In 2008, Tyson Foods accommodated Muslim workers, granting them time off for the religious holiday of Eid-al-Fitr. At the time, Robert Spencer caught hell from erstwhile allies such as Allahpundit for “crossing the line” between resistance to jihad and supposed anti-Muslim bigotry. Negotiating this invisible line has been a really difficult issue for all of us engaged in the anti-jihad movement, since we all accept American religious pluralism and tolerance, and in a perfect world we would like to be able to smile magnanimously at members of every faith, encouraging them to practice their creeds in peace. We would like to believe that good (e.g. orthodox, pious) Muslims are more likely to be good citizens than bad ones, just as in general pious Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and Hindus are more likely to be ethical than “bad” ones, and principled, philosophical unbelievers are more inclined to moral behavior than those who are not morally self-consistent. In general, it’s better to have moral principles than not to have them, and it’s better to obey the voice of one’s conscience than to ignore it. This seems both obvious and… American.

As President Eisenhower once apparently said: “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what that faith is.” However frustrated each of us might be that his own most deeply treasured beliefs are not enshrined by the public authority–America’s founding Protestant majority adopted tolerance as a practical measure, given the proliferation of creeds–most faiths in America have had their sharp political edges worn off by the necessity of coexistence. Indeed, we came to see the positive advantages of the state refusing to adopt a particular religion, so long as people of each faith could have an equal voice in the political arena with each other, and those of no faith. The experience of confessional states in Europe taught us that with political power can come corruption, and that established churches can end up like decrepit American car companies decaying behind the wall of protectionism. The free market of ideas, it turns out, is just as important as the free market in goods and services. By the late 19th century, American bishops were troubling the Vatican with their enthusiastic embrace of a non-denominational state–and at Vatican II they led the successful fight to get the Church to officially embrace religious liberty. All of this a very, very good thing.

What happens when we begin to suspect that a particular moral system accepted by our fellow citizens is fundamentally incompatible with peaceful coexistence? That is what Americans began to see was true of Communists in the 1920s and 30s. Whatever good deeds individual Communists performed fighting segregation, or leading labor unions in fighting for needed reforms, perceptive Americans fitfully learned that these were being done in the service of a comprehensive, all-encompassing ideology that seeks a totalizing transformation of society, that rejects the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the constraints of the Constitution. Union activists learned that Communists never cooperated except as a means to gaining control; peace activists learned that the Communists they worked with were constantly trimming their organizations’ policies to accord with diktats from the Comintern, to suit Soviet Russia’s foreign policy. (This became most blatantly true when anti-fascist activists accepted the Hitler/Stalin pact, and vigorously opposed Roosevelt’s Lend/Lease aid to embattled Britain–then flipped like a coin when Hitler invaded Russia.)

What do we do when we learn–as we do from reading Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or, and the few others brave enough to tell this unwelcome truth–that an entire world religion is in many ways parallel to Communism? When we learn that the “civil rights” organizations that claim to speak up for the individual rights of American Muslims under the Constitution refuse to denounce suicide-murder attacks in Israel? When these same groups’ leaders admit that they favor, in the long run, a sharia government in America?

If we’re like Allahpundit, we take refuge in denial. We frantically search for enemies “on the right,” whom we can paint as the real anti-Islamic extremists, by contrast with our own, more “nuanced” position. In politics this is known as “triangulation.” It’s what Bill Clinton engaged in when he denounced Sistah Souljah, and it’s what the Palestinian Authority does all the time when it presents itself as the “reasonable” alternative to Hamas. And this tactic works pretty well, if we’re not really concerned with the truth of the matter. The fundamental question is: Can Islam co-exist with modern, liberal tolerance of many religions, in which no citizen is subjected to basic discrimination based on his faith or lack of faith? For Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism, this question has already been answered. Muslims around the world, as this site documents better than any other, are answering that question for us every day. While their words often say “Yes, of course!” their actions say “No” in blood and fire and fury. The few, who like Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Bat Ye’or and Geert Wilders, are willing to face the truth, find themselves spattered with mud flung from every direction. They face charges of “McCarthyism” and religious intolerance.

Are they really intolerant of individual Muslims? Of course not. Are they intolerant of the whole package that is Islam–including its vastly detailed mechanism for repression of other faiths, the subjugation of women, and the abandonment of reason? To that the answer is yes. Almost no one in the anti-jihad movement favors depriving Muslims of the rights they are guaranteed by our Constitution. Few anti-Communists ever favored the outright state censorship of Communist speech, either. (Remember that even the irresponsible and mendacious McCarthy didn’t advocate that.) But given what these truth-tellers know about how Islamic activists operate, and the parallels they see between Islamic and Communist modes of subversion, anti-jihadists would have to be insane to welcome any advances of orthodox Islam in the public arena. Private businesses granting religious holidays to labor unions is, in itself, quite harmless. But when what you face is an comprehensive ideology of intolerance, you really can’t celebrate their winning any victories–since the ideologues always use them as a stepping stone to further recognition, greater cultural power, and the final goal of true domination.

And so, when Tyson’s tolerant gesture of celebrating Eid is rewarded, as it has been, with the slogan “All Americans Must Die” written on its walls, Robert Spencer is not surprised. When a chicken company has to hire rent-a-cops to patrol its bathrooms to keep the incidence of anti-American threats to minimum, it is not out of place to ask, in exasperation:

“Could you have imagined on September 12, 2001 that within ten years, an American business that had nothing to do with terrorism, weapons production, security, or anything of the kind, would have to have armed guards patrolling its hallways, as the price of the privilege of having Muslim employees?”

None of us wants the government to punish Tyson as a company for acting like chickens. In fact, we would all oppose such an action as a violation both of freedom of religion and freedom of contract. But we mourn every advance of Islam’s banners into the public square, since we know they are banners of war.