Here's an article about an Indian politician who says that there's "a sinister ploy to link terrorism with Islam." And here's a post from Gateway Pundit demonstrating that 100% of the world's top international terrorists are Muslim.

Now you might be thinking "well then I guess what that Indian politician said was the height of stupidity." And you'd be wrong. Because these two academic tools just published this in the NYT:

This idea of trying to reconcile Islam and the West is well intentioned, of course. But the premise is wrong. Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative. Instead, Mr. Obama, the first "post-racial" president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a "post-civilizational" president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like.

If we ignore how Osama Bin Laden thinks he's motivated by centuries of Islamic theology on jihad then it'll be just like that's not true. If we ignore how Australian terrorists believe that terrorism is holy then it'll be just like that's not true. If we ignore how Iranian clerics tell Hajj pilgrims to launch global Islamic holy wars then... and so on.

Between the two of them Olivier Roy and Justin Vaisse teach hundreds of undergrads and publish dozens of articles every year. Not sayin', just sayin'.

References and previously after the jump...