Let us assume all kinds of things about Stephen Coughlin. Let us assume he was difficult. Let us assume he was not willing to display the kind of deference to those in brief authority in the Pentagon, and who -- whatever their ignorance about essential matters -- think such deference is due. Let us assume he did not know how to control his tongue.

But in the end, so what? None of that would or should matter, were any of it true. What matters is that he has had the intelligence and good sense to study Islam before making assumptions about it, or at a higher level, making policies based on those ignorant assumptions. He is aware of the fact that Muslims -- as Bernard Lewis has noted and perhaps should take the occasion to remind Cheney -- are perfectly willing to behave deceptively in order to protect the faith. This is not a fabrication. Taqiyya and kitman can be looked up; their origins, their meaning, can be discovered.

The most effective and least expensive (never again must the hideous squandering of men, money, and matériel, as in Tarbaby Iraq, ever be repeated) way to conduct a war of self-defense against the Jihad, which is nothing but the sum of all the local Jihads everywhere, in Dar al-Islam (against the remaining non-Muslims wherever they are deemed insufficiently submissive) and in Dar al-Harb, is first of all to recognize that the chief instruments of the Jihad are the Money Weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest, and that these, as opposed to the easily recognized weapon of terrorism, are likely to be perceived and dealt with resolutely only by those who have come to understand the texts, the tenets, the attitudes of Islam. Such people are, it turns out, at this point quite few in number. Stephen Coughlin is one of them. He is therefore to be protected, not punished, whatever personality problems he may pose to the likes of England and others "taking a leadership role."

This is an intolerable act by those who do not understand how it will be perceived by the outside world. Muslims will be heartened. Hisham Islam -- what about Hashim Islam? If Coughlin is to go, then Hisham Islam certainly must go, and he should never have been hired in the first place for the cockamamie outreach nonsense to Muslims that one thought had been limited to the likes of Karen Hughes, not to hard heads (where are those hard heads?) in the Pentagon.

For how can anyone even discuss, much less plan, ways to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam, if Muslims -- whose sole loyalty as Believers is supposed to be to Islam and to the Umma (if it isn't, that Believer is not a good Believer) - with Muslims such as Hashim Islam sitting right there. How can the Pentagon personnel try to devise ways, for example, to push Islam back in East Africa, or to clearly take the side of the Christians in West Africa (including Nigeria) should another Biafra-like movement develop? How can they make plans to appeal to the resentments of non-Arab Muslims against Arab Muslims, and to encourage the correct view of Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism, with hisham-islams all over the place, listening in, inhibiting thought, discussion, plans?

It can't be.

In any case, it is those who have engineered this firing who should be watched from now on like hawks. As for England, or those who back him, what will happen to them? What is Cheney going to do? What is Bush going to do? Anything? Or is he still mired in his dyslexic dream of bringing "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East, and is going to leave office as innocent of Islam as he was when he entered it? what can one say? The whole thing dismays and disgusts.