Sunday, August 13, 2006

Bad Term: Islamic Fascists

Here's a really good Daily Kos article that does a better job than the Reuters article it references.

On Thursday Bush used the term "war with Islamic fascists". Now I think he was attempting to say it wasn't a war with all of Islam just with a particular radical group of Muslims. I also think calling them fascists is an odd use of the imprecise term. Here's a good about why it's a dumb term.

It seems some (many?) Muslims take offense at connecting their religion with the term. The Kos article adds a pointer to a Gallup poll that cites prejudice against Muslims and maybe there's a point to it.

It also quotes how the British Home Secretary described them merely as terrorists and points out that most of the victims of these groups have been Muslims.

The last point is the best. While we don't really know details of how this current plot was foiled it seems it came from a tip from...you guessed it a Muslim in Britain. See we want good relations with the Muslim community if we're going to win this war. And maybe starting a war on false pretenses isn't the best way to do that.

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