Conor Friedersdorf points to an odd passage from David Pryce-Jones:
Mark Steyn is a humorous writer, but he has a serious purpose, namely to point out that the Western world has Islamist enemies who wish it ill. We could deal with those Islamists except for one thing: A large segment of our fashionable opinion-makers, so to speak the Burumas of this world, think that Islamists aren’t as bad as all that; and if they are, then we are still worse, and what we stand for isn’t really worth defending. So the public doesn’t know what to think, and a few self-appointed custodians push them into all manner of doubt and guilt by accusing anyone who criticizes, or — horrors! — laughs at Islamists of Islamophobia, racism, fascism, etc. etc.
Obviously, there has been no shortage of self-appointed protectors who want to warn the public about threats from Islamist groups, and for the most part mainstream media outlets have repeated these warnings or served as venues for the issuing of such warnings. The point isn’t that there aren’t threatening, hostile Islamists in the world, but that they are largely so powerless, so irrelevant, and so few in number that it makes no sense that they inspire so much panic and alarm. Scoffing at the alarmists shouldn’t blind anyone to real Islamist threats when they exist. On the contrary, criticizing the people who routinely exaggerate the power of Islamists is an important part of confronting the threats that actually exist. It is also an expression of confidence in “what we stand for” that we don’t believe our way of life can be destroyed by such relatively weak foes.
