Quote Originally Posted by ProfessorB View Post
So I'm not at all sanguine about the notion that the now-departed Karen Hughes or her successor can "win" Muslim voters over to our side. That is a fight, in idea-based terms, that Islam has to manage for itself.
Islam won't. It can't. It is an algorithm of hermetically sealed thought that has no foundation within it for synthesis or argument with itself. It enforces itself by death sentences. It's ideological base is fundamentally opposed to the value set we of the West depend on for democracy and our way of life. Islam, just like Communism, must be confronted head-on at its roots, and the message needs to be repeated over and over again.

I should point out that Islam is crystal clear about this ideological war. They have published manifestos that couch this century in terms such as, "There are three great ideologies in the world. Communism, Capitalism and Islam. Islam defeated Communism in the last century. Islam will defeat Capitalism in this century." Etcetera, etcetera, tracts, blah, blah.

The roots of Islam to be relentlessly attacked intellectually are:
- Koran was not the word of god, but of man. Mohammed committed many crimes and was not perfect. Men decided what was and was not from Allah. Therefore men decided what was and was not in Koran. Parts of Koran have already been edited. Therefore Koran can be renovated for the modern era.
- Islam allows slavery. Islam has committed greater crimes of enslavement by an order of magnitude than the USA did. (Over half of all slaves out of Africa went to Muslim lands. 4.5% to North America.) We fought a war to rid ourselves of slavery. Islam is still enslaving "those who your right hand possess in war" in Sudan.
- Islam is an obligate religious dictatorship. It is written without possibility for misinterpretation. This is wrong and it must be directly attacked as wrong.
- Islam dictates that anyone leaving Islam is to be executed. Remember how much it took to save the life of that Afghan who converted to Christianity?
- Mohammed gave Arabs the imprimateur of superiority by virtue of race. Only Arab Muslims cannot be made slaves. All others, including Muslims, can be slaves. Thus it is a racist creed.

Those are the core issues that must be raised over and over until Islam and the whole world cannot help but incorporate the argument into their conciousness.

To make drive it home, one must make the points about where those ideological choices lead. They lead to poverty, class division, war, backwardness. It's 10th century thinking frozen in time.