Whack-a-Mo vetting

Hussain "Al-Britani", a former "citizen" of the UK now allied to ISIS and engaged in Jihad of the Pen (no doubt in addition to the other Jihads of killing, torturing and raping), in the wake of the Jihad of the Automobile & Sword in London this week, called for Muslims in the UK to stab Unbelievers more or less willy-nilly -- and to rob them in order to "buy knives".

This was reported on Jihad Watch.  Robert Spencer noted that in the report that came out in the London paper, Mirror, it was reported that "Al-Britani" was a "former Morrisons security guard from High Wycombe, Bucks".

Then Spencer wrote:

When Hussain was a Morrisons security guard, did anyone at Morrisons or anywhere else try to determine whether or not he was an “extremist”? Of course not. To do anything but assume his “moderation” would have been “Islamophobic.”

Does Spencer think that vetting Muslims is reliable & viable?  If he doesn't, his rhetorical question above makes no sense.

Sure, a vetting process that looks out for obvious red flags of "extremism" (i.e., of a fervent belief in the application of normative, baseline, mainstream Islam in its one form of Jihad -- the Jihad of the Sword -- and only that one form, and not the myriad other forms Jihad can take as they work in synergy with the Jihad of the Sword), may well accomplish a reduction of terrorism, in the sense that a metastasizing epidemic of moles may be minimized -- temporarily and fitfully -- by the practice of whacking them whenever they happen to pop out of holes in various unpredictable parts of the West.

However, Spencer's implied vetting process would be even more restrained than my metaphor -- we would only be whacking those moles who possess special visible features of being the "extremist" moles; and we would leave alone the majority of Moderate Moles.

So Spencer apparently believes the problem of Islam only stems from "extremists", and he thus apparently also believes that "extremist" Muslims (his "jihadists") are different from garden-variety ordinary Muslims.  And yet, he will turn around in other contexts and imply the opposite -- as in another Jihad Watch report about how UK Prime Minister Theresa May cautioned people to refer to the problem as "Islamist" not "Islamic" terrorism, for the former is the "perversion of a great faith" (viz., Islam).  Spencer on that occasion wrote:

But was there anything about Masood before his jihad massacre that would have identified him as an “Islamist” rather than as a Muslim? 

This is what I have meant by Robert Spencer's incoherence.  He won't pursue the logic of his own words to lead him to the logical conclusion that all Muslims are equally suspect.  Why he won't do this remains a mystery, though a mystery with a limited number of options to explain it:

1) Spencer is curiously brain-damaged

2) Spencer is doing clever sophistry in order to fend off the PC MCs who continue to dominate our Western societies, and he is disguising his true belief, that all Muslims are indeed equally suspect

3) Spencer actually believes that most Muslims are not the problem, only a Minority of Extremists (the numbers may be higher than what the broader Mainstream believes, in its anxiety not to "paint all Muslims with a broad brush", but it follows essentially the same logic as the broader Mainstream).

I think we can rule out #1.  As for #2, there is no evidence he is doing this; and even if he were, it would be futile, since the PC MC Mainstream damns him regardless of how carefully he treads to avoid their eggshells.  But apparently innumerable numbers of his adoring fans, who express themselves in far bolder terms than he does, must think he's pretending to be equivocating, when really he's signalling them by a tug of his earlobe that he's on their side.

Door #3 seems to be the most plausible, especially given his strenuous defense of such a moderated position against fellow Counter-Jihadists in comments sections of Jihad Watch a decade ago (see my recent essay, Third piece of the puzzle... And there's not a shred of evidence that Spencer has changed his mind about that; in fact, Spencer never seems to change his mind about anything, which is a tad disquieting in and of itself...).

Back to our story:  What the UK supermarket chain, "Morrisons", should have done is reject Hussain "Al-Britani" when he applied for work, merely on the basis of one vetting criterion alone: the mere fact that he is a Muslim.

More pertinently, the UK -- and the entire West -- should reject Muslims on that criterion, and by deporting them from the West, Morrisons and innumerable other institutions -- and the general populace -- in our Western societies shouldn't have to worry about vetting them.

But I don't see any signs that the two Mainstreams -- the Counter-Jihad Mainstream and the broader Western Mainstream -- are going to do anything to change the loop they're on, and putting all of us through: a reiterating Groundhog Day of timid incoherence that will last interminably.  But not forever.  When the Muslim moles have infested our societies long and deep enough to feel confident of moving into Phase B of their Jihad against us, we will finally be rudely shaken out of our denial; but at what cost?