Charlie Rangel sides with the lunatics

Perhaps seeking to change the subject from his recent spat with the Clintons over one of his pet causes, the New York Jackass told a local New York City radio host that it is wrong to refer to Islamist terrorists as, well, Islamist terrorists:

Asked about the refusal by some European governments to declare Hezbollah an Islamic terror group, Rangel told WWRL's Steve Malzberg and Karen Hunter, "To call it Islamic terror is discriminating, it's bigoted, it is not the right thing to say."

Ordinarily I'd have exclaimed something like "unbelievable," but we all know better. One wonders what Rangel's answer would have been if either Malzberg or Hunter had asked him what "Islamic terrorists" should be called.

In point of fact the center-right blogs and sites that I frequent usually distinguish the terrorists from Islam in general with references like "Islamist" and "Islamofascist." My personal favorite, which I coined, is "Islazi," which seems to roll off the tongue a lot smoother than "Islamofascist." But the sentiment is still the same.

Rangel even questioned whether, in fact, a worldwide Islamic terrorist movement even existed, saying, "We just take for granted that there is an Islamic terror movement because we do have some fanatic people who come from Islamic countries."

This eyeroll-inducing comment is akin to saying that, "We just take for granted that it rains because we do have moisture that comes from clouds." Using the term "Islamic terrorists" is not a suggestion that every last Muslim on the planet works for Osama bin Laden. The word "terrorists" is the means of distinguishing between "some fanatic people" and the "Islamic countries" from which they come.

The Harlem Democrat complained: "When we had the Ku Klux Klan we didn't call them Baptist terrorists. When Hitler was killing Jews, we didn't call it Christian terrorists."

True. But no sect or branch of Christianity has a jihad imperative, either. Islam, by stark contrast, has always been an imperialistic religion of the sword, spread not by personal witness, one soul at a time, but by military conquest.

Mohammed founded Islam as a reactionary riposte to the refusal of Jews and Christians to buy into the modifications and additions he wanted to make to the Bible based upon the visions he claimed to have experienced. It was intended to be fueled by resentment and revenge, to conquer the "peoples of the book" and impose Mohammed's "alternative views" upon them (i.e. dhimmi-zation). During its first century of existence, Islam erupted from the Arabian peninsula and swept across the Middle East, North Africa, and into what is now Spain and Portugal. It was only the Muslims' defeat at the hands of Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 that halted this expansion, and began the long, slow decline that led to their being left behind by the emergence of the Christian West from the "Dark Ages" and their part of the world relegated to subjection to Western colonization and then futile, quasi-tribal dictatorships.

It is to that early era of Islamic pre-eminence that "Islamic terrorists" aspire to return the entire world. A "global caliphate," a world theocracy, Iran on a planetary scale. Not every Muslim agrees with this, but many do, even if only ten percent or so are sufficiently committed to actually go forth and wage "holy war" against the "infidels." And that makes the jihadis indellibly "Islamic," no matter how much Charlie Rangel dislikes it.

Rangel said Americans needed to realize "that a lot of countries may be poor, but they still have pride. And that is one thing that we completely ignore."

I think it's Charlie Rangel's pride that is the problem. Maybe if he'd swallow some of it, he might be able to acknowledge all that President Bush has done and continues to do for the "poor" countries on whose behalf such left-wing numbnuts phonily bleat.