After Manchester and London again, this almost 40-year old war is at a new level, and it’s fair to ask when we will really get serious about global Islamic terrorism. Not the “we will defeat ISIS” pronouncements, but the kind of commitment that will be necessary to root out this evil from its sources. Islamic terror will not be defeated by military action alone. UK Prime Minister Theresa May came close to this kind of commitment after the most recent London attack, certainly far beyond her European counterparts, when she outlined a new strategy that goes directly to the Islamic ideology and will involve “difficult and often embarrassing conversations” with the Muslim community about the evil in their midst.
This is what we have needed for years and it will be very difficult, even more now because of several decades of coddling the “moderate” Muslims who, along with the ACLU and fellow travelers, consider any such talk deemed critical of Islam Islamophobic and because of the failure of immigration policy and assimilation, especially in Europe. As Chilton Williamson notes in his book, After Tocqueville, Muslim immigrants and their offspring are demanding not integration with the natives on equal terms but acceptance by them on terms favorable to, and dictated by, Islam. And “when a weak and uncertain majority culture–like that of Europe–lacking confidence in itself and in its past is challenged by an assured, self-confident, and aggressive minority–such as Islam–the consequent conflicts are likely to by settled in favor of the minority.” But in spite of these liabilities, these difficult conversations must begin soon, along with much else, political correctness be damned.
More broadly, we need to immediately rally the West against the Islamic ideology and its propagation, whether in mosques, madrassas, or the internet, and we should demand cooperation in this effort from our Middle Eastern allies. We should also require that Facebook, You Tube, Twitter and other outlets of social media join in fighting the radicalization for which they serve as a conduit, even if it means some censorship, either voluntarily or, if necessary, involuntarily. Our Constitution and First Amendment are not suicide pacts. We should not allow people to come to this country to preach and foment violence against our people.
We must also return to our roots, as Pope Benedict so well outlined over a decade ago in his lecture at Regensburg. For if we have forgotten who we are we will lack the moral clarity to deal with this crisis. And I would remind you that the enemy suffers no such confusion with a quote from Osama Bin Laden: “There are only three choices in Islam: either submit, live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die”.
