The "real scandal" in the "Quran-handling" case.

Diana West explains something that has been overlooked in all the discussion of respecting Muslem sensibilities. After explaining that Army regulations require an elaborate kabuki theater of donning clean gloves and carrying the Quran in a clean detainee towel, West writes:

At first glance, this scene may seem to exemplify a bizarre excess of good manners, an absurdly obsequious respect for a largely foreign faith. Since when does the United States specifically direct its soldiers to show two-handed "reverence" in the handling of any religious book? But it seems to me that there's more behind this charade. The "clean gloves" and "detainee" towels are the tip-off. The fact is, under Islamic law, non-Muslims are deemed unfit to touch the Quran. That much is generally known. What is not usually considered is the reason: According to the Islamic law, we are unclean.

The term is "najis." On the multilingual Web site of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric, there is a catalogue of Islamic laws (www.sistani.org). This includes a list of "najis things." There are 10, beginning with an assortment of excretions and body fluids -- obvious stuff that really shouldn't need special mention. On the "najis" list with urine, feces, etc., are the pig, the dog and the "kafir." That means the Christian, the Jew, the unbeliever in Islam -- and, chances are, the Gitmo guard.

In effect, then, with its official policy of clean cloves and detainee towels, the United States military is promoting, enabling and accepting the Islamic concept of najis -- the unclean infidel -- a barbarous notion that has helped fuel the bloodlust of jihad and the non-Muslim subjugation of dhimmitude. Our soldiers are many things: self-sacrificing, bold, loyal and true. They are not unclean.

Is this political correctness run amok? Not exactly. It's something else again, a new threat from within that needs vigilant redress. P.C. is about victimology, the elevation of perceived victim groups to the canonical pantheon. The Gitmo rules are more blatantly about surrender, a voluntary self-extinguishment, a spreading condition of denial of what is right and worth standing for. Not what you expect from the United States Southern Command.

It should be axiomatic that Americans are not "unclean". Americans should stand up for that proposition even if radical Islamists disagree. It is in fact a founding principle of Americanism that there are no "unclean" castes, peoples or faiths.

According to Donald Kagan, adopting a strategy which is strong enough to confront and incite an enemy, but not strong enough to win, is a recipe for long term defeat. (See the Athenian response to the "crisis" at Epidamnus. In our case, let us hope that our politically correct strategy of confronting Islamic terrorism while conceding their moral superiority doesn't yield the same results.

Update: But this kind of thing, or images of our fellow citizens throwing themselves out of burning buildings or having their heads cut off, are "spiked," lest Americans become angry.

Does anyone doubt that this kind of one-sided propaganda is paying dividends for the enemy?