Posted on 09/28/2001 7:32:24 AM PDT by Francohio
But as Mideast expert Daniel Pipes wrote this week,
"The president dismissed al-Qaida's version of Islam as a repudiated 'fringe form of Islamic extremism.'
Hardly. Muslims on the streets of many places – Pakistan and Gaza in particular – are fervently rallying to the defense of al-Qaida's vision of Islam.
Likewise, the president's calling the terrorists 'traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam' implies that other Muslims see them as apostates, which is simply wrong.
Al-Qaida enjoys wide popularity – the very best the U.S. government can hope for is a measure of Muslim neutrality and apathy."
Although without question there are millions of peaceful, tolerant and decent Muslims, what we're talking about here is a particular brand of Islam -- a rapidly expanding one at that -- often called "Islamism." Like communism and Nazism, it is a brutal, coercive utopian movement bent on nothing less than total world domination.
It's what President Bush described, in his excellent Sept. 20 speech to the nation, as heir "of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century ... they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism." Yes, the president, to his credit, characterized the enemy correctly, albeit briefly and incompletely. But he gave no sense of the size of the enemy.
Take a deep breath. Of the world's approximately 1.2 billion Muslims, an estimated 10 to 15 percent are of the militant "Islamist" strain. Do the math – that's well over 100 million human beings who, to a greater or lesser degree, are caught up with what amounts to the world's most dangerous cult.
Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, told this writer that right now perhaps eight to 10 governments are "scared of being toppled" if they stand up to the Islamic "jihad" against the West. Citing Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Jordan, Indonesia and other potential "coalition" members, Marshall said such states "are afraid their country could be destabilized if they support the West too much, which shows that opposition to American action is not simply from a few hundred people."
The same fear that is keeping these foreign governments from full cooperation with the USA is, on a personal level, what is keeping those who describe themselves as "Moderate Muslims" from taking action against their co-religionists.
But American Muslims have to make a very hard choice now: Our way, or theirs. Make it fast.
America needs to make some very hard choices now was well.
Such as are we going to continue with our suicide path of open and unregulated immigration disguised as inclusion, diversity, tolerance, and political correctness.
If we don't start making tough choices now, western culture will simply be enveloped and die out through attrition.
You will let me know when you find him, won't you.
Well said and true...
As Paul Johnson reminds us in National Review Islam is an imperialist religion, far more so than the most severe form of fundamentalist form of Christianity. The latitudianarism of American society is alien to it. History shows that only when Muslims are in power are they tolerant, and their notion of toleration is to force other religious groups to pay tribute and to conduct their religious life in ghettos. When The Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, the first action of "The Conqueror" was to order the great Christian Church of Santa Sophia stipped of its Christian aspects and converted to Islamic worship. The Turks then continued their conquest of Europe, twice pushing to the gates of Vienna before being stopped by the Hapsburgs and mounting an invasion of Italy before being stopped by a Spanish and Venetian fleet at Lepanto in 1572. Those of us who know the history of Muslim agression expect American Muslims to stop their whining about Crusades. The very word, after all, comes from the Spanish word Cruzado, describing the Christian efforts to REconquer the country taken from them by the Muslim Moors in the 8th Century.
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