This post by Dean Esmay, “calling out Michelle Malkin,” is what is known in the business as traffic bait.

So go ahead and click it and give Esmay more of the traffic he wants. I highly recommend you read his post as the classic blogospheric example of how not to argue about Islam.

Or anything else, for that matter.

Notice the absence of a single link or a specific quotation of anything I’ve ever written (at least as of this posting). Very Ralph Peters-esque. He “calls me out” by citing…something written by blogger Gary Metz. He relies on overwrought non sequiturs (Muslims are buried at Arlington National Cemetery!) and beats his chest:

I’m making an open appeal to your conscience, Michelle Malkin, and to the conscience of conservatives everywhere: shouldn’t you start making a distinction between Muslims who hate us and want to kill us, and Muslims who believe in freedom, democracy, and religious tolerance?

Before one makes an ass of himself, with all due respect, he should do his research and homework . Perhaps one should worry less about other people’s consciences and more about one’s intellectual sloppiness.

Speaking of which, it looks like Esmay is becoming unhinged:

Good gracious.

Bryan Preston weighs in here.

There is a grown-up debate to be had about the incompatibility of fundamental tenets of Islam and liberal democracies, and about the prospects for reform in the Muslim world (Max Boot makes a histrionics-free go at it in the LA Times, which I will come back to soon). I will waste my time no further with trivial distractions. I make no apologies for highlighting the horrors of sharia law, criticizing creeping dhimmitude, and citing the work of outspoken and brave critics of Islam–Muslim and non-Muslim alike. (Speaking of which, don’t miss Jihad Watch at Hot Air TV today.)

I will not submit to hysterical boys who cry “Islamophobia!”

Neither will Brigitte Gabriel:

Our mediocre attitude of not confronting Islamic forces of bigotry and hatred wherever they raised their ugly head in the last 30 years, has empowered and strengthened our enemy to launch a full scale attack on the very freedoms we cherish in their effort to impose their values and way of life on our civilization.

If we don’t wake up and challenge our Muslim community to take action against the terrorists within it, if we don’t believe in ourselves as Americans and in the standards we should hold every patriotic American to, we are going to pay a price for our delusion. For the sake of our children and our country, we must wake up and take action. In the face of a torrent of hateful invective and terrorist murder, America’s learning curve since the Iran hostage crisis is so shallow that it is almost flat. The longer we lay supine, the more difficult it will be to stand erect.

I’ve just bought her new book. You should, too:

I’ll take Brigitte and Wafa Sultan and Aayan Hirsi Ali and Nonie Darwish over the Dhimmi Esmays of the world any day.

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More blogosphere reaction:

Plus + Ultra
Pink Flamingo
Rosemary at QOAE
Donald Sensing

Related must-read: Andrew Bostom reports on a Pentagon briefing about suicide bombers that will have the “Islamophobia” crowd in hysterics. It’s in the Koran:

With suicide bombings spreading from Iraq to Afghanistan, the Pentagon has tasked intelligence analysts to pinpoint what’s driving Muslim after Muslim to do the unthinkable.

Their preliminary finding is politically explosive: it’s their “holy book” the Quran after all, according to intelligence briefings obtained by WND.

In public, the U.S. government has made an effort to avoid linking the terrorist threat to Islam and the Quran while dismissing suicide terrorists as crazed heretics who pervert Islamic teachings.

“The terrorists distort the idea of jihad into a call for violence and murder,” the White House maintains in its recently released “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism” report.

But internal Pentagon briefings show intelligence analysts have reached a wholly different conclusion after studying Islamic scripture and the backgrounds of suicide terrorists. They’ve found that most Muslim suicide bombers are in fact students of the Quran who are motivated by its violent commands – making them, as strange as it sounds to the West, “rational actors” on the Islamic stage.

In Islam, it is not how one lives one’s life that guarantees spiritual salvation, but how one dies, according to the briefings. There are great advantages to becoming a martyr. Dying while fighting the infidels in the cause of Allah reserves a special place and honor in Paradise. And it earns special favor with Allah.

“Suicide in defense of Islam is permitted, and the Islamic suicide bomber is, in the main, a rational actor,” concludes a recent Pentagon briefing paper titled, “Motivations of Muslim Suicide Bombers.”

Update:

LGF on When Chihuahas attack. LOL.

Oh, and let me help Dean out here. You must be looking for this and this. And?

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