{"id":38922,"date":"2017-06-13T04:00:22","date_gmt":"2017-06-13T08:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=38922"},"modified":"2020-07-06T10:43:45","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T14:43:45","slug":"how-to-defeat-islamist-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/06\/13\/how-to-defeat-islamist-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"How to defeat Islamist terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest Libertarian Enterprise<\/em>, L. Neil Smith<\/a> suggests a different approach to fighting Islamist terror:<\/p>\n

Somebody once wisely observed that you can\u2019t fight an idea with guns and bombs, but only with a better idea. One reason we are still having problems with communism \u2014 in North Korea, China, Venezuela, and our college campuses \u2014 is that we have been trying to fight it, since 1917, with guns and bombs. There are many better ideas than communism, but its strongest advocates, the American mass media, won\u2019t permit them to be discussed.<\/p>\n

Much the same is true of Islam, only more so. It is a belief-system almost entirely rooted in fear and ignorance, and has many vulnerabilities. A full, open, and public discussion of it would destroy it utterly, but its advocates are afraid to permit that, turning instead to Molotov cocktails, submachine guns, and large knives. Failing that full, open, and public discussion, a book should be produced that could change the course of history.<\/p>\n

When I was a young man, classified ads in Reason<\/em> magazine and elsewhere offered a publication called 100 Biblical Contradictions<\/em>. The book I have in mind for Islam would be similar to that, short, plain paragraphs mostly asking dangerous questions. It would be small enough to fit into a jacket or jeans pocket, and durable, like a Langenscheidt\u2019s foreign language dictionary. It could be air-dropped by the hundreds of thousands where it would do the most good \u2014 Syria, Iran, Michigan \u2014 and audio recordings could be made available to the many \u2014 especially Muslim women \u2014 who can\u2019t read.<\/p>\n

I would borrow a leaf from Heinlein and call it by the Arabic word for Doubt. It would be more powerful than the Father of the \u201cMother Of All Bombs\u201d.<\/p>\n

The trouble with it, and the reason such a book will likely never be produced, is that it would be fully as destructive to other mystical and irrational belief systems, to Christianity and Judaism, among others \u2014 all of which are based on faith (which Mark Twain or someone once said means \u201cbelieving in something you know damn well ain\u2019t so\u201d) as it would be to Islam. Joseph Farah and Glenn Beck and Franklin Graham would all freak out. Of course, there are individuals I\u2019ve known \u2014 Christians, Jews, Muslims, and quite a few Buddhists \u2014 whose belief is gentle and strong enough to withstand what should be in Doubt, but not a majority.<\/p>\n

It would appear that most human beings believe, without examination, whatever their parents and leaders and Hollywood balloon-heads want them to believe. So much for advancing the human condition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, L. Neil Smith suggests a different approach to fighting Islamist terror: Somebody once wisely observed that you can\u2019t fight an idea with guns and bombs, but only with a better idea. One reason we are still having problems with communism \u2014 in North Korea, China, Venezuela, and our college campuses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,53,11],"tags":[780,47,1382,257],"class_list":["post-38922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-politics","category-religion","tag-communism","tag-islam","tag-lneilsmith","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-a7M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38922"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58457,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38922\/revisions\/58457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}