from TRACKSIDE  (c)   

commentary by John D'Aloia Jr.

A reader wrote "that our Muslim brothers and sisters would be offended by" a recent TRACKSIDE. The reader identified with quoted remarks by British Prime Minister Tony Blair regarding Islam. I suggest that people with such beliefs have been taken in by revisionists who champion a warm and fuzzy politically-correct view of the world. Militant Islam rose out of the desert and drove Christianity from its birthplace by conquest. The troops of Jihadistan are its modern day disciples. The politically-correct shibboleths of society’s moralistic bullies - diversity, multiculturalism, feminism - are anathema to them. If Muslims are offended, they are being offended by their own history. If we are going to play the offend game, I am offended by the open support of Jihadistan by Muslims in our own country.

Today we are fighting terrorists - not a nation, not a people, not a religion - yet as political and military events unfold, we ignore history at the peril of Western Civilization. Anthony Harrigan, in a "The St.Croix Review" article on the current expansion of Islam (he called it the Second Wave,) wrote: "J.M. Roberts, author of The History of Europe (1996) makes the definitive statement on Islam, saying, ‘Islam from the start was a religion of conquest.’ It remains so today. It has a very different character from Christianity, which it displaced for centuries in North Africa, the Middle East, Spain, and the Balkans. ... the underlying message of Christianity has been ‘love they neighbor,’ whereas Muslims believed that if they killed an infidel - a non-believer - they would be transported into paradise. From the seventh century onward, this belief has characterized and unified Muslims from Indonesia to the slums of Gaza and the West Bank."

For coalition-building purposes, Islam is said to be a religion of peace; the word itself is said to mean peace. The author of an encyclopedia article derived the word’s meaning through a grammatical analysis of four forms of the word. He concluded that the word Islam, in its ethico-religious significance, means the "entire surrender of the will to god." The Koran makes no bones about it - Allah is god and the only law that matters is that written by Mohammed. In effect, you are with us or against us. That is reality. Nothing has changed since the 7th Century. An Islamic peace is radically different than the peace defined by our pluralistic Western society: "Let us all get along so we can enjoy our freedom; I’m OK, you’re OK." An Islamic peace occurs with the establishment of an Islamic theocracy. All people are Muslims and there is no separation of church and state. One needs look no further than the persecutions of Christians in the Sudan, Pakistani clerics turning out Jihad soldiers, discriminatory laws in Nigeria, or the rule of the Saudi aristocracy to see the unmasked face of militant Islam.

Bin Laden and company are portrayed as but a lunatic fringe. Such a portrayal stretches the meaning of "fringe." Millions of Muslims worldwide buy into his jihad. There are over 725 million Muslims, not counting those in Western Europe or the Western Hemisphere. If just one percent are openly militant, that is over 7 million people. (One Middle East expert puts the amount between 15 and 25 percent.) They are driven by a multitude of ideas and passions, some based on self interest, some based on pure hate and demagoguery, but all underlain by a strict reading of the Koran, a reading being drummed into the minds and souls of each new generation by clerics throughout Islamic lands. For them, the Koran is the only basis for all human action: political, social, and religious.

Ultimately, we will be facing a choice similar to that facing the nation during WWII and the cold war. We decided that we did not want to goose-step and say "Heil Hitler." We decided that we did not subscribe to the chant "Better Red than Dead." We turned to, solidified our national identity, and did what was necessary to remain free. If Western Civilization, our pluralistic society, and our understanding of freedom is to survive a 21st Century resurgence of militant Islam, we had best get down to basics - understand what makes it tick, understand its goals, and develop an equivalent spiritual and moral fortitude by returning to our Judeo-Christian heritage. Today technology gives us an edge, but in the end, preserving our culture, our ideals, and yes, our Faith will require not PC mantras but the same inner strengths and beliefs that carried the day for El Cid, Charles Martel, John Sobieski, Don John of Austria, and Prince Eugene of Savoy.