In a recently released video of Kamala Harris speaking at the Islamic Center of Southern California, the vice president declared that, “We must have the courage to object when they use that term, ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’”

While there is much to be said about this asinine statement, the first thing that struck me is how Harris’s approach perfectly conforms to the Left’s ancient strategy, one that few on the Right still comprehend.

The Leftist agenda has always been multigenerational, requiring patience and lots of subtle subversion and gaslighting. It began with small, seemingly reasonable requests; but with each victory — that is, every time normal, rational people acquiesced to what they instinctively knew was wrong — the bar was raised higher, preparing the way for more unreasonable requests-turned-demands.

Take sexual depravity. In the beginning, we were told that homosexuals wanted nothing more than to be treated with full equality and acceptance, without experiencing discrimination or worse.

That request was granted as people willingly forsook the truth about sexuality—but did it stop there? No. Now, decades later, if you do not “celebrate” the most perverse and vile sorts of sexual depravity and allow your children to be immersed and indoctrinated in it, you are deemed to be a threat to society.

Now, consider how Kamala’s assertion about “radical Islam” perfectly fits within this Leftist paradigm of making a small, seemingly innocent request, only to make greater, more insane ones once it’s embraced.

Dumb and Dumber

Back in 2001, when Americans by and large first took notice of Islam, a debate quickly developed: Were Muslim terror groups acting in keeping with or against Islamic teachings? Did Islam promote terrorism or was it the “religion of peace”?

Out of this debate, the phrase “radical Islam” emerged triumphant, and was initially seen as something of a compromise. It came to mean that, while Islam itself is innocent, Islamic teachings could nonetheless be manipulated or “twisted” in a fashion that supports the beliefs and goals of terror groups like al-Qaeda.

This, of course, merely opened the door to more relativism and paved the way for the mainstream and widely accepted idea that Islam, in and of itself, is perfectly fine — or, to quote former President George W. Bush, “Islam is peace.” The only problem was that there were “bad guys” out there who cleverly manipulated Islamic teachings and scriptures to say and support what they believed and did.

Now, more than two decades later, here is Kamala Harris saying that even that politically correct and highly sanitized formulation is no longer acceptable. Not only are we expected to reject the idea that Islam itself sponsors violence and intolerance — which was the net result of acquiescing to the phrase “radical Islam” — but now we cannot even accept that there are any “radical” versions of Islam out there.

And so we continue to go from dumb to dumber.

Jihad Is Necessary

Doing away with “radical Islam” by necessity nullifies “radical Muslims,” as the latter are based on the former’s existence. Which paves the way to yet another, even more absurd falsehood: If there is no such thing as “radical Muslims,” then whenever Muslims lash out, and regardless of what they say (cries of “Allahu akbar” and the like), they are really motivated by factors that have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam, or even their own reading of it (grievances, economics, climate change, Israel, etc.).

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Islam itself — not radical Islam — is hostile to everything Western civilization represents. The Koran and Muhammad repeatedly praise terrorism. Jihad, defined as warfare against non-Muslims for no other reason than that they are non-Muslim, is a standard aspect of the faith. Before the age of relativism and political correctness set in, even the most prestigious and staid authorities maintained this.

Thus, the original version of the British Encyclopaedia of Islam’s entry for “jihad” (by Emile Tyan) states that the

spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general … Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam … Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad can be eliminated.

Such is the importance of words and the need for precision, which I’ve been (vainly) arguing for since 2009, including once before a congressional committee.

The Boiling Frog

Had American society openly and vocally stood against the normalization of homosexuality and sexual depravity in general — the way 90 percent of the world’s population have done and continue to do — the buck would have stopped in the 1960s.

And it’s the same with Islam: Had people rejected politically correct terms such as “radical Islam” as deceptive whitewashers of its dangers, the matter would have ended in the early 2000s, and so many negative developments — such as the flooding of the West in general and Europe in particular with Muslim “refugees” who behave more like terrorists — would not have occurred.

The lesson? Acceptance of one small lie always opens the door to the inevitable acceptance of more lies and their negative ramifications. But because it happens slowly and subtly, the boiling frog that is America fails to notice.

 

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.