Cognitive Dissonance

It was only on last Thursday, when the details of the Ft. Hood jihad were only just beginning to slip out from under the PC rug, that I downloaded an article by D.L. Adams from American Thinker. (“Resolving the Cognitive Dissonance of Islam”).

I’m sure it had been posted before anyone knew of the attacks, making its timeliness eerie. Here’s an excerpt:

The negative spiritual and intellectual consequence of believing two mutually exclusive concepts is "cognitive dissonance." Our interaction as a society with Islam is a direct cause of "cognitive dissonance" for us as individuals and as a culture.

Resolution of the contradiction requires the rejection of one of the concepts as false. If we continue to ignore our cognitive dissonance about Islam the consequences are dire: we will lose our civilization.

Islam is much more than a religion; it is a complete civilization that includes politics (caliphate), jurisprudence (Sharia law), war (jihad), and a deliberately misleading "religion of peace." The doctrine of Islam is found in three books: Koran (the literal word of Allah as "revealed" to Mohammed), Sira (Mohammad's biography), and Hadith (stories about and sayings of Mohammed by contemporaries). The definitive text of Sharia law is "Reliance of the Traveller." Allah and Mohammed are to be obeyed, not questioned. "Islam" means submission;" a Muslim is "one who submits." "Islam" does not mean "peace."

The entire article is worth reading.

The Ft. Hood attack, combined as it was with the astounding initial reactions of the Army, the FBI, and some (not all) in the media to bury Hasan’s Muslim identity and motivations, have brought this cognitive dissonance to the forefront. That’s a good place for it.

By now, those of us who already know “Islam” doesn’t mean peace are weary of the countless interviews and commentators beating the dead horse about how PC thinking got these soldiers killed. The truth of that is so obvious now that I can’t imagine anything useful being added to it.

But even if nothing new is added, the monotonous repetitions of how PC rules have given Islam a protected status against criticism are useful. It’s useful that it’s being discussed at all. We Americans, apparently, require lots of repetition before things sink in. At least, that’s what the guys trying to get me to buy gold and Cialis seem to think.

Besides, the majority of America really did need a remedial class in the ABCs of Islam.

Just before Hasan launched his jihad our national “situational awareness” had degraded all the way back to where it was on 9/10/01. And now, at least for a little while, we’ve got some of that 9/12/01 freedom back: freedom to hold Islam at least slightly accountable to our free and peace-loving civilization, instead of vice versa.

I don’t expect it to last. Hasan is alive and talking, but he’s lawyered up now, and I have little confidence that government agencies sworn to protect and serve Diversity will do a proper job of investigation. That Congress had to request the CIA to “preserve” documents related to Hasan (translation: don’t shred them) didn’t inspire my confidence. And of course, those opinionmakers who, remedial lessons notwithstanding, will never relinquish their fantasies about Islam as a peaceful, misunderstood, victim group, will begin revising the history of Ft. Hood so that the true victims are Muslims caught in the backlash.

But for now, after an eight-year summer vacation, America is back in school again. As Adams has written, our cognitive dissonance about Islam “will be resolved only with honesty and knowledge.” Upsetting as the Ft. Hood attack has been, it has provided us an opportunity for that now.