SILENCE:

All is not lost (Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Aug. 28, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

The Bush administration dubbed it the "War on Terror," a characterization that virtually everyone else (this author included) has adopted. But terror is a technique, an instrument of warfare. It has to be wielded by someone in order to be a threat. And, to be effective, military and other responses to that threat have to be aimed not at the technique but at those who employ it to advance their political or other goals.

In fact, Bush and his national security team have gone to great lengths to avoid saying the obvious: The principal enemy in this war are Islamists - radical, intolerant and virulently anti-Western militants who assert that the teachings of Muhammad provide a religious justification for their predations. Indeed, they contend that jihad, or holy war, is their moral obligation.

For Islamists, the notion that the Muslim faith is a "religion of peace" - as President Bush often insists - is an abomination. They are convinced that Islam is, by its very nature, a militant religion. Indeed, they consider the preeminent target of their jihadism to be those who claim to follow Muhammad yet are peaceable, law-abiding, tolerant of other faiths and otherwise willing to assimilate into non-Muslim societies.

A microcosm of this phenomenon can be found in the Palestinian front in this war. Islamists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah are determined to dominate and, if necessary, to liquidate those Palestinians who are willing to live in peace with Israel. To be sure, they are also determined to destroy the Jewish state. And, like their counterparts elsewhere, they seek in due course to transform other non-Islamic nations into Islamist "republics" (like Iran's).

Lest there be any doubt, however, what these militants would impose on the rest of the world, they would first inflict upon others they consider apostates from the Muslim faith.

SHOULD WE fail to understand this reality, success in the present conflict is likely to elude us. Our natural allies are the billion-plus, non-jihadist Muslims around the globe.

Why aren't they saying anything? Would Western church leaders sit idly by if the Christian Identity whackos rose to the same central position in Christianity as the Islamists have in Islam?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 7, 2003 9:46 AM