Fearful Things

Jeff Jacoby is worried, he has been reading Robert Ferrigno's dystopian thriller "Prayer for the Assassins" and as such is scared Al Qaeda could take over the USA and impose Sha'aria law.
Frankly, I think the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Boy Scouts of America have a better shot at it, but why quibble with the frightened?
Now I've seen Ferrigno's book and it sounds mighty contrived as to how Al Qaeda etc actually pull off the conquest of the USA.
Contrivance is deadly when writing political fantasies, its what killed Allen Drury's ponderous "Advise and Consent" series.
Note to Jacoby and Ferrigno, always keep your near future dystopia's vague and simple, in this respect take George Orwell's "1984" or Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here" as your models.
For that fact, if you are really in the market for a good book that beats the tocsin about the "Islamic Threat" just pick up a copy of the late Anthony Burgess' "1985" and excellent and utterly paranoid work in every respect.
On the other hand there is a bit of an intellectual disconnect here in Jacoby's thinking. It seems to me, that one of the reasons that US Movement Conservatism and it's Praetorian Apologists have been a bust a fighting Al Qaeda is that in the main, they have the same policy goals. They both lust after a primitive patriarchic society dominated and controlled by revealed religion as interpreted by a elite priestly caste.
Jeff therefore isn't railing against the coming hordes of Islam and their anti-rational rule so much as he wants to make sure the Next Society is one controlled by the right set of believers.
So between Jeff and his wowsers and Al Qaeda and their suicide bombers mere secular society has come in for some hard knocks since September 11th 2001.
Think about that for a while.

Now mind you, I'm not drawing a line of moral equivalence between Jeff and the suicide bomber class. Jeff lives in a civil secular society and wishes to peacefully transform it into a sort of Christian Theme Park with hot and cold running holy water at the Sheraton and witchburnings on cable TV. His ambitions are silly and retrograde but no one getting killed on their behalf.
The suicide bombers live in a society already overburdened by religion and are looking to solve all those problems with more sectarian violence.
So its a difference of means and milieu don'cha know.