The view that dismisses the doctrinal centrality of Islam to jihad extremism, in all its blind and dangerous denial, is spreading, as Diana West writes.

“British literary lions,” she notes, “couldn’t agree more. Philosopher John Gray and historian Eric Hobsbawm recently said on British television that even the word “‘Islamist’” was “‘unfair’” because “’it implied a strong link to Islam.’” West rebuts:

Never mind the link is doctrinally accurate. Better to accommodate mortal threat without identifying its Islamic roots. Instead of defending their nations — for starters, stopping Islamic immigration and, with it, the progression of Islamic law into Western societies — our elites have decided to pretend Islam isn’t there at all.

Our financial elites are also playing the pretend game:

If they read Robert Spencer’s jihadwatch.org, the essential daily compendium of jihad and dhimmi news, they might get a clue. But, very ominously, Mr. Spencer’s Web site is being blocked by assorted organizations which, according to his readers, continue to provide access to assorted pro-jihad sites. Mr. Spencer reports he’s “never received word of so many organizations banning this site all at once.” These include the City of Chicago, Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, GE IT, JPMorgan Chase, Defense Finance and Accounting Services and now, a federal employee in Dallas informs him, the federal government.

Yet more ominously, some of our military leaders seem to have been putting on the same blinders. Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, senior counterinsurgency adviser to our forces in Iraq, writes that terrorists are usually “driven by fundamentally non-religious motivational factors,” to which West aptly responds: “I wonder which non-religious motivational factors inspired Glasgow’s terror-docs to scream “Allah, Allah” while ramming a flaming car into the airport.”