The sort of men who deport filmmakers, when they aren’t locking them up, and treat the stunts of shock jocks as a matter of national security, fail to understand that they are not fighting some vague notion of “extremism” which is fed by “extreme” language and actions, but an organized ideology whose goal is not merely preventing Bubba the Love Sponge from burning the Koran, but compelling the Mayor of Tampa and the American commander in Afghanistan to compel Bubba not to burn a Koran.
Islamists have not launched a thousand years war over Bubba; they have done it so that the cities and countries where Bubba and Imran live submit to Islam. Locking up filmmakers and warning off DJ’s is not quite up to Saudi and Iranian standards of submission, but it’s a start. Once the principle has been established, then the rest is a matter of negotiation. And the negotiations always begin and end with a bang.
There are two laws that govern men; the law of faith and the law of force. The law of faith is followed when you do a thing because you believe it to be right. The law of force is followed when you compel others to do a thing or are compelled to do it by them. Faith at its strongest is more enduring than force, and yet force can be used to change faith. America has lived under the law of faith, following the laws that it believed to be right. Islam conducts its affairs under the law of force, as it has since the days of Mohammed. American leaders are abandoning their laws of faith to force, giving up on freedom of speech to accommodate the violence of Islam, while forgetting that when you give up faith to force, then you also abandon any further reason to resist that force. Without faith, it is easier to let force win.
