The Western Muslim (or the Muslim Westerner)

I count two times on Jihad Watch recently where this meme has popped up, and it's not unreasonable to assume it reflects a deeper problem; namely, the problem I used to call "asymptotic" -- i.e., the retention, to one degree or another, of PC MC values in the hearts and minds of Counter-Jihadists who otherwise affect to be oh-so free of such values.

The first instance is not that surprising, as it was penned by the egregiously soft-on-Islam colleague of Robert Spencer's, Christine Williams-Douglass, whose asymptotic tendencies I've noted a few times (see especially my two-part series on her recent book on Muslim "Reformers" as well as this Google page of the few essays I've written alluding to her nougaty softness on Muslims).  Without apparently even thinking about it (thus reflecting a given so deep in her psyche it's natural to blurt it out), Williams-Douglass recently referred to a Muslim who happens to be in the West as a "Westerner".  The title of her Jihad Watch report was:

Ex-wife of Islamic State chief: “I only had babies to raise them as killers”

As one reads further, one notes that this "ex-wife" (likely not much different than an Islamic sex slave) is named "Tania Choudhury" and, in the mainstream report Williams-Douglass cites from the Mirror, that Tania is "[o]ne of five children born in London to British-Bangladeshi couple Nural and Jahanara Choudhury..."

If we "in the Counter-Jihad" have learned anything these past 15 years since 911, it is that no Muslim is really a "Westerner" because the Islam they self-identify with is inimical to the West -- not merely on some abstract level, based on ideas, but literally, in terms of a war Islam is waging on the West now (and has been waging since at least the 8th century A.D.).  But, of course, this epitomizes the very crux of the problem of the problem of the problem (i.e., the problem of the Counter-Jihad)  -- namely, its ongoing inability to fully process the horrifying mountain of data about Islam it has otherwise been on the forefront of assimilating. 

Speaking of 911, the article's sentence describing Tania goes on to say:

"...she told how she became radicalised and sought revenge on the west after 9/11..." and then subsequently became the "wife of convert to Islam and jihadist John Georgelas..."

Naturally, Robert Spencer's stalwart colleague of the Counter-Jihad, Christine Williams-Douglass, made no mention of this ridiculous meme of a Muslim "becoming radicalized" in which the broader Western Mainstream indulges. 

And the jihadist Tania married to embark on her career on the front lines of the Jihad of the Sword, who was a convert to Islam (from his name, one reasonably assumes he was a British son of Greek extraction -- shades of Yusuf Islam!), by virtue of his choice to join our enemy, abdicated not only his citizenship but also his identity as a Westerner.

Of course, Christine Williams-Douglass points none of this out in her report -- even though she articulates the screaming reasoning for why she should be pointing these things out:

"This deeply disturbing account of a brainwashed Westerner, the wife of convert to Islam and jihadist John Georgelas, is similar to scores of others, yet most leaders refuse to acknowledge the Islamic theology of death, hatred and a false greatness that motivates jihad activity. Thus those leaders enable this jihad against Western interests, and likewise enable the abuse of women and children."

The second instance of this meme popping up is more disappointing, because more surprising, as it comes from a journalist I thought was more savvy than that -- Giulio Meotti.  It comes in a report published on Jihad Watch about the recent revelations of the Good Cop Tariq Ramadan ("Good Cop" because his affectations of being a "Moderate" "Reformer" are clever enough to fool the broader Western Mainstream, but not clever enough to fool the Counter-Jihad Mainstream, as the "Better Cops" like Maajid Nawaz, Zuhdi Jasser, Asra Nomani, Tarek Fatah, et al.(qaeda) are all too often able to do).  In a breezily parenthetical description, Meotti glibly refers to a Muslim activist in England who, as a self-stylized feminist, more astute observers would deem a "Good Cop" Muslim, in the following way:

"An English militant for women’s rights, Aicha Ali-Khan, had gathered signatures to fire Ramadan from the prestigious university..."

Notice how Meotti honors her with the title of being an Englishwoman, even though she is named after the Mother of All Stockholm Syndrome Muslimas (Aisha) who grew up to be a fierce jihadist; the founder of Shia Islam, Ali ibn Abi Talib; and lastly, the lineage of one of the most brutal islamic dynasties in history (which is saying a lot!), the central Asiatic Khans.  Not to mention that Meotti also shows himself to be fooled by her "militant" activism "for women's rights". Whether that makes her a "Good Cop" Muslim or a "Better Cop" Muslim depends on whether she is capable of fooling not merely the Western Mainstream, but also the Counter-Jihad Mainstream.  While Meotti is one of those twilight participants "in the Counter-Jihad" who seems at best to straddle both Mainstreams, the fact that his piece was published at that bastion of the Counter-Jihad Mainstream, Jihad Watch, indicates that this Aicha Ali-Khan has managed to fool them to some degree (not a difficult thing to do, alas); and so, as we strip her of the honor of the title of Englishwoman, we extend to her the backhanded compliment of the title of Better Cop.

But as I say, simply being a Muslim should disqualify Aicha Ali-Khan and Tania Choudhoury -- and any Muslim whatsoever -- from being honored with the designation of being "English" (or "American" or "Canadian" or "French" or "Belgian" or "German" or "Italian" or "Spanish" or... etc.).

Will the "Counter-Jihad" learn this in time to help wake up the West to its protracted, metastasizing peril at the hands of a veritable Mohammedan invasion in this, our 21st century?  I see few signs to be hopeful about the answer to that question.

P.S.:  By contrast, we have a writer, Michael Walsh who, in his essay on the Counter-Jihad Mainstream site, Ruthfully Yours, writes about a Muslim family in Ireland with likely connections to the Muslim Brotherhood (not that mainstream Islam isn't already no better than the Muslim Brotherhood).  In his piece, Walsh appropriately questions their identity, so glibly assumed in mainstream media, as "Irish".  For many (if not most) in the Counter-Jihad Mainstream, the mere fact that "Mr Halawa was born in Ireland and grew up in Firhouse, a suburb of Dublin" would make him an "Irish" "citizen" -- magically delicious and impervious to deportation as a member of a seditious organization (Islam) that is now at war with us.  Of course, I can't say for sure whether Michael Walsh wouldn't balk at the more robust position I advocate here -- namely that any and all Muslims are not, because according to their own Islam they cannot be, Westerners.  And it's difficult to say whether Walsh is "in the Counter-Jihad" per se, and whether he is part of the Leadership or is just a Civilian.  He seems to occupy that amorphous in-between area (roughly the same indistinct waters Giulio Meotti swims in), of which one indicator is being published on Ruthfully Yours, I suppose.  (Interestingly, I notice that Ruthfully Yours never seems to give any acknowledgements to Robert Spencer or to Jihad Watch -- almost as though he and it don't exist -- even though it occasionally publishes pieces by six-degrees-of-separation individuals like Daniel Greenfield (a regular on the site of Spencer's longtime friend and colleague, David Horowitz), Raymond Ibrahim (still occasionally published on Jihad Watch), and Giulio Meotti (who, as noted above, was recently published on Jihad Watch).)