That's it-just get Obama to say 'hey, you lone individual extremists-you should just not be doing that stuff, OK and pretty please".
The problem with liberals like Thomas Friedman is that they think they get Islam. But because they are people of no faith, other than the Church of Liberalism, they really cannot get into the mindset of jihad.
He says in the article that "father knows best"-after all, it was the Scrotum Bomber's own father who tipped the system to his son's radical nature.
And herein lies the problem. This Dad is an exception. The large majority of the Muslim world is in the mindset of the bomber-not the exceptional Dad.
We hear no widespread condemnation from the "silent majority" of allegedly peaceful Muslims...why?
Because perhaps-they are really not interested in condemning these actions. Yes, the brave individuals who do take a stand put themselves at tremendous risk and I salute them. But we have yet to see the groundswell of rejection by Muslims of the tenets of their faith that clearly instruct them to kill infidels.
This kind of religious reformation can only come from within.
Memo to Thomas Friedman: not even Obama can shame Muslims into rejecting these articles of faith.
The other problem is that Friedman approaches "shame" through Western eyes.
The Muslim world, and indeed, much of South Asia, too-has a very different concept about what constitutes personal, or communal "shame". For them, shame and honour have to do with control of women and their sexuality and the firm continuum of patriarchal family structure.
Liberals now are struggling with the obvious issue of male, Muslim jihadists being the issue preventing safe, convenient airline travel.
They know it in their hearts, and they skirt around the issue-that militant Islamic jihadi orthodoxy is simply not compatible with airline travel or frankly, with democratic society.
