Dear Ramesh: Conservatives Ought to Know Better

This op-ed piece by Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review appears in today's National Post. I would draw your attention to this bit of business:

I don't find it offensive when people criticize Islam (or, for that matter, Christianity) as a font of bad ideas. But I think it's more likely to be counterproductive than useful in countering illiberalism and radicalism among Muslims. And it's not a stretch to treat an attack on the Islamic religion as a criticism of all or most Muslims.

Liberals, and others, need to be able to keep in their minds two things simultaneously; Much of the Muslim world is in need of reformation, and any reforms are most likely to come from people who are Muslims themselves--not from people who dismiss their religion as the "mother lode of bad ideas."

What bollocks! And shame on Ponnuru for, in essence, telling us to ix-nay our examination and criticism of Islam's awful ideas, the ones which have given rise to the world's deadliest totalitarianism du jour.

Here's my response:

It's bad enough when leftists like Ben Affleck who know nothing about Islam insist that any criticism of Islamic doctrine is ipso facto "racist." It's just as bad when Islamists who know exactly what their religious doctrines call for want to silence us because they believe that all criticism is "blasphemous" and therefore forbidden. But when an ostensible conservative like Ramesh Ponnuru claims that shedding light on the "bad ideas" within Islam--the jihad imperative, the draconian punishments for violating sharia law, etc.--is, in his word, "counterproductive," I can't help but throw up my hands in despair.

Non-Muslims drawing attention to the problematic aspects of Islam may cause offense and may not promote the Muslim-engendered "reform" Ponnuru thinks is possible. But being forced to hold our tongues does incalculable harm to Western civilization, the linchpin of which is free speech and one's right as a free-born individual to be rude, offensive and, yes, even "blasphemous." It is shocking and more than a little disgusting that Ponnuru, of all people, is as disinclined as any leftist or Islamist to defend the free flow of ideas, the right that establishes and sustains all our other rights and freedoms.

Incidentally, on the front page of the NatPo's paper paper, "jihadist" is misspelled (as "jidahist") in really big letter. Heads should roll for that one, I think.