WSJ: Hey, let's call it a war against "Islamic supremacy"!

James Taranto has had a great new idea: let's not call it a War On Terror, but a War On "Islamic Supremacy"!

[...] So, how does one describe these movements? "Terrorist," as we have noted, is too imprecise, a reference to tactics, not ideology. What we need is a term that acknowledges that they are Islamic movements without implying anything invidious about Muslims who do not belong to such movements.

The answer: Islamic supremacy. The analogous term, white supremacy, is in no way offensive to whites, Indeed, condemnations of white supremacy generally succeed at shaming whites into shunning groups like the Ku Klux Klan, just as the West hopes to shame Muslims into shunning Islamic supremacist groups.

We would define Islamic supremacy as follows: a doctrine that seeks to subjugate or exterminate non-Muslims, or convert them to Islam by force. This is slightly different from white supremacy, in that there is no such thing as a racial conversion--but we think the analogy is close enough to be useful.

This is getting too close to the bone, so Taranto draws back into a comfortable moral equivalence, gliding over the fact that while Christianity and Islam are universalist, Christianity lacks the militaristic imperative to subjugate nonbelievers that is taught by all the orthodox sects of Islam:

One might argue that supremacy is inherent in Islam, inasmuch as it claims to be the one true religion and (unlike some other faiths, such as Judaism) seeks converts. But the same is true of Christianity, which has largely made peace with secular modernity and religious pluralism. Reconciling Islam with religious pluralism is a task for Muslims. Combating Islamic supremacist movements is one for non-Muslims and nonsupremacist Muslims alike. [...]

The entire koran is about the supremacy of the arab. They make people memorize the koran in arabic. 95% of all muslims do not speak or understand arabic. So, they are learning how to just say words that have no meaning for them. Then there is the dress for both men and women. The dress proscribed is from the seventh century arabian desert.

I like this idea. Terror is a tactic. Supremism is an ism. Now that we know how to fight.