The French Revolution
The chattering class is in angst over a new poll that shows that — in spite of President Obama’s urging to the contrary — people just don’t like Islam.
A new poll conducted by the Huffington Post and YouGov shows that “A majority say that they view Islam unfavorably, and even Democrats are almost twice as likely to view Islam negatively than positively.”
Here are the numbers:
But my husband, Constitutional attorney David French — who is also an Iraq veteran — doesn’t think “Islamophobia” is to blame:
… the media is missing a powerful, largely-uncovered influence on America’s hearts and minds — the experience and testimony of the more than two million Americans who’ve served overseas since 9/11 and have experienced Islamic cultures up-close.
Yes, they were in the middle of a war — but speaking from my own experience — the war was conducted from within a culture that was shockingly broken. I expected the jihadists to be evil, but even I couldn’t fathom the depths of their depravity. And it was all occurring against the backdrop of a brutally violent and intolerant culture. Women were beaten almost as an afterthought, there was a near-total lack of empathy for even friends and neighbors, lying was endemic, and sexual abuse was rampant. Even more disturbingly, it seemed that every problem was exacerbated the more religious and pious a person (or village) became.
I spent enough time outside the wire and interacting with tribal leaders to get a sense of the reality around me, but the younger guys on the line spent weeks at a time living in the heart of the local community. I remember one young soldier, after describing the things he’d seen since the start of the deployment, gestured towards the village around us and said — in perfect Army English — “Sir, this s**t is f**ked up.” It is indeed.
While it’s certainly unfair to judge Indonesia or Malaysia by the standards of Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s very hard to shake the power of lived experience, nor should we necessarily try. After all, when we hear stories from Syria, Yemen, Gaza, the Sinai, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali, Pakistan, and elsewhere they all fit the same depressing template of the American conflict zones. Nor is the dazzlingly wealthy veneer of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the other Gulf States all that impressive. Tens of thousands of soldiers have seen the veritable slave labor that toils within the oil empires and have witnessed first-hand their casual disregard for “lesser” life.
(Read more of his thoughts at National Review.) I’m writing this on the world’s largest religious website, Patheos, that has a vibrant Muslim channel. How do we balance the new polling and the fact that there are many peace-loving Muslims? David writes: “But this same experience has caused us to treasure the Muslim friends we do have — in part because we recognize the extreme risks of their loyalty and defiance of jihad.”
The soldiers’ stories have not been told in a large scale way, because of the ever-widening gap between people who serve and the elite media. Still, soldiers came home and told about what they encountered first hard. Naturally, these tales are being passed verbally from one person to another, from one family to another.
Two million people telling stories has got to have an effect.
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