Posted on 07/25/2005 8:57:50 AM PDT by knighthawk
Shehzad Tanweer was the bright, Muslim son of a first-generation Pakistani immigrant in Britain. His father owned a fish-and-chips shop, and Tanweer, at 22, was a university student headed for a profession - the kind of story of immigrant assimilation that is so familiar in America. Instead, Tanweer became a murderer, killing himself and other fellow travelers in the morning rush hour on London's Underground. Muhammad Bouyeri, born in the Netherlands, shot Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker and a descendant of the painter, six times while Van Gogh was bicycling in Amsterdam. Then he cut Van Gogh's throat and, with his knife, carved an Islamic manifesto on his victim's chest. Van Gogh's offense? He made a film about the oppression of Muslim women. In his trial, Bouyeri turned to Van Gogh's grieving mother to say, "I don't feel your pain. I have to admit that I don't feel sympathy for you. I can't feel for you because you're a nonbeliever."
The outrages committed in the name of Islam are doubly painful in Britain and the Netherlands because, besides the grief and suffering these young Muslim men have caused, there is the viciousness of their betrayal of trust in these notably - perhaps one should say excessively - tolerant European countries.
These are the same nations that gave many Muslim immigrants a new start, nurtured their children as Britons and Netherlanders, and listened courteously to the venom of militant Muslim leaders who, like Tanweer and Bouyeri, had assumed the mantle of citizenship.
Now, the British, the Dutch and other European countries must confront the reality of homegrown terrorists in their midst - a more daunting challenge than dealing with infiltrators from abroad.
Economic deprivation does not explain this phenomenon. These killers are relatively well-off, educated people, not the indigent and the uneducated. Second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants may be even more radicalized than the first, a lost generation vulnerable to anyone who offers them an identity within the wholly imaginary community of their own Islamifascist creeds.
This malignancy predates Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11 and the Bush administration. Militant British Muslims have blamed everything and everybody except themselves, conveniently overlooking the obscenity that it is fanatical Muslims inspired by them who are doing the killing.
In Britain today, there is broad public support for a crackdown. Such a move is more than justified. Britain has provided asylum to so many extremist Muslims that London has become the headquarters of Islamifascism in Europe. The list of terrorists coming out of London is quite extensive, including Richard Reid, the convicted shoe bomber; Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who orchestrated the 2002 beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl; and the British bomber who walked into a popular Tel Aviv pub and killed three and wounded 60.
The aspiration of these radical Muslims is to make Islam the world's dominant religion. With 20 million Muslims in Europe, a population likely to double over the next 20 years, national borders are no defense against the insidious ideology of radical Islam.
What should America do?
First, we must tighten our scrutiny of people coming here. Most second-generation European Muslims are citizens of the European Union and, as such, eligible for U.S. visa waivers, which permit them to pass through U.S. immigration checkpoints easily. Greater scrutiny of such visitors is needed immediately.
Second, we must harden our determination not to compromise with Muslim terrorism or explain it away by any mealy-mouthed "understanding" of it. "Explanations" of terrorism are unforgivable. It isn't war; it's murder. Terrorists aren't soldiers; they're criminals.
Third, we must increase security funding for public transport by land, rail and buses, where 16 times as many people travel every day as they do in airplanes. This must be done on a risk-based formula, as supported by the 9/11 commission - not as another pork-barrel program for greedy congressmen.
Fourth, we must invest more in intelligence and revise overly restrictive rules on its dissemination and use. Today, we face a threat to the most fundamental values of our free and democratic way of life. In this modern version of the Thirty Years' War, there is only one objective: We must prevent the 21st century from becoming the century of terrorism.
Ping
It's only just started, Europe.
Wait until the Muslim population is 20-30%. That's when the real terror will start.
No amount of tolerance will save them.
The FIRST thing we should do is to forget this crap about not profiling Muslims for the sake of political correctness. The second thing is to secure the borders. The third thing is to implement a guest worker program where all applicants are thoroughly screened criminally and medically. The fourth thing is to start deporting those who don't have the appropriate clearances.
I'm impressed. Looks like Mort Zuckerman gets it. Wish the rest of the MSM did....
I'm not only impressed, I'm stunned!
Mort Zuckerman is hereby cordially invited to our house for dinner ANY TIME he likes!
I'm seriously impressed, and I'm a tough audience.
Good list. I also think the government should start bugging Mosques. If they preach destruction then deport them.
No need to bug them. Just send in undercover agents. They are open to the public.
Actually, it's too late for that. We must make the 21st century that of the extermination of terrorist cultures.
Disagree with this part:
"It isn't war; it's murder. Terrorists aren't soldiers; they're criminals."
WRONG. It IS war. The jihadis aren't exactly soldiers, but they are more than just criminals. Thinking like this is what brought us 9/11. We must STOP treating jihad as a 'crime' - or lose the war.
"Explanations" of terrorism are unforgivable. It isn't war; it's murder. Terrorists aren't soldiers; they're criminals.
-WRONG. It IS war.-
You're so right, and to clarify it further, it's a holy war. Not of our making - we're not shouting "onward Christian soldiers!" when we bag a baddie. It's the other side spewing all the religious references around.
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