Damned if we do, damned if we don't...), I breezed over a new term I've come up with:
...like Robert Spencer and the rest of the CJM (Counter-Jihad Mainstream)...
As with other terms I've come up with over the years to denote phenomena that keep impinging on me and annoying me (e.g., "PC MC", "asymptotic", "the Comfortably Apolitical"), I realized that I need a term to denote a Counter-Jihad whose leadership consistently promotes a soft approach to the problem of Muslims while promoting a hard line against Islam, and whose civilian members follow along more or less like sheep (sometimes turning to wolves to attack those who dare to criticize the methodology or analysis of one of their Exalted Leaders). Moreover, at times, even that hard line against Islam is not maintained -- e.g., Daniel Pipes or, more elliptically, Robert Spencer; not to mention in a multitude of subtle ways by which the Counter-Jihad rhetoric telegraphs between the lines a taxonomy of the problem insulating Islam per se. Thus, for example, a random survey of the otherwise fine Counter-Jihad blog Ruthfully Yours yields various essays with phrases like "Islamists such as Erdogan" (what exactly is an "Islamist" and how is that different from a "Muslim"...?) and "Daniel Pipes has riveted his attention upon the threat that radical Islam poses to civilized life in nearly every corner of the globe" (what exactly is "radical Islam" and is it worse than unqualified, natural "Islam" without additives...?).
All this and a thousand other instances I've noticed over the years indicates an unspoken norm guiding the Counter-Jihad (such as it is), creating a phenomenon that calls for a new term. And that term is the CJM -- the Counter-Jihad Mainstream.
I chose that purposefully to play on a consonance with the Mainstream Media about which the Counter-Jihad is always bitching.
So, today's exhibits are Tatjana Festerling and Anne Marie Waters -- two otherwise commendable street warriors in the Counter-Jihad, who have been centrally and bravely active in the PEGIDA movement in Europe... who, when they begin to utter formulations, unfortunately lapse into CJM rhetoric.
In a recent interview with Festerling reported at Gates of Vienna, she does just fine for many hundreds of words, but then at a certain point has an asymptotic spasm:
There it is again: the mantra of the CJM: the aggrandizing millions of Muslims inside our gates must be vetted and managed, not expelled. Two problems with this:
1) they cannot be vetted for our safety with adequate reliability;
2) Festerling’s proposal isn’t anywhere near being even considered now anywhere in the West (other than a tiny minority of outlying states; e.g., Czech Republic and Hungary) -- which means the nature of the problem is getting worse and therefore the prescriptions for it should not reflect what is now happening, but the worsening state it will become in the coming decades. And yet the CJM continues to counsel prescriptions only relevant to the nature of the problem as it now is (and even that may be unrealistic, given that the millions of Muslims already inside the gates of the West pose a security problem of metastasizing proportions as their Islam continues to undergo a global revival).
Our second example is Anne Marie Waters -- again, a brave and exemplary Counter-Jihadist in many ways. During an interview with the vaguely fishy Gad Saad (formerly featured on the home page of her website, Sharia Watch, now relegated to archives), Waters did two things that were disquieting.
As the quasi-oily Gad Saad three times very subtly pushed a soft approach to the problem of Muslims, Waters did nothing to correct him, but rather showed signs of acquiescence, if not agreement.
The first instance was when Saad felt the need to mention the “moderate reformer” Salim Mansur (whom he anxiously hastened to inform the audience was also a “friend”). The problem with Salim Mansur, however, is that he is a Muslim -- he reveres Muhammad and the Koran. That ruins any other words of seeming reform he may utter. But that insight of Zero Tolerance for Any and All Muslims seems, unfortunately, to be a remote concept eluding the CJM. Not only did Waters show no signs of dissension, she helpfully added that there are other (supposedly) reformist Muslims out there like Mansur.
Next, after an impassioned and informed complaint Waters voiced in the interview about the problem of Muslim immigrants, Gad Saad felt the asymptotic urge deep in his being to hasten to append a reminder for the audience assuring them that many Muslims just wanna have a sandwich and are not bad people after all. Again, Waters showed no signs of demurring.
Third, and more subtly, when Waters was talking about the need to exclude hard Leftists from any respect or recognition, she only said “them” without explicitly saying who she meant -- prompting Saad to interject with an anxious reminder that she meant Leftists and not Muslims which -- Saad added anxiously -- would be “hateful”. And Waters responded to this outrageous asymptotic burp with an "oh yeah, right..."
I got a vague sense that Waters did not entirely agree with Saad, but was just going along with him, to avoid being branded as a “bigot” herself. But I’m not sure; perhaps she does agree with Saad... It's hard to tell with these CJMers. I emailed her and asked her this question, and when a week later she hadn't responded, I sent a follow-up email; it's been a month now, and no reply. [Update: It's been a frigging year now, and still no reply]
This brings me to my second concern. When Waters spoke of her thoughts of what to do about the problem of Islam in the context of the Biblical flood of Muslim immigrants inundating Europe and showing no signs of abatement but only of metastasizing, she recommended that we should admit Muslims if they pass a questionnaire. Essentially the same thing Festerling said, and it reflects a dismaying detachment from the reality of the nature of the problem of a chaotic mass influx of a population rife & riddled with a psychology & culture of xenophobic supremacism, Hijra-conquest, and taqiyya.
From these two CJMers, we get no sense at all that they realize the horrendously systemic problems which Muslims raise. This notion that we can manage millions of Muslims within the West by vetting them with questionnaires indicates a shocking naivete about the full catastrophe of Mohammedanism.
But that's the Counter-Jihad Mainstream for you.