The West’s Struggle with Islam

It goes deeper than just the attacks  in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, and Orlando (and the others that will follow). It will go past 2100. It’s the Second Hundred Years War.

It will become apparent, one hopes, in this post that the American and European left are like children who can’t spot “stranger danger.” But  ironically, they think they are so wise that they will lead us to the New Promised Land.

They can’t see that it’s the path towards destruction. and if we point out our concerns, they label us “Islamophobes.”

In a June 14 presser, Obama, a spokesperson for Western leftists generally, knocked down strawmen and then missed the point about Islam.

He lectured us, as follows:

So there’s no magic to the phrase “radical Islam.”  It’s a political talking point; it’s not a strategy.  And the reason I am careful about how I describe this threat has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually defeating extremism.  Groups like ISIL and al Qaeda want to make this war a war between Islam and America, or between Islam and the West.  They want to claim that they are the true leaders of over a billion Muslims around the world who reject their crazy notions.

No one believes that the phrase “radical Islam” is magical or is a strategy, even though Obama sent a clear message in his 2009 speeches in Cairo and Ankara that his words are magical and that it was Bush’s fault, but the new administration would fix things.  His middle name, after all, is Arabic, so he can relate to them, he told them.

What we deny, Mr. Obama, is that ISIS and al-Qaeda are the only groups in Islam who intend to make this a war between Islam and the West. All throughout the Islamic world, calls go forth from mosques that America is decadent and must be taken down by the will of Allah.  This sort of ideology is what motivated Islamic jihad during Muhammad’s lifetime and continued for four hundred years before the Church finally called for the first Crusade in 1095 to stop Islamic aggression.  Islam declared war first.  This same aggressive impulse is still powerful today.

The left–Obama is just one temporary spokesperson, for there will be others after him–reminds me of the dutiful, mousy wife who tiptoes around her alcoholic and abusive husband who flies off the handle at the slightest move or for no discernible reason. Will she wake up and realize she’s not the problem, other than enabling him?

Will the left wake up to the cold, hard reality that it’s not America’s and the West’s fault, but the problem lies with Islam? Where does the left’s self-loathing come from? I don’t know exactly because it appears irrational.

So much for the sleeping left. Now let’s get to the struggle.

First, we must acknowledge that parts of sharia are harmless to society, like washing before entering a mosque or not eating pork. If Muslims keep it there, then they can fit in to Western society. However, Islamic law penetrates every aspect of society, including government, civil law and its punishments, and basic, fundamental liberties.

In the struggle, if Islamic armies can’t conquer us through military might, then how can they take down the West?

What leftists like Obama miss are sharia and the Islamic legal system and government. Call it their version of mission creep.  Let’s use six hallmarks of civilization and stay within the confines of the USA, though Europe and Canada closely parallel us.

1. Today, we keep government and religion separate and distinct; that is, religious law like sharia does not control our government, nor does the government control religions. Islamic civilizations fuse together mosque and state in a mishmash.

2. Free speech is honored over here, even if citizens criticize religion.  In Islamic civilizations, such criticisms can land the critic in jail and earn him lashes on the back, and possibly execution.

3. Freedom of religion is allowed over here, but in Islamic countries such freedom is suppressed, and religious minorities are barely tolerated or are even eliminated.

4. Womankind can express herself in whatever ways she deems appropriate.  In Islamic civilization, womankind is oppressed, even to the point of domestic violence, permitted in the Quran itself.

5. Punishments here in America differ and are superior.  We treat private behavior as just that – private.  Yet, gays can even go to night clubs if they choose the public square, or they can hold pride parades.  In Islam, sexual misconduct is treated as criminal, leading to lashes, prison, and maybe even death.

6. In the USA today, there is no forced religion tax, but in Islamic civilizations the jizyah for religious minorities, under threat of death from the Muslim military, and zakat or charity tax are imposed.

From these six point, it is obvious that Islamic law severely restricts liberty. This conflict between suffocating and oppressive sharia and American liberty explains exactly why sharia is incompatible with American values. This explains why sharia, not even in part or certainly not in whole, should never worm its way into our culture and especially not into our legal system.

Bottom line on the irreconcilable differences:

American values: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (even by going to a gay night club)

Islamic values: Islamic law severely restricts liberty in an effort to stamp out public unrighteousness.

The two systems can never work together, so we have to block all efforts to incorporate sharia into our freedoms; then we can win this war of ideas and values.

However, leftists like Mr. Obama are confused about the nature of the struggle.  They think the Orlando massacre and ISIS are all that they have to oppose.  But it goes much deeper than that.  The struggle is in fact with Islam as a religion and civilization, “con-fused” together.  With a weak military, Islam is aggressive in slow motion, as Muslims refuse to assimilate in the “dirty” West and open up sharia courts in the U.K., for example.  Every one of those six points flow from Islamic law.

No mistake or confusion: this is the Second Hundred Years War – a slow-grinding, gradual war with occasional flare-ups as we saw in the Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, and Orlando massacres (and others that will follow).  It will endure past 2100.

The real war is ideological and fought in the minds of our citizens.  European leaders cave more readily than American ones, though often the left fails their country here.

It’s an open question whether we’ll win it, but we need to teach every generation that there is a war that can be won.

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