No- It's Not "Radical Islamic Terrorism"

Hillary Clinton won't call it "radical Islamic terrorism." Neither will Barack Obama. Neither will Joe Biden. In fact, basically no major Democrat is calling the Paris Attacks or the California attacks that. It drives conservatives completely nuts. They hate it. They think it denotes weakness, and encourages more terror. I have no idea on what logic they think that happens, but they do. And it's pretty entertaining to watch them stew over it, to be honest.

When the gunman shot people in the Planned Parenthood a few days ago, we did not call that "Radical Christian Terrorism." Same when Dylan Roof shot people in a historical African-American church in South Carolina. We don't call it "radical Christianity" when a nation in Africa executes people for being gay, or when an American lunatic kills an abortion provider. Not only do we not call Christians "Radicalized Christians" when they commit acts of terrorism, we would actually laugh at someone if they did say that. It's preposterous, and we treat it as such. We recognize the stupidity of calling out an entire religion over a few people.

ISIS has a few thousand active members according to most credible sources (200,000 at most). Al-Qaeda is even smaller. There might be a total of one-million Muslims who are members of terrorist groups. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. ISIS and all of these nut-jobs are basically Islams equivalent of Christianity's Ku Klux Klan. In other words, they're a few extremist "hillbillies" within the religion. Equating people like this with the whole religion is ridiculous. Is America popular with all Muslims? No, I'd say not, after a decade of war in predominantly Muslim nations, killing tens of thousands. That still hasn't made even a fraction of them join ISIS.

Saying we are fighting "radical Islamic terrorism" sounds good to ignorant people here who are afraid of Muslims because "they don't know any." It's not good in practice. It give ISIS and others the dignity of association with a religion. It puts other Muslims in bed with them, as though they are a part of this fight. It frankly gives the impression that we are at war with Islam. If we are truly at war with a religion of the world, our country has lost it's moral authority. It is not who we are, and frankly it's not warranted. 99% of Islam is not at war with us.

The GOP's obsession with rhetoric that creates the most stark divides possible is simple a byproduct of having a base that is angry and fearful of "outsiders." This does not mean the Democrats should oblige them. To do so would be stupid and harmful. There's no need for that in our nation. I can only hope we continue to be lead by people with the judgment and intellect to know why it is stupid to use the words "Radical Islamic Terrorism." If we are not, our country will begin down a dangerous, stupid path.