The Good Muslim Terrorist

The Good Muslim Terrorist

There are no Palestinians. There are no moderate Syrian rebels. There is only Islam.


The axe that fell on the head of a Rabbi in Jerusalem was held by the same hand that beheaded Yazidi men in the new Islamic State. It is the same hand that held the steering wheel of the car that ran over two Canadian soldiers in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec and the same hand that smashed a hatchet down on the skull of a rookie New York City cop in Queens all in a matter of months.

Their victims were of different races and spoke different languages. They had nothing in common except that they were non-Muslims. This is the terrible commonality that unites the victims of Islamic terror.

Either they are not Muslim. Or they are not Muslim enough for their killers.

The media shows us the trees. It does not show us the forest. It fragments every story into a thousand local narratives. In Jerusalem the killers were angry because of Jews praying on the Temple Mount. In Queens and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, they were outraged because we were bombing the Islamic State.

And in the Islamic State they were killing Christians and Yazidis because America hadn’t bombed them yet.

Our leaders and our experts, the wise men of our multicultural tribes, who huddle in their shiny suits around heavy tables, believe in the good Muslim terrorist the way that the Muslim believes in Allah. The good Muslim terrorist who is willing to make peace for the right price is their only hope of salvation. The good Muslim terrorist willing to settle for Palestine or Syria at 50 percent off is their way out of a war.

And so like Chamberlain at Munich and FDR at Yalta, like a thousand tawdry betrayals before, they make themselves believe it. And then they make us believe it.

A thousand foreign policy experts are dug out, suited up and marched into studios to explain what specific set of un-Islamic Muslim grievances caused this latest beheading and how the surviving non-Muslims need to appease their future killers. And then another tree falls. And another head rolls.

The appeasement never works. No non-Muslim country has ever reliably made peace with Muslim terrorists inside its own borders. Even the Muslim countries have a shaky track record. Most have settled for either massacring them, like Algeria and Jordan, or secretly allying with them, like just about every Muslim country from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia.


And yet Nigeria is expected to cut a deal with the Boko Haram rapists of its little girls, Israel is expected to negotiate with the mass murderers of its Rabbis, Hindus in India are expected to negotiate with the Jihadists who burn them alive and somehow arrive at a peaceful settlement. And if the peace doesn’t come, then it won’t be the fault of the rapists, the axe-wielders and arsonists, but of their victims.

It is never the Muslim terrorists who are at fault for not being appeased by any compromise and any concession. It is the fault of their victims for not appeasing them hard enough.

Compromise with Muslim terrorists is impossible because the issue is not really about Jerusalem, oil revenues in Nigeria, Kashmir or Syria. It’s always about Islam. The territorial claims are unlimited and uncompromisable because they are backed by Islam. No concession can ever suffice because Islam promises its followers not merely some land in Syria, Israel or India… but the entire world.

The forest is Islam. The trees are theirs because the forest belongs to them. Jerusalem and Kashmir are not any different than New York or Sydney. Muslim historical claims are mythologies invented to give weight to their religious violence.

After losing a few wars the Arab Muslims who had been fighting for a Greater Syria decided that they would fall back to claiming to be “Palestinians” while demanding a state on the territories that the Jordanians and Egyptians had ethnically cleansed Jews from in 1948 before losing a war to those same Jews in 1967. But that was never anything other than a down payment on the rest of Israel.

Meanwhile the Islamic State is recreating Greater Syria under a Caliphate.

Turkey’s president, who sponsors the Islamic State and dreams of reviving the Ottoman Empire, recently announced that America was originally Muslim. It’s absurd, but so is claiming that Israel never existed and that its Arab Muslim conquerors are really some sort of ancient “Palestinian” people who were there first. When even the most ridiculous lie is told often enough, it becomes mistaken for a fact.

The good Muslim terrorist is born out of this false history. Unlike the bad Muslim terrorist who wants Caliphates and harems of frightened little girls, who wants Islamic law and beheadings on every corner, the good Muslim terrorist is misunderstood, lacks economic opportunities, is traumatized by war and unaware of the benefits of peace. What he really wants is his own McDonald’s franchise in Jerusalem. He wants microfinance in Kashmir. He wants to build solar panels with 3D printers to fight climate change in Nigeria.

These are the lies that the modern Chamberlains tell themselves and then us. These are the lullabies that the newscasters hum audiences to sleep with just before the bombs go off and the heads roll.

There are no good Muslim terrorists. There are no moderate Jihadists. There is only Islam.

There were no friendly Islamic militias in Benghazi. There are no moderate Taliban. No one is looking to cut a deal for peaceful nuclear energy in Tehran. They are looking to cut our throats.

The moderate and the extremist, the good and bad Muslim terrorists, are no different than our own police game of good cop and bad cop. President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said that his policies are no different than those of Hamas. The Free Syrian Army and the Al Qaeda aligned militias in Syria fight together. They are both out to create an Islamic state. The only difference is that the FSA and the Palestinian Authority get their money and weapons from us. Hamas and Al Qaeda get them from our allies in Turkey and Qatar. And they often get them from us.


Behind every bad scowling Muslim terrorist whom we hunt with drones is one of our good Muslim terrorists or one of our good Muslim allies. There would be no Taliban or Bin Laden without Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

There would be no ISIS without Qatar. And there would be no Qatar without our protection. Even while we bomb ISIS with our planes, our air power protects Qatar. Even while we condemn the latest Muslim terrorist attack in Jerusalem, we fund the payments that will be given as a reward to the families of the killers.

There are no good Muslim terrorists. There is no territorial compromise that will sweep away a thousand years of brutal ideology and replace it with our idea of the good life. Moderates who just want an extra mile on a map don’t chop down old men at prayer, don’t rape little girls or burn families to death.

Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the good Muslim terrorist are all stories that we tell ourselves. It’s time to start telling ourselves the truth.

by Daniel Greenfield