Statement of the obvious.

The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle [against terror] is that we're not actually fighting it properly. We're not actually standing up to these people and saying, "It's not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of greivance isn't justified."

~Tony Blair, just before leaving office as Britain's Prime Minister.

I delight in Mr. Blair's excellent characterization of the ideas of Muslim fruitcakes. Forget whether the Medina period pronouncements by Mohammed (Curses Be Upon Him) trump the Meccan ones (or is it vice versa?). Forget parsing the subtle differences between the eight schools of jurisprudence. Forget whether the Quran is to be read as the literal word of Allah. Forget whether fatwas can have extraterritorial effect on non-Muslims or apostate Muslims in Dar al Kaffir. Forget whether Mohammed sanctioned temporary marriage, sex with infants, or death for apostates.

Just forget all that. The whole construct dreamed up by the fruitcakes is just absurd. All of it.

Mr. Blair is wont to believe that it's British Islamicists and their particular brand of thinking that's the problem. Good luck to him on that and blessings on him for at least coming up with an apt characterization of their thinking.

For our part, given as we are to favor the offensive use of presumptions when dealing with Islam and its true blue adherents, we favor the view that the whole shootin' match is flawed and absurd and it's for the adherents to demonstrate how the views of the murderous fruitcakes are somehow separable from the base doctrines, if you get my drift here. Let the Islamic sophists 'splain it to me exactly how the Muslim fanatical skyscraper does not have its foundation in the cement (pron. CE-ment) of the Koran its own sef. Let them 'splain how that 180,000,000,000-ton structure hovers in the air all by itself.

The sad thing to notice, however, is that Mr. Blair at one time was the Prime Minister of Britain and had a chance to institutionalize his thinking and proclaim it vigorously to his own people and the world at large. But he was, so far as I know, silent on this point until the very end. The absurdity of Islam. It needed to be described thus. But it wasn't. The opportunity for Mr. Blair was never seized by him.

Such a loss.

As for any Muslims who are offended by my characterization of Mohammed as one worthy of being cursed, I say do the same. Curse Jesus, the Christian God, the United States, my ancestors, whatever you want. Take a guess at what I consider to be the most holy thing in the world and lay into it with a vengeance.

Now ask me if I care.

Now, if you want to go into a nut roll over what I say about Mohammed, go right ahead. The only question I have is, "Why does your heartburn over my opinion or words give you the justification to kill or destroy anyone or anything?"

I'm just curious about your sense of justification here. Or are we back to the "absurd" deal.

I think we are.

"What About Muslim Moderates?" By James Woolsey and Nina Shea, Wall Street Journal, 7/10/07, p. 10 (emphasis added).