This guy gives us a headache.

Juan Cole's got an insufferably smug roundup purporting to demonstrate that moderate Muslims are rushing to the front lines in the battle against Islamic extremism. It's very typical Cole stuff on all three typical Cole levels: cherry-picked examples in the service of flawed analysis, with the purpose of providing liberal terrorist apologists ammunition in the form of ostensible erudition. As of this post going into the MT backend, the post is nearing 400 diggs, which reflects tens of thousands of hits for that one post. This is what he's good at - allowing DKos Denizens to talk about how learned scholars are on their side against the ignorant warmongers supporting Bush and Israel.

We're inclined to go through the typically Cole-ish examples - ever-so-tangled examples, contextualized in ever-so-off ways, making use of ever-so-subtle omissions. So his lead example is Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon. Fadlallah did indeed condemn Bin Laden - very important point. Do you think that it's also important to note that Fadlallah was the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, and was concerned about whether or not Shiites or Sunnis would lead the global jihad against the West? We think it's important to note. Cole didn't.

The rest of his examples proceed apace, but you know what - screw it. Grant all of his examples. Accept that every scholar he pointed out is against terrorism (even though not a single one of his statements goes that far). Even if all of that was true, his conclusion would still be stunningly incoherent:

Listen, we were going to insert a rant here. It had a lot of capital letters and words. But again, it's just not worth it. Cole's claim is that "it is bizarre" to claim that "Muslims haven't done a good job of fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism". Given that today there is more support in the Muslim world for jihadi ideology and terrorism than there was a decade ago, this is a stupid claim that not even the densest ideologue could justify in a public forum. This isn't even close. Is there a single Muslim country where political Islam is in significant retreat in a way the offsets palpable gains in Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, and Bangladesh? Do polls show greater or lesser sympathy for secular values in Muslim countries? We can even be specific: is opposition to Israel in the Muslim world more or less inflected as religious obligation? If Muslims have done a good job fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism, we'd really hate to say what would constitute apathy.

If you read Juan Cole and you think "wow, that's a really good point - I just knew that my fellow Leftists and I were right to suspect that Bush administration Likudniks were demeaning Islam's peaceful nature" then you are an idiot.

Previously: Juan Cole - Fraud, Juan Cole - Anti-Semite?, Academics Who Attack Israel are Brave if Brave Means "Doing Things All Your Collegues Who Agree With You Will Tell You That You Were Brave for Doing"