Blogger boggles the mind.

You may know of Pamela Geller, author of the Atlas Shrugs blog, and, more notably, the woman responsible for this ad running in several states:

She has exercised her right to free speech, having paid to place this ad in subways and buses.  I respect that right.  She has a hard time understanding why people may find the use of the word savage offensive.  After all, the word simply means uncivilized, does it not?  Well, sort of.  Its primary meaning is untamed or wild, indeed.  But it tended to imply beast rather than beastly when used to refer to African or American natives during colonization.  In this sense, the word was used to imply that such persons were not human, and therefore did not have souls--today, you might use neanderthal as a synonym to imply one is not a homo sapiens sapiens.  But that is a different point.  Rather, today she wants to argue against a gentleman (apparently he has been less than gentlemanly in other contexts, but that is, again, a different issue).  Instead, she has decided to take on a religious point: the meaning of the word jihad.  In her most recent post, she includes an interview with Ahmed Rehab, a spokesman for Hamas-CAIR.  Quite apart from the question of the intentions of this group, Rehab claims that jihad means spiritual struggle, and that it does not have to indicate a violent struggle or war.  In response to Rehab (whose intentions may be nefarious), Geller decides to wax theological (not to say philological).

I am no fan of violent jihad, nor of religious war of any sort.  Nevertheless, Geller should stick to what she is good at: making up funny question-begging epithets (I particularly like 'enemedia').  There is a long history (over 1000 years) of interpreting jihad to mean inner struggle in a spiritual sense.  Many followers of Mohamed (certainly not all) have tried to steer away from certain violent aspects of the Qur'an, just as many Christians and Jews have reinterpreted parts of the Old Testament to find meaning in aspects of our past with which we no longer agree.  The Qur'an often uses the word jihad to mean the struggle or cause (generally of Allah, it would appear).  Different sects interpret this in different ways, some placing emphasis on holy war.  But for Geller to call this a lie is factually incorrect.  Rehab may be disingenuous, but that is another matter; though I would have  more respect for Geller--read: any--had she simply said that.

Her criticisms of Dan Ponce, the journalist (read: enemedia) who interviewed Rehab, are likewise incomprehensible.  She wants to know why Ponce did not ask Rehab certain questions about his alleged crack-pot positions on terrorism (see the bottom of her blog entry).  The simple answer is: because it is a report about how the Muslim community (and the broader local communities) are reacting to her ads.  Those questions seem interesting to me, and I might like to hear the answer.  But here they would be entirely irrelevant.  Ponce may have chosen his interviewee poorly.  Once again, that would have been an intelligent point on Geller's part.  Too bad she did make it.