Understanding the Problem

Andrew C. McCarthy writes in National Review the following, as in part his reaction to the recent terror attack in London.

When we speak of Islam, as opposed to Muslims, we are not speaking about a mere religious belief system. We are talking about a competing civilization — that is very much how Islam self-identifies. It has its own history, principles, values, mores, and legal system. Islam, thus understood, is not non-Western. It is anti-Western.

The remorseless fact is that before ISIS and al-Qaeda and the Khomeini revolution and Hezbollah and the Blind Sheikh and the Brotherhood and Khalid Masood, there was the single thing that unites them all. There was Islam.

I hear echoes of Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations in McCarthy's formulation - nothing of which to be ashamed, by the way. Hat tip to Power Line for the link.