Comment E-mail Print Bio Archives

Newsweek recently ran an article by Fareed Zakaria titled, Learning to Live with Radical Islam. In this article Mr. Zakaria contends that in our quest to prevail over the virulent factions within the fundamentalist Islamic culture we in the West must learn to discern the radical Islamist from the jihadi; the fundamentalist from the terrorist. Although Mr. Zakaria touches on a few noteworthy points -- specifically the West's need to engage in the war of ideas -- his thesis that, "We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license," ignores the fact that jihadis rule by force and that their "cultural context" and "license" is no less than totalitarian.

That the United States and the Western nations engaged in the violent struggle against radical Islamist aggression were delinquent in engaging in the war of ideas goes without saying. In reaction to the act of war perpetrated on the United States on September 11, 2001, our government reacted to secure the nation, to strike at the heart of the governments and terrorist organizations that executed the slaughter of 3,066 innocents at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, PA. This response was immediate for the simple fact that it was within our government's purview; it was something that could be executed with an order.

Additionally, it was easy for the West to engage violent jihadist organizations and the countries that abetted them both economically and diplomatically through the use of sanctions and diplomacy. In the weeks and months after September 11th, there was a great outpouring of cooperation from countries sympathetic to our plight and position. Through this cooperation was forged Operation Enduring Freedom in which fifty-one (51) countriescontributed to the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban, the totalitarian figurehead government that provided safe haven to al Qaeda. This cooperation also gave birth to economic sanctions against terrorist organizations and the individuals and state sponsors that aided them. Financial institutions around the world froze bank accounts that provided the financial fuel for the violent jihad.

But the United States and the West were delinquent in understanding the war of ideas, the ideology behind aggressive Islamofascism. Almost immediately after the attacks of September 11th, President Bush took to the airwaves and decried that Islam was a "religion of peace." Many understood this action to have emanated from a two-fold need:

▪ The need to circumvent any reactionary or vigilante aggression against the Islamic community here in the United States

▪ The need to keep from alienating Middle Eastern allies the West would certainly need to partner with in the upcoming battles to be waged

The repercussions of this declaration were many, with many of them being detrimental to the mission of defeating radical Islamist aggression here on the home front.

An honest examination and understanding of the Quran and the Hadith (understand that both must be read in context to one another to accurately understand the teachings of Muhammad) present some extremely disturbing revelations where violence, anti-Semitism and global conquest are concerned. These revelations, documented in a plethora of scholarly writing, lay waste to the notion that Islam, traditionally, is a religion of peace. Accurately depicted, fundamentalist Islam -- exampled by Wahhabism, the prevalent form of Islam in Saudi Arabia -- is an aggressive ideology that subjugates women, oppresses societal interaction, institutes the death sentence for apostasy and which has, over the centuries, been spread by the sword.

>> Continued -- Page 1 2 3