So “Islamofascism Awareness Week” has started, and it’s already off to a great start…with one of the local College Republican chapters changing the name of the event.  They claim the change is meant to ease tensions with the local Muslim Student Association, but I think it’s just a convenient way to avoid deep embarrassment.  I can’t blame them–I wouldn’t want to be associated with an event with such an idiotic name, either. 

But Horowitz is there to remind us why it is necessary:

“It is to raise awareness that there are religious radicals who are obviously armed to the teeth who want to impose their religious law on everybody and who will kill anybody who gets in the way, who they regard as infidels,” he said.  

Because no one is aware of the problem, you see.  There have also been great costs incurred because of this ‘heroic’ work of raising awareness:

His efforts have spawned “a national McCarthy-like witch hunt of anyone who wants to discuss the oppression of women in Islam and the threat of radical Islam and the totalitarian movement in Islam,” Horowitz said.  

Who can forget the chilling scenes of the House Un-Islamofascist Activities Committee grilling the poor and defenseless Santorum: “Mr. Santorum, do you now want or have you ever wanted to discuss the oppression of women in Islam?”  Fortunately, the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali hasn’t been permitted to circulate (it’s been kept under wraps so completely that I don’t even know who she is–how could I?)–the witch hunts have made sure of that!   

What is the more specific purpose of the Awareness Week?  It is aimed at confronting “the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat.”  So it isn’t really very much about “raising awareness” about anything as it is an obvious effort at pushing pro-administration spin.  The phrasing they use is also a bit confused, since the “war on terror” is officially the response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and presumably they do want to credit Mr. Bush with that response.  What they probably meant to say was that Bush didn’t “start” the war with jihadis, but that isn’t actually what they said. 

It would be eminently desirable if CAIR and other such groups were put under serious scrutiny, and it would also be excellent if the bogus charge of “Islamophobia” were challenged in a serious way.  But that isn’t what these activists are proposing to do.  They are pushing some petty partisan propaganda campaign under the cover of one of the most ignorant, meaningless words coined in my lifetime.  No wonder so many academics generally want nothing to do with conservatism, when this is the conservatism they encounter.