Arab leaders call for Jihad over Jerusalem. Again.

Over the past 150 years, Muslims have learned that the threat of Jihad scares Westerners. The concern that hordes of half-crazed third-world Mohammedan zealots would go nuts is a consistent motif throughout contemporary newspapers of a century ago no less than it is today, just today it is less politically correct to think in terms of half-crazed third-world Mohammedan zealot.

From the March 2, 1899 Otago Witness:
From the Evening Independent, February 7, 1913:
From the Timaru Herald, September 27, 1876:
Over the years, Muslim leaders have learned that the very idea of a religious war strikes fear in Western hearts, because Westerners tend to be afraid of naked fanaticism. The thought that religion is enough reason to wage war seems primitive to modern ears, and being confronted with people who are fundamentally irrational is a scary thought.

Arab and Muslim leaders have cultivated this fear over the decades, to the extent that Westerners now censor their own speech to avoid any chance of offending the irrational Muslim hordes and spark a Jihad, or at the very least a murder spree.

I have called this mindset "the diplomacy of fear." These leaders have learned that their very threats can get the Western world to bend to their bidding, and the fear is based on the concept that Muslims cannot be trusted to act rationally. Leftists embrace this soft bigotry and the Muslim and especially Arab leadership exploit it.

In that context, it is telling that a conference in Cairo over the weekend called on all Muslims worldwide to initiate a religious war in defense of Jerusalem as a reaction to Israel daring to consider the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb to be "Jewish." The intent is not so much a show of strength by rioting Muslims - whose actual jihads have invariably fallen far short of the threats - as it is to frighten the West into pressuring Israel not to tick off the crazy, irrational "Mussulmans."