Straight From The Devil's Mouth

Some of the people tell you Islam is a religion of peace because they think that then you'll want to convert. But you cannot possibly say Islam is a religion of peace; jihad is not an internal struggle.

We can fight wherever, in Iraq, London, Paris, or Berlin. There is no such thing as innocents. The idea of the Islamic state is terror against anyone who doesn't support Islamic ideology." [emphasis added]

-Khalid Kelly, British resident and follower of radical cleric Abu Osama

Yeah, yeah, yeah, jihadis are - what? A tenth of Islam? Of course, that's still a hundred million fighters. 1% would be ten million. But leave that aside for a moment.

How many of the remaining Muslim population are silent supporters of the "holy" war waged in their name? The answer is, a whole lot more than we want to admit:

Religion, not politics. Today European mosques teem with imams, financed by Saudi Arabian oil sheiks, who preach jihad, and where moderate voices are all but shut out. Hizb ut-Tahrir, a militant Islamic youth group banned in Germany and Holland, freely spreads its message of hate outside British mosques. The British government likewise tolerates Al-Muhajiroun, another Islamist hate group that preaches violence. "Moderate" Muslim Council of Britain's spokesman Dr Azzam Tamimi, a regular guest on the BBC, declared last year that he was prepared to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel. And that's only scratching the surface. In the past decade, notes Hebrew University of Jerusalem academic Robert S. Wistrich, "the UK's undisputed political, economic, and cultural center has also become a major world center of political Islam and anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American activism."

Those "moderates" who have denounced terror seem to be speaking out not because they genuinely oppose the end results of the bombers (whether they renounce the end ideals remains unclear), but because it is in their security interests to do so. Writing in the Financial Times this week, Shahid Malik, MP for Dewsbury, admitted that "the stakes are high and the choice is stark: either we confront the voices of evil, or we sit back and allow wider British society to regard us as a community that condones such evil." [emphasis added]

The Washington Times' Diana West, who took some serious heat from the inimitable Hugh Hewitt last week for her refreshing candor in blowing the PC-cover off of the "Islam isn't our enemy" myth, reinforced this theme today:

Having determined that "99%" of European Muslims are "peace-loving and not engaged in terror," Charles Krauthammer [urges them that], "They must actively denounce not just ... the terrorist attacks, but their source: the Islamist ideology and its practitioners. Where are the fatwas against Osama bin Laden? Where are the denunciations of the very idea of suicide bombing? Europeans must demand this of all their Muslim leaders."

Why Europeans? Why not the Krauthammer 99%, or the [Hugh] Hewitt millions? This is where it gets tricky, where those cultural ties to terrorism's tactics and/or goals seem to be all too binding. It is true that in March, something called the Spanish Muslim Council issued a fatwa against Osama bin Laden, calling him an apostate for his atrocities. Judea Pearl, father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, mentions this in his Boston Globe piece about a clerically star-studded conference on Islam in Jordan this month. Mr. Pearl notes that the fatwa led many to believe it would be followed by others, "and," he writes, "that using the Islamic instruments of fatwa, apostasy and fasad (corruption), Muslims would be able to disassociate themselves from those who hijacked their religion."

He continues: "Unfortunately, the realization of these expectations will need to wait for a brave new leadership to emerge. The final communique of the Amman conference, issued July 6, states explicitly: 'It is not possible to declare as apostates any group of Muslims who believes in Allah the Mighty and Sublime and His Messenger (may Peace and Blessings be upon him) and the pillars of faith, and respects the pillars of Islam and does not deny any necessary article of religion.'"

Mr. Pearl spells out the chilling ramifications: "In other words, belief in basic tenets of faith provides an immutable protection from charges of apostasy." Even what Mr. Pearl calls "anti-Islamic behavior," including "the advocacy of mass murder in the name of religion, cannot remove that protection," he writes. "Bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the murderers of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg will remain bona fide members of the Muslim faith, as long as they do not explicitly renounce it." [emphasis added]

And since the "pillars of Islam" are precisely what "bin Laden, al-Zarqawi, and the murderers of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg" etc., etc., etc. are carrying out, the only ones who could logically be charged with apostasy are whatever genuinely moderate Muslims attempted to "excommunicate" them.

I am afraid that it will take every non-jihadist Muslim banding together en masse and doing precisely that - including taking up arms against their terrorist brethren, as is happening in Iraq - for a genuine Islamic "Reformation" to become a reality. That can't begin happen until we all start fighting this conflict as a "total war." And that can't happen until we disabuse ourselves of the "wishful thinking" to which Ms. West refers.

The enemy clearly has no doubts, either about himself or the rightness of his mission. We have to remove the doubt he does have - about the inevitability of his crushing, comprehensive doom.