Saturday, December 24, 2016

The problem of the problem of the problem

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This tertiary problem radiating out from the primary problem (Islam, of course), via the intermediary problem (the problem of the West's persistent myopia to the primary problem), has not gone away over the years, just because I haven't reported on it.

This tertiary problem is the problem of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream's failure to grasp the full nature of the broader Western Mainstream and its myopia to the problem of Islam.

A recent Jihad Watch report offers us a massive, albeit seemingly indirect, manifestation of this "problem of the problem of the problem".  The report concerns a recent public statement by Prince Charles, warning against Trump and "the dark days of the 30s" during the Holocaust -- with explicit comparisons drawn between the Jewish victims of those days with the supposed Muslim victims of "Islamophobia" in our day.

In a nutshell, the manifestation of the tertiary problem is evident in the responses by the counter-jihad laity (or civilians) in the comments section to that Jihad Watch report:  The overwhelming reaction by these counter-jihad civilians treats Prince Charles as an anomaly, as though he's some weird buffoon with nutty ideas about Islam -- when in fact the monstrous reverse is the case.  The entire Western Mainstream (including I dare say most of the relatives, friends, work colleagues, and acquaintances of these Jihad Watch commenters) thinks more or less like Prince Charles.  It still remains the wearying case throughout the West that the anomaly is the Counter-Jihad.

Why is this important to point out?  For two reasons:

1) Because of the secondary problem (the Western Mainstream persisting in its myopia to the primary problem, of Islam), the main function of the Counter-Jihad (I prefer to say, the Anti-Islam Movement -- but the reasons why the Counter-Jihad Mainstream seems reluctant to adopt that more accurate designation is part of the problem of the problem of the problem... but I digress) should be to wake up their fellow Westerners and shake them out of their myopia.

2) That main mission of the Counter-Jihad, however, cannot be optimally done when its members persist in misapprehending and misconstruing the reasons why their Western fellows continue to indulge in this myopia.

P.S.:  And, in addition, it doesn't help when the Counter-Jihad itself indulges in certain memes that also betray a degree of myopia (e.g., speaking in terms of "Islamism" and "Islamists" instead of the more accurate Islam and Muslims; speaking in terms analogous to the Moderate Muslim as though those analogous terms are viable for our analysis of the problem; and in various ways, refusing to face the fact that the problem of Islam is also a problem of all Muslims).

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