One gets the distinct sense that a bunch of the usual suspect conservatives maintain a text file somewhere on their computers with a bunch of tirades ready to go at the time of the next big terrorist attack in the West -- and by God, even with the latest attack foiled, they're going to go ahead and use the material anyway. Step forward Andrew Sullivan, lacking even the excuse of being hot-headed following 9/11 that he used to explain the notorious "fifth column" post:
But what does it say about the state of Islam that one of its young believers believes that the best way of "standing up for his community" is not to make arguments, or proselytize, or campaign - but to murder innocent civilians he has never met. There is something terribly sick within the Muslim mind at this moment in history. It is Nietzsche's ressentiment, but with God re-attached. We should indeed fear these people for the hideous carnage they can wreak for the sake of their God. But we should never let our fear overwhelm our contempt for them - their sickness, their evil, their petty insecurities, their inability to live meaningful lives and their attempt to assuage this by murdering others in God's name. Yes, they evil. But they are also pathetic, miserable excuses for human beings.
And given a chance to back down:
But something is sick within the Muslim mind at this moment in time, and it is not Islamophobic to say so. The major source of the mass murder and threat of mass murder in the world right now is rooted in Islam. It is waged in the name of Islam; it is justified by reference to Islam; it is a fundamentally religious movement.
... I could equally say that at this moment there is something sick in the Catholic mind - and, in my view, there is ... Ditto the Christianist temptation among evangelicals ... And the sad truth is: no religion in the world right now has as many internal problems as Islam ... But I'm not interested in writing lies. If more Muslims were as "emotionally devastated" by the carnage wrought in their name as the words on a blog, Islam would have a much healthier future.
Amongst the things missing in all this is any kind of nuance; in particular the cocktail of repressive regimes in Muslim countries, alienated Muslim minorities in the West, and a ready supply of additional things to be alienated about via the policies of George W. Bush. But as Sully's Nietzsche reference shows, along with the pivoting of the rhetorical guns on the Catholic Church, he might have reached the point where part of his problem is with any organised religion. Which is fine -- our own preference would be for a religion that displays approximately the coherence and life-guidance that's on display in the Vicar of Dibley. But we don't have the Time.com platform to turn this unmet need into an attack on one billion people.
UPDATE: An effective riposte, though not intended as such, to Sully's philosophical warmongering from his friend, Matthew Parris in the Times (UK):
More dangerous are the constellation-makers among our presidents, prime ministers and newspaper leader writers: it does lie within their power to breathe life into the monsters they think they see. If they keep shouting that we face a clash of civilisations, a war of the worlds, they may drive bigger numbers on both sides into the arms of the smaller numbers who do want to rally volunteers for a battle.
UPDATE 22 AUGUST: When we were working on the original post, we thought that Sully's quip about Islam sounded like something he had heard somewhere, and a little Googling at the time led us to suspect Roger Scruton as the original source. This recent WSJ piece from him increases the suspicion.
FINAL UPDATE 21 SEPTEMBER: He returns to the reference in a brief comment on George Carey's endorsement of Pope Benedict's controversial speech: Ressentiment under Allah: a toxic brew indeed.
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