The Mustache of Understanding has a new term. He defines online jihad recruitment as ‘Virtual Afghanistan.’ Apparently, the bad guys are no longer recruiting people to go to Chechnya, Kashmir, Iraq, and Afghanistan in mosques because of the increased surveillance there. Instead, they are using Facebook and YouTube. So, Facebook and YouTube are part of Virtual Afghanistan in the same way that Kabul and Kandahar are part of the real Afghanistan. Clever, isn’t it?
What Little Tommy Friedman really wants, however, is a civil war in the Islamic world that parallels our own civil war back in 1861-1865. The good guys (The Virtual North) need to really take it to the bad guys (The Virtual South), so that everyone’s offspring can hate each other five generations down the line.
Only Arabs and Muslims can fight the war of ideas within Islam. We had a civil war in America in the mid-19th century because we had a lot of people who believed bad things — namely that you could enslave people because of the color of their skin. We defeated those ideas and the individuals, leaders and institutions that propagated them, and we did it with such ferocity that five generations later some of their offspring still have not forgiven the North.
Islam needs the same civil war. It has a violent minority that believes bad things: that it is O.K. to not only murder non-Muslims — “infidels,” who do not submit to Muslim authority — but to murder Muslims as well who will not accept the most rigid Muslim lifestyle and submit to rule by a Muslim caliphate.
The part I don’t quite understand is the exact point in this bloody process where they are all supposed to Suck.On.This.
