How to Refute the Islamists

Like many others, I am tired of the Islamists claiming that they have ethics and principles and that the West doesn't. They are the ones that kidnap children. They are the ones that throw sulfuric acid into girls' faces. They are the ones whose founder was a pedophile, and whose Quran promises boys in heaven.

The military action against the militants is not enough. More needs to be done by way of changing people's minds, so that more people in places such as the Middle East and Africa resist groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram.

Do you want to know the argument that would completely invalidate them? For real?

It is as follows. America is the only reason that these people can be Muslim. If not for America, the Soviet Union would have gotten to all these countries; and if they had become Communist, they would not be able to practice Islam at all. Whereas with America as the top country they can be as Muslim as they want to be for as long as they aren't killing Americans or their allies.

I do not understand why this argument is not being used, it is so obvious. The Middle East owes its not being Communist to the United States. And that means that it owes its right to practice Islam to the United States.

The ethical argument must be dealt with as follows. Great people, over centuries of hard work, have given America and much of the rest of the Western world liberties, opportunities and a more humane treatment. The West is not morally worse than the Middle East; it is morally better than the Middle East and has been made so through the efforts of any number of great people. In the West, women have rights. In the West, people have opportunity. In the West, people are treated much better than they are in the Middle East; and that makes the West morally superior to Muslim countries.

Once again, I do not understand why this argument – just as obvious as the preceding – is not being used more often. If you kidnap 200 schoolgirls in America, or if you throw sulfuric acid into a girl's face in America, you will face certain prosecution. And it is outrageous that the people who engage in such monstrosities should go around preaching morals.

This is not a war between Christianity and Islam. At the center of the attack are accomplishments of Western liberalism, such as free speech and women's rights; and it is in the name of these things, and not in the name of Christianity, that fight against Islamists must be waged. The people who want to join the fight against Islamism for Christian reasons should be welcome to do it. But they should not be the only people fighting this battle.

As for American liberals, they need to see things put into perspective. By standards of what is important to them – such as free speech and women's rights – the Islamists are vastly worse than the Western conservatives; and they should be fighting them with the same or greater intensity than they are fighting the Christian Right. Evil is not limited to the Western civilization, and very few things in Western Civilization compare in their cruelty, brutality and oppression to the Islamists. A feminist true to her creed would not be supporting the world's most misogynistic ideology; and a liberal true to his creed would not be supporting an ideology that militantly rejects free speech and personal liberties and is enforced through sulfuric acid attacks on schoolgirls.

Killing militants is not enough. They can easily recruit more for as long as they hold a monopoly over the minds of people in Middle East. More must be done to change minds. That will reduce cost in lives and money and secure for America a strong following in Middle East, allowing the people on the ground to defeat the Islamists.