Mother Jones rather misses the point

Let it not be said that I post only articles critical of Islam!  I'm always looking at the other side to see if there's anything of interest.  On the Mother Jones blog Stephan Salisbury says "Muslim bashing" has failed US politicians ("Why Islam-baiting doesn't work").  But the piece is largely ad hominem, and misses a key point: that the concern is about the ideology of Islam, not individual Muslims -- for his article, while headlined "Islam-baiting" mostly talks of "Muslim bashing", a very different thing.  Thoughtful critics of Islam -- there are many such and many very knowledgeable -- make a clear distinction between the ideology of Islam and individual Muslims.
Mind you, Republicans, or the conservative right more broadly, don't do themselves any favours by having ignorant representatives such as Renee Ellmers arguing the point. Here, she gets flayed by Anderson Cooper, even though his left/progressive views, the usual dreary moral relativism, ought to be refuted easily.
I posted this comment at Mother Jones:

I wonder if Stephan Salisbury has himself read the core texts of Islam?  

I came to my own understanding of Islam by doing that first up -- reading the Koran, Sirah, Hadith, the Umdat, etc, -- not by taking a cue  from what Salisbury calls the "Islamophobic machinery fueled by large right-wing foundations, PACs, individuals, and business interests..." [I didn't even know about these when I first did my reading around the subject, years ago]

As for Sharia, I rely mainly on the Umdat, the Classic Manual of Islamic Jurisprudence, as a primary source.  

From all this, I've come to my own conclusion: that western values are indeed threatened from the rise of Islamism.  Others not of the Right see it too -- eg the One Law for All organisation in the UK.  

Merely to tie the issue of the threat of Islamism to the vote-grabbing opportunism of conservative  ("reich wing")  US politicians  and their "Muslim bashing", which has, according to Salisbury, largely failed, does not gainsay that threat.  

And to imply that Sharia is only a "threat" in quotes (ie, not really a threat), because "no one knows what you're talking about", when you mention "Sharia", is surely a non-sequitur and dangerous if it happens that Sharia really is inimical to the values of the west: as surely it is.

I have been long-time Labor (Australia) voter, hence don't see myself as right-wing, but it's a thing of the Left reflexively to label all critics of the ideology of Islam (nota bene: Not "Muslims") as "right wing Islamophobes".  In view of the comments policy on this blog, surely that ought to be out of bounds as pure ad hominem.