Terrorism Has 'Everything To Do With Islam,' Author Charges

President Bush wasted no time, following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, in exonerating Islam and reminding Americans that the violence had been committed by freedom haters. Islam, the religion the terrorists claimed to represent while carrying out their attacks, actually stood for peace, the president insisted.

Fourteen months after the attacks, the 19 hijacker/terrorists are still considered heroes by certain elements of the Islamic community around the world.

A would-be shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and an alleged would-be dirty bomber, Jose Padilla, have seen their attack plans foiled in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001. But the accused Beltway Sniper, John Muhammad, and his alleged teenaged accomplice John Malvo, are believed responsible for a multi-state shooting spree that culminated in the killings of ten people in the Washington, D.C., region, before they were captured.

Reid, Padilla, Muhammad and Malvo all had one thing in common - a devotion to Islam.

Robert Spencer, author of Islam Unveiled and an adjunct fellow at the conservative think tank Free Congress Foundation, believes Islam's theological foundation is creating many of today's terrorists and would-be terrorists.

Spencer's book takes a critical look at the religion of Islam, its holy book, The Koran, its prophet Muhammad and concludes that the religion is producing violent behavior in a significant numbers of its adherents.

"The religious motivation [for terrorism] is paramount for millions of these people and if we don't recognize that, we are going to be ill equipped in the face of what we are up against," Spencer told CNSNews.com.

Spencer believes the U.S. is not prepared to fight a war on terrorism because the nation fails to understand the true nature of Islam.

"[Our leaders] are intent on insisting that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, when it has everything to do with Islam," Spencer said.

"When you are in a conflict and you don't know the true nature of your opponent, you are at a tremendous disadvantage," he added.

According to Spencer the "mainstream interpretation" of the religion of Islam is responsible for violent behavior because the text of the Koran has many passages inciting followers to violence.

"When the Koran says, 'Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them,' the extremists can point to that and many other verses of that kind and say: 'Look, this is what the religion teaches,'" Spencer said.

Moderate Muslims are "in the unfortunate position of saying: 'No that is not actually what it means,'" and can be "easily portrayed by extremists as being the disloyal party, the ones that don't take the Koran seriously," he added.

Moderates have a difficult time explaining away verses that incite violence because Islam teaches that the Koran was dictated word for word by Allah (God), according to Spencer.

"Muslims teach the Koran is the literal words of God in a stronger sense than Christianity believes the Bible is the word of God ... the Koran is more than inspired, it is dictated, it is actually God speaking. There is no human element," Spencer said.

"The moderates who might be fighting against Islam's dark side, have the disadvantage of having to go against the plain words of the text of the Koran," he said.

"There is no theological or geographical or denominational or any other kind of firewall between extremist Islam and moderate Islam," he added.

Islamic scholars and Muslim advocates dispute Spencer's research and the premise of his book.

Michael Young, editor of Islam For Today, rejects the notion that the religion of Islam is to blame for terrorist activities.

"Islam promotes itself first and foremost as a religion of peace ... Islam spread throughout Southeast Asia and Africa entirely by peaceful means," Young told CNSNews.com.

Young believes many people mistakenly believe Islam is a violent religion because of the "local culture" of some Muslim nations.

"Very often when Islam is in society for so long, people fail to distinguish between what is Islam and what is their own local culture," Young explained.

Young did concede however, "There are vocal people within in Muslim community who do harbor Taliban sympathies."

Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was more blunt in defending Islam from charges that it encourages terrorism.

"When people of other faiths commit crimes or violent acts, people don't generalize to the whole faith, but when a Muslim commits a violent act, somehow it is an indictment to their entire faith," Hooper told CNSNews.com.

"Muslims occasionally do bad things, so do Jews, so do Christians, so do Hindus, so do Martians," he added.

Hooper believes that since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, there has been "a new cottage industry of defamatory attacks on Islam."

"If you want to make a buck now, attack Islam," Hooper said. "When it is done to Christianity or Judaism, people in authority object. When it is done to Islam, it gets a pass," he added.

Young believes Islam's tarnished image among some Westerners is the result of some Muslim followers misinterpreting passages of the Koran, something that could happen in any religion, he said.

"If you are intent on committing a violent act, you can always find some religious text that smashes the heads of babies against rocks. If you choose to interpret in a certain way, you will find what you are looking for," Young said.

But Spencer, agreeing that many religions of the world have inspired violence among its adherents, believes Islam is by far the most culpable.

"There is no doubt that Christians and Jews and everybody else bearing every other name of every other religion have done terrible things, but that doesn't mean that every religious text is equal in capacity to inspire that kind of thing," Spencer said.

According to Spencer, the Koran takes the "Seventh Century warrior," Muhammad, and "canonize[s] him as the supreme example of human behavior."

"So that instead of being a Seventh Century warfare pattern that we ought not to follow, [Muhammad] becomes the model for how we should always behave. So this is the defect, this is the difficulty," Spencer said.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department officer and counter terrorism expert, believes media and government officials are not dealing forthright with the threat of Islamic terrorists, because there is a "bit of political correctness still running afoot."

"We like to portray as a nation, Islam as a religion of peace, and it really isn't," Johnson said.

"As it is widely practiced, [Islam] doesn't encourage peace and it encourages violence, Part of that is that it has not had its own version of The Reformation. It is stuck in Middle Ages as Christianity or Judaism once was," he added.

"[Moderates] do not represent the majority thought in the Muslim world. They are very much on the defensive," Johnson said.

Johnson believes the radical Islam movement is the greatest national security threat facing the U.S.

"There is no other significant threat confronting us ... it gives people a reason to do what they do and to take risks and make sacrifices," Johnson said.

"I think George Bush was right when he called for a crusade, but it's not a crusade of Christians against Islam, as was a hallmark of the first Crusades. This is a crusade of [modern societies] versus a medieval thought process," Johnson said.

In order to fight what he sees as a growing Islamic threat, Spencer proposes that the U.S. impose strict immigration limits on Muslims entering the U.S.

"Why were 50,000 Muslim men admitted to the country from Muslim countries since September 11?" he asked. When are we going to start being sane about immigration law?"

Spencer would also like to see mosques monitored by law enforcement for anti-American sentiment and any inciting of violence, ideas Hooper finds offensive.

"I live here too. I don't want to be attacked, but battling terrorists and defaming Islam are two different things," Hooper countered.

Spencer is not optimistic the U.S. will take the security threat of Islam seriously.

"Everyone is so afraid of being called a racist that they are afraid to take measures that are necessary to defend oneself," Spencer said.

The central problem is inherent in Islam itself -- there is no separation of church and state and there can be no such separation according to the Koran. Alexis De Tocqueville wrote in the 1830's about the influence of religion on American politics and culture in "Democracy in America" and as a counter example he pointed out why Islam could not be reconciled to democracy.

Mahommed professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The Gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other, -- beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.

In our politically correct, multicultural rush to be tolerant of all religions, we are stumbling on the central irreconcilable conflict between Islam and Western civilization -- Islam is a political agenda as well as a religion and the example of its founder and its sacred book justify holy war to impose religious rule against unbelievers. There is no getting around this fact. This is the answer to all the pundits questions about why political and individual freedom is virtually absent from the Islamic world and why democracy makes little progress there. All religions are not equal -- they differ greatly, in De Tocqueville's words, " in the nature of the belief they inculcate, on the external forms they assume, and on the obligations they impose."

However tolerant we wish to appear, September 11th should have made it clear to everyone the lengths that Islamic jihadists will go to in order to impose their religio-political views on the world. It does no good for our leaders to pretend that this central conflict does not exist or that there is some "true" Islam out there that has been hijacked. Osama Bin Laden's Islam is as legitimate in their own tradition as is Turkeys brand of "moderate" Islam. Islam is moderate in Turkey only because the government has imposed strict restrictions on religious practice and there is a constant struggle against Islamic fundamentalism even there.

The West coexisted peacefully with Islam in the past only because Islamic countries were isolated, poor and powerless. Now that oil wealth has funded Islamic extremism all over the world and open borders policies have allowed large numbers of Islamic people to settle in the West, I fear that we can co-exist only to the extent that Islam's adherents reject that part of their own tradition and religious doctrines that advocate jihad and religious totalitarianism (merging of state and religion) and accept Western notions of political, religious and individual freedom.

This means the West must defend its own tradition of freedom and must require its Islamic citizens to accept and observe our own political creed of separation of church and state and constitutional principles. When public opinion polls show Muslim immigrants would vote for and impose religious law on America we know that we have lost this battle. Mumbling about Islam as a "religion of peace" and the refusal of political and media elites to publicly confront and expose the growing number of Islamic political activists whose preachings and teachings exhibit a betrayal of American political values will not get us there. That just convinces Muslims all over the world that our belief in our own principles is not strong enough to withstand jihad. All nations of the Western tradition -- if they value their own traditions of political and religious freedom -- must attack and discredit what has been called Islamo-fascism with as much passion as we attacked Communism and Nazism. We must go after the ideas, including the so-called "religious" ones, that justify holy war as well as going after the terrorists who implement the ideas.

Political correctness now stands in the way of this effort to defend Western political values as well as our very lives. When American political leaders and the media attempt to prevent any public discussion and criticism of Islamic doctrines by telling us at the outset that Islam is a "religion of peace" and the only problem is the amorphous, disconnected "terrorists;" when they imply that all those who point out problems with Islamic doctrine are "bigots" and cannot be trusted to refrain from mob violence; and when they try to spin the facts of real events to downplay the role of Islamic motivations then they stand in the way of our own defense and they obstruct the process of discrediting the religious ideas and beliefs that give rise to this very same "terrorism."

Amazingly, political correctness amounts to the adoption by American political and media eliltes of the Islamic "fatwa" system of suppressing free thought and inquiry -- thou shalt not think or speak such! It is an outright rejection of our Western tradition of encouraging free debate and discussion of all topics, religious and political. And, of course, we impose no such politically correct "fatwas" against the criticism of our own Christian or Jewish traditions. That is how we as citizens go about self-government, through public deliberation and discussion. It is what makes and keeps us a free people. To the extent that our political leaders believe that we cannot be trusted with the truth, much less with the responsibility of debating this issue in a civilized manner, then they have rejected the core of the American experiment -- self-government. Political correctness is a craven capitulation to totalitarianism and is as much if not more of a danger to our freedom as that posed by Islamo-fascism.

THIS SAYS IT ALL!!!!!

Broken Arrow, Oklahoma School officials remove "God Bless America" signs from schools in fear that someone might be offended.

Channel 12 News in Long Island, New York, orders flags removed from the newsroom and red, white, and blue ribbons removed from the lapels of reporters.

Why? Management did not want to appear biased and felt that our nations flag might give the appearance that "they lean one way or another".

Berkeley, California bans U.S. Flags from being displayed on city fire trucks because they didn't want to offend anyone in the community.

In an "act of tolerance" the head of the public library at Florida Gulf Coast University ordered all "Proud to be an American" signs removed so as to not offend international students.

I, for one, am quite disturbed by these actions of so-called American citizens; and I am tired of this nation worrying about whether or not we are offending some individual or their culture.

Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Americans. However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled in New York and Washington D.C. when the "politically correct" crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others.

I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to America. In fact, our country's population is almost entirely comprised of descendants of immigrants; however, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some native Americans, need to understand.

First of all, it is not our responsibility to continually try not to offend you in any way. This idea of America being a multi-cultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Americans, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language, and our own lifestyle. This culture, called the "American Way" has been developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom.

Our forefathers fought, bled, and died at places such as Bunker Hill, Antietam, San Juan, Iwo Jima, Normandy, Korea, Vietnam, We speak English, not Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society - learn our language!

"In God We Trust" is our national motto. This is not some off-the-wall, Christian, Right Wing,political slogan – it is our national motto.

It is engraved in stone in the House of Representatives in our Capitol and it is printed on our currency. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation; and this is clearly documented throughout our history. If it is appropriate for our motto to be inscribed in the halls of our highest level of Government, then it is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools.

God is in our pledge, our National Anthem, nearly every patriotic song, and in our founding documents. We honor His birth, death, and resurrection as holidays, and we turn to Him in prayer in times of crisis. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture and we are proud to have Him.

We are proud of our heritage and those who have so honorably defended our freedoms. We celebrate Independence Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Flag Day. We have parades, picnics, and barbecues where we proudly wave our flag.

As an American, I have the right to wave my flag, sing my national anthem, quote my national motto, and cite my pledge whenever and wherever I choose. If the Stars and Stripes offend you, or you don't like Uncle Sam, then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet.

The American culture is our way of life, our heritage, and we are proud of it. We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from. We are Americans, like it or not, this is our country, our land, and our lifestyle.

Our First Amendment gives every citizen the right to express his opinion about our government, culture, or society, and we will allow you every opportunity to do so. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about our flag, our pledge, our national motto, or our way of life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great American freedom, the right to leave.

Barry Loudermilk If you agree, pass this onto other Americans!! It is time to take a stand!!

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