Liberalism in wartime

It's not easy being a liberal in these times. Tolerance of other cultures is not a popular concept when there are fanatics out there that have declared war on us. Recent events like the riots in Nigeria over Miss World have lead a lot of bloggers to demonise Islam as a whole with an attitude that smells strongly of racism. I've criticised Bigwig of Silflay Hraka for this rant, which I felt crossed the line - that sort of talk gives the green light to the racist troglodytes to come crawling out from the rocks under which they'd been hiding.

On the other hand, it's impossible to pretend that there's nothing wrong with large parts of the Islamic world. Body and Soul has posted a lot of food for thought recently, including this.

I read an interview some time back with Kanan Makiya, a professor of Middle East studies at Brandeis and an Iraqi dissident, who said that part of the problem with Islam in much of the Arab world today is that Arab intellectuals abandoned it -- and that left religion in the hands of imbeciles. I think there's something to that. (I also think we've got a similar problem in this country -- although obviously on a much smaller scale -- with the decline of the old mainstream churches and the growth of both dumbed down smiley face religion -- the kind you find in a lot of popular religious books -- and, well, the imbeciles and thugs, Falwell and worse.)

What's not so clear is what we should do about it. I'm not at all convinced at the warblogger's arguments - that we should go in with all guns blazing to make the Arab world safe for western consumerism, and do to Islam what we did to the Aztecs. Nor am I convinced that half-a-dozen different regional conflicts are really part of one big war. On the other hand, to do nothing to defend ourselves against the fanatics isn't an option.