All-Canadian Hair-Splitting

The other day, in a diatribe condemning Lowe's for bowing to "bigotry" because it had second thoughts about buying ad time during TLC's All-American Muslim, Jonathan Kay engaged in an exquisitely sensitive feat of hair-splitting:

Look at those words carefully — “Islamic agenda.” Not “Islamist” or “Muslim Brotherhood” or “Salafist,” but “Islamic” — i.e., of or pertaining to a faith embraced by over a billion people around the world.

You say Islamic and I say Islamist--let's call the whole thing off. Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister, for one, thinks we should. Channeling a hefty, Lesbian Jewish chick, he says, "Islam is Islam," and that's that. So, too, does Clifford D. May, who explains here exactly that Islam--not Islamism, but Islam in and of itself--has to do with it.



Update: At least J. Kay--who's supposed to be on the right--is willing to use the term "Islamist." Unlike, say, the Obami, who have banished both Islamic and Islamist (and jihad, jihadi and and jihadist) from their lexicon. That said, though, Kay's and Obama's "philosophies" appear to be in synch:

If you want to know why Maj. Nidal Hassan was able to carry out a jihadist attack at Fort Bragg, one of the most fortified targets imaginable; if you want to understand why, despite months of neon signs that he was a jihadist, Hassan was able to murder 13 United States soldiers and support personnel (i.e., about double the number killed in the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center); then look no further than this video clip.

It features testimony at a House hearing on threats to our military by Paul Stockton, President Obama’s Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Defense & America’s Security Affairs. He is unable to bring himself to utter the word “Islamist,” much less admit what ought to be the undeniable fact that Muslim terrorists are motivated by Islamist ideology.

It reflects the Obama philosophy that we cannot even hint that an interpretation of Islam — drawn literally from Islamic scriptures — is the force motivating our enemies. Even though this is unquestionably true, to say so, to acknowledge it in any way, would mean, according to administration thinking, that we are at war with Islam itself — with all 1.4 billion Muslims, including the hundreds of millions who do not subscribe to this interpretation. Unwilling to entertain the possibility that the enemy has a coherent, knowable doctrine — which is a powerful catalyst precisely because it draws credibly (not inarguably but credibly) on scripture — we have forfeited the natural right to defend ourselves and the troops who make it possible for us to live freely...