One percent of 1.2 billion is 12 million Muslim fanatics who believe America is the Great Satan, fount of all evil, to be attacked and demolished. Whether al-Qaeda is centralized as it was before 9/11 or decentralized, as it appears to be after Bali and Mombassa, is immaterial. Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion. From Sweden (660,000 Muslims out of 5.8 million people) to Switzerland (also 10 percent), Senegal and Somalia in Africa, Sumatra and Singapore in Asia, and South America (especially Brazil and Venezuela), there are Wahhabi and Deobandi mosques. And that’s just the countries beginning with the letter S.
Muslims are a majority in 63 countries. Of the 30 conflicts now under way in the world, 28 concern Muslim governments or communities. Amir Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, says two-thirds of the world’s political prisoners are held in Muslim countries, which also carry out 80 percent of all executions each year.
Is Islam, as President Bush keeps repeating, “a faith based upon peace and love and compassion” committed to “morality and learning and tolerance”? Yes and no. Radical Islam is committed to jihad against the United States and Israel, or a war of civilizations between the Judeo-Christian West and the impoverished Muslim world. The Wahhabis and Deobandis hate all things American, and are intolerant vis-à-vis all religions outside their own warped view of Islam. Moderate Islam is yet to find a voice that will roll back the extremists, a sort of Islamic Martin Luther, or at least a Martin Luther King.