The Distinction Between the Religious and the Political

From the article, Religious Freedom and a Mosque by Bill Warner:

There is a practical working definition of religion as compared to politics. Religious practices are done by those who follow that religion and are motivated for achieving paradise and avoiding hell. Outsiders are not involved in those religious acts. If it is about going to heaven and avoiding hell, then it is religious. However, if the religion makes a demand on those outside of its own group, then that demand is political.

There are about as many Buddhists in America today as there are Muslims. When was the last time you remember a Buddhist demand of any kind? Do Buddhists set up councils to shape the textbooks and demand Buddhist finance? Does the government make a big announcement when Buddhists are appointed to high posts? Are there even any Buddhists in any White House appointments? Do Buddhists complain? Never, for these are political actions, and Buddhism has almost no political outreach. Buddhism in America is purely religious, not political at all.

Yet the media and the Internet are consumed by talk and argument about Islam. The discussion is never about how many rounds of prayer to do or whether a certain food is halal (religiously proper). No, the focus is always on something that non-Muslims are to do to accommodate an Islamic religious practice.

Let us be clear: If the religion makes a demand on those outside of its own group, then that demand is political.

U.S. Government Tries NOT to Notice the Religious Motivations of Islamic Jihadis

FROM CNS NEWS: "The Obama administration’s reluctance to acknowledge and confront the religious motivation behind Islamist terrorism is not helping the counter-terror effort, leading experts warn in a new report.

"The administration’s recently released National Security Strategy defines the enemy as 'al-Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates,' but Washington Institute for Near East Policy report argues that it is a bigger one – 'the extremist ideology that fuels and supports Islamist violence.'"

Or, as David Wolpe put it in his Newsweek column entitled, Tell the Truth: There Are Islamic Terrorists,

Will lying about people's motivations change their behavior? If I decide that global warming needs to be stopped so urgently that I blow up every car factory in the free world, will I be tamed if you label me a "climate crusader" rather than an eco-terrorist? Surely not; the reasoning is faulty, the strategy foolish and the result a moral muddle.

If a person deliberately terrorizes (catch the lexical connection?) in the name of a faith, then he or she is a terrorist whose faith should be implicated in that label. Yes, there are Jewish terrorists and there are Christian terrorists. At the moment, the most severe terrorist threat to peaceable relations in the world comes from neither faith. We do peace loving Muslims no honor by refusing to properly label their violent brethren. There are Islamic terrorists. We know this. To say otherwise is a cowardly evasion.

To use the words 'Islamic terrorists' no more indicts all Muslims than to say that there is teenage drug use indicts all teenagers. Is there disproportionate drug use among teens? Indeed. Are there specific sociological reasons that can offer a partial explanation? Undoubtedly. Is it nonetheless a phenomenon that needs to be labeled, understood and combated? Certainly. Now read back, with still more urgency, those same questions with the Islamic terrorist in mind.

To arrive at a name for something does not mean you understand it. We can call someone an Islamic terrorist and still know little of the person's psychology, or world view, or the shaping forces of his life. But surely to call something by its proper name is a first step in understanding; we have known that since Socrates insisted thousands of years ago that the protagonists in any argument define their terms. So here goes: someone who targets innocent people in the name of Islam is an Islamic terrorist. Next question.

Language Reveals Denial

The following is an excerpt from Daniel Pipes' Still Asleep After Mumbai:

The fact that terrorist fish are swimming in a hospitable Muslim sea nearly disappears amidst Western political, journalistic, and academic bleatings. Call it political correctness, multiculturalism, or self-loathing; whatever the name, this mentality produces delusion and dithering.

Nomenclature lays bare this denial. When a sole jihadist strikes, politicians, law enforcement, and media join forces to deny even the fact of terrorism; and when all must concede the terrorist nature of an attack, as in Mumbai, a pedantic establishment twists itself into knots to avoid blaming terrorists.

I documented this avoidance by listing the twenty (!) euphemisms the press unearthed to describe Islamists who attacked a school in Beslan in 2004: activists, assailants, attackers, bombers, captors, commandos, criminals, extremists, fighters, group, guerrillas, gunmen, hostage-takers, insurgents, kidnappers, militants, perpetrators, radicals, rebels, and separatists – anything but terrorists.

And if terrorist is impolite, adjectives such as Islamist, Islamic, and Muslim become unmentionable. My blog titled "Not Calling Islamism the Enemy" provides copious examples of this avoidance, along with its motives. In short, those who would replace War on Terror with A Global Struggle for Security and Progress imagine this linguistic gambit will win over Muslim hearts and minds.

Post-Mumbai, Steven Emerson, Don Feder, Lela Gilbert, Caroline Glick, Tom Gross, William Kristol, Dorothy Rabinowitz, and Mark Steyn again noted various aspects of this futile linguistic behavior, with Emerson bitterly concluding that "After more than 7 years since 9/11, we can now issue a verdict: Islamic terrorists have won our hearts and minds."