By John F. Di Leo -
Reflections on the War on Terror, in light of the Manchester Arena Bombing
On Sunday, May 22, 2017, President Trump and King Salman of Saudi Arabia addressed a gathering of the political leadership of some 50 muslim-majority nations… and on Monday, May 23, an ISIS-inspired jihadist detonated a nail bomb in Manchester, England after a concert, killing over twenty innocents, injuring sixty more.
Whether intended to be a response or not, this terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena must be directly assessed in light of King Salman's speech yesterday in Saudi Arabia… because it hammers home the special challenge of this war.
In a pointed and well-received speech, the king of Saudi Arabia – a leader in the Arab world – called for an end to the use of terrorism as a religious tool, essentially repeating the order of General al-Sisi’s famous New Year's Day speech in Egypt two years ago. The king's speech was directed at politicians; the general's speech was directed to clerics. The general's speech fell on deaf ears; the king's was apparently accepted by the politicians.
Still… less than 36 hours later, an islamofascist demon detonated a nail bomb outside a concert as the hall was emptying, to kill and injure the most attendees possible without even having to worry about going through security.
How?
In a normal war, when the political rulers order the fighting ended, it stops. The armies obey their political leaders.
But in an ideological war, waged by demonic alleged clerics and their devotees all over the world, we must remember that these are people who consider themselves independent of – and even superior to – their political leaders. In such a war waged by stateless savages, who knows if the politicians' commitment will have any effect at all?
Perhaps some of the state financing will dry up, and yes, that makes a difference… but in a war like this, it doesn't take a lot of money.
Waged the way they started – with organized teams learning to fly and hijack planes – state sponsorship played an important role. But today, they fight by giving an order on YouTube or Facebook Live, and the implements of destruction are dirt-cheap: drive your car into a crowd, shoot up an army base, build your own improvised bomb with kitchenware… It doesn’t take billions of dollars and training camps in the Afghan hills anymore, not for these awful techniques.
It is time for islam – and the political leadership of the world, both islamic and non-islamic, to step in and return to the techniques of the past. Up until World War II, if a non-Nazi government identified Nazi agitators, they were locked up. If they found communist rabble-rousers, they too were imprisoned. It sounded harsh, but it stopped them from spreading their poison.
Today, we allow the advocates of jihad to live among us and preach their poison freely. We let them run mosques, madrassahs, and islamic community centers, taking full advantage of First Amendment protections for religion, when all they do is spread a poisonous political ideology in the name of religion.
We know there are mosques that do not advocate such things… known as the “moderate muslims,” they denounce the “theology” of jihad, and oppose violence. We cannot estimate their numbers from outside, but we know they are out there, and their religion is poisoned by those who use it to advocate global conquest and pure evil like what we saw in Manchester… and San Bernardino… and Orlando… and Fort Hood… and Paris… and New York… and so many more cities, now almost daily, for decades now.
We do not know the real numbers… we hopefully dream that the jihadists are only 10% of islam, but we must honestly admit it’s much more. Perhaps it’s the moderates who are only 10%. We won’t know unless islam itself responds to King Salman’s and General al-Sisi’s calls for reform.
Every mosque on earth must denounce the barbaric philosophy of jihad and the tools of terror… and turn over the imams, mullahs, and other clerics who preach it, who give cover and support to budding terrorists, who appear on hidden websites to exhort their crazed followers to acts of unspeakable evil.
The dividing line between the islamic clerics who we can honestly define as peaceful, and those who advocate the "theology" of jihad, must be made clear. The moderate muslims don’t want the rest of us to judge them by their jihadist fellows’ philosophy and actions? Well then… separate yourselves from them, vocally and permanently.
Advocates of islam want the rest of us to call them "one of the world's great religions.” Well, that title doesn’t come from numbers alone. The only way to earn that title is by denouncing every aspect of the jihadist/terrorist branch of their family, both every incident and the theology that supports it.
And those who refuse to denounce must be recognized as the officers in an enemy army, subject to imprisonment and worse. Sane countries identify their enemies within, and respond to them; sane countries don't allow cancers to spread unchecked within their very borders.
Until that dividing line is clear, the rest of the world cannot be blamed for lumping all islam into the same group.
We want to be fair and tolerant, but fairness and tolerance cannot be a suicide pact. Suicide is their tool of choice, not ours.
Copyright 2017 John F Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is an international trade compliance trainer, actor and writer. A former chairman of the Ethnic American Council and the Milwaukee County Republican Party, his columns are regularly found in Illinois Review.
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