The Doctrine of Moral Equivalence

In the wake of “Geert Week”, Andrew Bostom has posted his observations on the cluelessness of certain American conservatives concerning the Islamic threat. Some excerpts from “Geert Wilders, Ibn Warraq, and Islamo-Realism” are below:

Ibn Warraq and Geert Wilders: Islamo-Realist Brethren

This past week I had the great pleasure of meeting and hearing Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders several times — Monday February 23, 2009 in Manhattan, at a luncheon in the Four Seasons Restaurant; Wednesday February 25, 2009 in Boston at the WTKK studios; Wednesday evening, again, during an inspirational lecture at a Stoughton, MA synagogue; Friday February 27, 2009 at The National Press Club in the morning, culminating in an electrifying event held for Mr. Wilders at CPAC Friday evening, by my indomitable colleague and friend Pamela Geller, hosted, in addition, by another dear friend and colleague, Robert Spencer, and myself. At each of these venues (with the exception of the Michael Graham Show interview at WTKK in Boston), Mr. Wilders spoke either before or after a presentation of his harrowing, but realistic film, “ Fitna.”

One particularly important event I did not attend was a Wall Street Journal editorial board luncheon for Mr. Wilders (in Manhattan) on Tuesday, February 24, 2009, between 12:00 and 1:30 PM. Fortunately, however, I did help arrange for my colleague and mentor Ibn Warraq to attend this luncheon. Sadly (but not surprisingly), as Ibn Warraq told me, Mr. Wilders — whom Warraq described as poised, informed, and unbowed — was confronted with the semi-belligerent, triumphantly uninformed attitudes of his WSJ editorial board hosts. As Warraq noted, aptly, some 7.5 years after the September 11, 2001 acts of jihad terrorism which decimated lower Manhattan itself, these board members (with, thankfully, one older and wiser female journalist emeritus exception), “Don’t know a bloody thing about Islam — about the Koran, hadith, sira, or the doctrine and history of jihad.”

- - - - - - - - -

The WSJ editorial board’s attitudes are pathognomonic of the devastating effects of cultural relativism and declining self-educational standards which plague modern journalism…

Dr. Bostom includes a quote from Ibn Warraq:

The doctrine of Moral Equivalence comes easily to a culture already infected with moral and cultural relativism. Other common characteristics of the apologists of totalitarianism include, denial of the evidence, of reality: leading to search for “real causes,” or “root causes,” which is bound to lead to conspiracy theories; contempt for Western institutions, but a willingness to exploit them for their own use; being ideologues they are immune to criticism, and contrary evidence, which they are able to explain away; masochism, since they are lacerated with feelings of guilt, ready to blame everything automatically on the West, take blame for all the ills of the world, and as a consequence wish to see the West punished, humiliated, denigrated, vilified and calumniated, the West deserves to be punished, we deserve to be punished, I deserve to be punished; exaggerations of the virtues of the Other, and the crimes of the West, denial the Other could be racist, imperialist, or colonialist, in short, evil; arrogance of the intellectuals who cannot be bothered to learn the facts, do the hard research in archives, and primary sources.

Read the rest at his blog.