Calling a Spade

John Feffer, writing for blogging website smirkingchimp.com in a post titled "Orlando and the Future of Terrorism" says that we should see the union of Omar Mateen and ISIS as opportunistic at best, and implores us to see the events as a 'mass hate crime'. Although I ultimately think he's arguing semantics, it is his assertions about the future of Islam and terrorism that worry me.
Faffer lays it out for us as follows-- terrorism has been on the decline worldwide because the organizations responsible for them where able to find some political purchase for their ideals, and needed little convincing that killing innocents wasn't as effective as policy in advancing their agenda. He warns us though, that jihadists would find no political platform  that would ever appease them and so we must take action against them. His suggestion is that violence begets violence, and so we must seek to disarm the likes of ISIS of their social media campaigns, their finance, and their social structure while giving mainstream Muslims a political platform that will "force out" the jihadists.
This argument is simply dishonest, or at best ignorant. There are case studies that show us what happens when political Islam is implemented into Shari'a law.

It is often heard that we are at war with the Muslim world, or at least there are those who wish to make it so. There is infinite difference, however, in arguing ( as I do) that we are, or should be, at war with ideas. The Qu'ran, or as outspoken secularist author Sam Harris calls it, 'the mother lode of bad ideas', is the basis for Shari'a law, and one would be hard press to find a more barbaric instruction manual on how to behave toward a spouse, homosexuals, or a number of liberties that non-Muslim westerners enjoy. Indeed, where the Qu'ran is of moral guidance, almost all the values of tolerance and equality that we wish to see spread across the world are in fact seen as immoral (see page 81 for a case in point about homosexuals). Even if encouraging Islamism was the best way to cut the root system of ISIS, what we would be growing in its stead is a society so against our values so as to be deemed criminal, especially in its treatment towards homosexuals.
So if we wish to end Islamic terrorism, we should have a frank discussion about religion, the power of ideas, and the need to reform the Muslim faith. It should go without saying that there is no implication in these statements of action against Muslim people in any way. We should exercise tolerance, and protect the freedoms of every Muslim while they, as a global community, make every effort to reform their faith.
So long as we shut down all conversation regarding the shortcomings of the Muslim faith by throwing accusations of 'Islamophobia', we will spend the next half dozen generations fighting permutations of Al-Qeada, the Taliban, and ISIS. Because at their heart is an all too plausible interpretation of the word of God (the Qu'ran).