Totten Interviews Hitchens

Excerpt:

MJT: And yet the other side, the radical Islamist side, hysterically calls us all Crusaders and Zionists.

Hitchens: Here’s a way of throwing an Oregon progressive into a state of confusion: ask him or her if they’ve read the latest Al Qaeda pronouncements on the Hindu question. Or, shall we put it another way, a billion infidels, brown-skinned, third world, living in a secular democracy, and all of them deemed by fatwa as fit only for slaughter.

Who’s the racist here? Me for pointing that out?

Remember, this Al Qaeda crap comes not out of Palestine. We’ve got three big Asian democracies, one Christian—the Philippines—one largely Sufi Indonesia, and one Hindu—India. The attempts of Al Qaeda in each case is to create a separate state, to wrench one out of the territories of these three, which would lead to more chaos and war and misery than you can imagine. The reason I’m an optimist is because if we can manage to create alliances with these three large prosperous multicultural democracies, and say that we understand the attempt by radical Islam—again, I correct myself. I should say reactionary Islam.

I don’t like the word radical being used here. I do it myself sometimes, but I’m always trying to stop myself. We say “the radical imam.” No, he’s not radical. He’s the most reactionary bleeder in the region.