Andy, entertaining they may be, but I’ll avoid replying to your jibes. They are terrific prosecutorial flim-flam deployed, as always in your case, with great skill, but on this occasion, to little effect, so let’s just move on.

Turning, instead, to more substantive matters, I note that you still ignore the fact that in response to the way that the Washington Post quoted (or not) the Koran, I had this to say:

“You are quite right that (a) there are some horrifying verses in the Koran, and that (b) they are too often passed over or excused… by commentators who should, and often do, know better.”

Andy, I was agreeing with you. Can we, at least, agree on that without me having to write out, like a naughty schoolboy trapped in detention, those lines from the Koran that you yourself had already posted on the Corner just pixels before? Our long-suffering readers can only take so much, you know.

Then there’s the moment in the second paragraph of your most recent post in which you write that “[you] plead guilty to viewing Islam as a dangerous belief system.” In the third paragraph, however, you say that you are not “obliged to come to a judgment about how Islam, the comprehensive belief system, should “principally” be seen.” Well, Andy, you may not be obliged to do so, but you have done so, and what you have done is assert that Islam is a “dangerous belief system.” Later still, you go on to mention (no doubt accurately) that most of the Muslims you know are “good people”.

But Andy, are they “good people” with a “dangerous belief system,” (remember, that’s how you are describing their religion) and, if they are, how does that work? Are they perhaps “interpreting” the supposedly immutable word of God that you earlier referred to in a way that you find congenial, and if they are, doesn’t that rather make the point I have been making over these last few posts?

Where we do both agree is that there is a very dangerous strain of Islamic thought once again on the march. For what it’s worth, I’ve been writing about this for years. I’ve no time for those who would wish this strain away, or pretend that it did not exist. I’ve said that plenty of times too. In fact, I said it yet again on Wednesday in response to, well, you. As you may have overlooked it, I’ll repeat myself:

“I have never made any excuses for those who persist in sticking with an ancient interpretation of an ancient text…What’s more, in what I wrote yesterday (and have written before), I made clear that I have no truck with those who would deny either the more savage passages in the Koran or, for that matter, Islamic history. The history is what it is. The words are what they are…I have no time for the naïve, empty-headed, and dangerous, banality of those who persist in describing Islam solely as “a religion of peace”.

Clear?

Now we come to the question as to what to do about the threat that we both agree exists. You think it’s an urgent problem. So do I. I also happen to think that it’s going to take a while, a long while, to sort out, and while that process is going on the West, not to mention many other people across the world, will be in grave danger. I’m pretty sure you feel the same way. Winning this struggle will take military force. It’ll take aggressive police work, and, Andy, it’ll take tough prosecutors such as yourself.

But it is also a matter of hearts and minds. How you win over those hearts and minds is a very complex question, and we’re very far from the answer. In my view, secularization and modernization are part (but only part) of the solution, and so is, as you would certainly agree, isolation of the extremists and their stigmatization within their own community as fanatics, madmen and despots-in-waiting. You and I also want to see moderate Muslims reinforced, and encouraged. This will involve blunt talk as well as honeyed words, but somehow I suspect that labeling the religion to which these moderates at least nominally subscribe as a “dangerous belief system” is not going to win them over.

But perhaps that’s just me.