Recently in Islamic terrorism Category

Helsinki is a beautiful, seemingly remote city, situated far from the troubles of the world, particularly the war on America and other parts of the civilized world being waged by the true believers of Islam.

Or so it would seem, but that's not the case. As did neighboring Sweden, Finland welcomed immigrants whose Islamic upbringing and ideology (or way of life, if you prefer) set them culturally centuries apart.

Sweden's second largest city Malmo is bulging with Muslims, who are responsible for a staggering increase in crime, particularly "youths" preying on the elderly and a multifold rise in rape of blonde Swedish women.

This week barbarian horror visited Helsinki.

The overwhelming majority of Americans know we are at war.

The would-be Christmas bomber reminded everyone of that fact.

So why did the government take the Christmas bomber into the criminal law system and read him his rights as if he were a U.S. citizen and tell him he had the right to remain silent?

We need information! The bomber has already told us that there are dozens, maybe more, already trained in Yemen ready, willing and able to launch similar attacks at American targets. Don't we want to know that?

One more or less learned U.S. lawyer Josh Marshall argues that's the way it should be, what the Obama Administration is doing is the right thing. Marc Thiessen questions that:

Why is the Obama administration telling Abdulmutallab that he has the “right to remain silent”? Why are they not interrogating him to find out what follow-on attacks may be coming? Is Josh okay with the decision to let this terrorist, who tried to kill hundreds of Americans, keep his secrets to himself? And will he stand up and defend that decision if another terrorist who trained with Abdulmutallab in Yemen succeeds in blowing up another plane?

Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted the blind sheikh behind the first World Trade Center bombing, explains why what the Obama administration is doing is gravely damaging to our national defense.

UPDATE: A new Rasmussen poll finds that 58% of the American public want the Christmas bomber waterboarded! Also,

Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters think the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim to blow up the airliner as it landed in Detroit should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Only 22% say it should be handled by civilian authorities as a criminal act, as is currently the case.

The public's priority is defending Americans. The president should do what the public wants and what his oath to the Constitution requires.

Former vice president Dick Cheney is very concerned about the failure of the White House to confront the war on terror (it won't even use the term "war on terror") seriously.

As I've watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won't be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won't be at war.

He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, "war on terror," we won't be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe. Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war? It doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn't fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency - social transformation--the restructuring of American society. President Obama's first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.

The enemy knows it's at war. Pretending that we aren't at war is a prescription for disaster and human tragedy.

It turns out that the U.S. has been cutting back on use of its best screening equipment, including the kind that can detect PETN, the explosive that Richard Reid and the Christmas Day bomber brought aboard that could easily have brought down both airplanes.

We appear to have entered a period of denial about the seriousness and magnitude of the deadly threat the nation faces.

Check out this report....

The Terrorists' Secret Weapon
by Gerald Posner in the Daily Beast
December 30, 2009 | 5:44am
Mike Segar / Reuters Intelligence experts have heard chatter for months about the explosive allegedly used by the underwear bomber. So why has the U.S. cut back on machines that detect it?

U.S. security officials had become increasingly worried in the months leading up to the attempted airplane bombing on Christmas Day about terrorists using the explosive agent concealed by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, several counterterrorism experts tell The Daily Beast. Internet chatter about PETN spiked over the summer, as monitored by U.S. intelligence services, the sources add.

Yet over the past 18 months, a Transportation Security Administration employee tells me, the U.S. has stopped using more than half of the Explosive Trace Portals that have capability of detecting PETN. These are dubbed “puffer” machines because they release several puffs of air to shake loose trace explosive particles as passengers walk through. The TSA employee, who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity and does not agree with the reduced use of puffers, says that there are fewer than 40 machines deployed today, down from 94 in service (and more than 200 purchased).

While Obama speaks of "isolated" terrorist incidents (without mentioning Islam or Muslims), the evidence of terrorist interrelationships is to the contrary. It's no wonder that Americans are restive about the president's commitment to defend them. Byron York explains:

Obama's conduct has raised questions about his commitment to preventing terrorism that simply didn't exist when it came to President Bush. The war on terrorism (a phrase Obama tellingly refuses to use) presents numerous decision-points that require a president to strike a balance between maximizing the assault on terrorists and their plans and maximizing civil liberites. Obama and Bush differ as to where the correct balance lies, with Obama believing it lies further on the civil liberties side than Bush did.

Thus, Byron is correct when he argues that, at the time Reid was captured, there was little if any doubt that Bush "was serious about using all the powers of the U.S. government to strike back at the terrorists." This is not the case with Obama, and it is that reality, rather than a "double standard," that explains why "there are so many questions about the president's handling of the Detroit incident."

From the Muslim world comes a realistic voice expressing more concern than the president does.

Abdul Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, Al-Arabiya TV director-general and former editor-in-chief of the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, is a courageous Muslim who uttered the most repeated -- and undeniably true -- statement about Muslim terrorists:

It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims. …

On December 29, 2009, , he published an important op-ed titled

"In Search of the Instructor in Yemen."

"Less than a day after the failed attempt to bomb a plane that was flying over the U.S. city of Detroit, a different kind of hunt began – the hunt for the person who instructed Omar Abdulmutallab [to carry out the operation], the person who turned Abdulmutallab into a terrorist. Omar Abdulmutallab is a Nigerian man who left Nigeria young and innocent and left London a prepared terrorist.
"Attention turned towards the Yemeni Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki, once again, who believes that he is the Sheikh of the new terrorists. It was this same Sheikh who instructed Major Nidal Hasan, an American of Arab origin, to commit the Fort Hood killings."

"The First Priority Should Be To Confront Extremist Ideology, Its Theorists, and Its Scholars, Before Its Students and Its Soldiers"

"So as not to further complicate this already complex issue, we can sum up the incident as follows: attention turned from pursuing Al Qaeda's army to pursuing its Sheikhs.
"After years of violent war, the image has become clear to everybody today; that 'Al Qaeda' is an ideological problem rather than an organizational one. Whilst there is a lot to do on the ground in order to eradicate this malignant disease, the first priority should be to confront extremist ideology, its theorists, and its scholars before its students and its soldiers. They are the secret to the organization and the reason for its continuation and its ability to recruit [people] and raise money, despite the great losses it has suffered all over the world.
"Abdulmuttalab, who was arrested in Detroit, and is only 23 years of age, spent three years studying mechanical engineering at a London university, and comes from a very moderate Muslim family; his father is a well-known banker in Nigeria and former chairman of First Bank, one of Nigeria's biggest banks.
"Farouk, Abdulmuttalab's father, was so concerned about his son that he alerted authorities, which is quite a rare thing to happen.
"The important question remains: Who convinced the young man [to carry out the operation] and prepared him for the operation? Abdulmuttalab is now in prison, whereas dozens of others or even hundreds like him are still at large."

Al-Awlaki, "The Source of the Problem," is "The Bin Laden of the Internet"

"Al Awlaki is now most wanted – and the source of the problem with regards to at least two crimes: that of [Major] Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 people, and [Omar] Farouk Abdulmuttalab, charged with attempting to blow up a plane and with the attempted murder of the 279 passengers on board.
"Al-Awlaki is an important character and it seems he is the bin Laden of the Internet, the leader of an organization that brings together thousands of young men who are communicated with firstly via websites and then dealt with on the ground later. He became a leader and a Mufti who communicated with his students electronically, and he takes part in extensive Daawa [Islamic preaching] through the World Wide Web.
"Just like bin Laden, a cat with nine lives, he was targeted in two similar raids a few days ago and it is possible that he escaped despite news reports of his death."

"Al-Qaeda is an Extremist Ideology That Must First Be Tackled Ideologically"

"The events of the last few weeks have revealed that the war on terror did not end with George W. Bush's absence, and that terrorism did not stop after the release of dozens [of prisoners] from Guantanamo Bay. The retirement or capture of leaders such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did not and will not stop the recruitment and activity of this terrorist ideology.
"In fact, all of this has only confirmed the old truth that Al-Qaeda is an extremist ideology that must first be tackled ideologically, along with the prosecution of those who support it and the need to wage war against extremist websites in general – which have become larger camps than the first camp that gave its name to the 'Al-Qaeda' organization."

Why doesn't Obama want to admit the United States is being attacked by Islamic supremacists?

Why doesn't Obama want to admit we're in a war we didn't choose with an enemy that has been fighting all others for 1400 years?

Why is Obama weakening our national security by treating Islamic terrorists as ordinary criminals instead of the Islamic enemy combatants they are?

Andrew McCarthy, perhaps the leading American expert on the inadequacy of the criminal justice system in fighting the Islamic supremacists dedicated to the destruction of America, devastates Obama's statements on how he has changed Muslim views of the U.S.:

Hadn't Abdulmutallab heard that we are closing Gitmo? Hadn't he heard that we're phasing out military-commissions so we can show the world that we give even the worst mass-murderers civilian trials with all the rights of American citizens? Hadn't he heard that President Obama has banned torture (yes, yes, I know, actually Congress banned it 15 years ago — details, details . . .)? Hadn't he heard that the president has called for "a new beginning" in America's relationship with the Muslim world? Hadn't he heard that this is our new, smarter strategy to safeguard the nation from man-caused disasters?

I suspect he's heard all those things.

Just because we have a new president who wants to be especially friendly with the Muslims of the world doesn't mean that the 1400-year war of Islam's true believers against the rest of the world has stopped. Almost every day evidence of the continuing war crops up, though often the national media doesn't report it or put it in the context of the global war that it is.

Syrian-born, but now an American doctor living in California Wafa Sultan appeared on al Jazeera television awhile ago and shocked viewers by saying straight out what is going on between Islam and the West. It isn't a "clash of civilizations" at all: It is a war between civilization and barbarism.

Today's editorial reminds us that among the 1.3 billion Muslims of the world is a significant number (15% is one estimate by a leading Muslim leader, that's 200 million) are following Mohammed's command to wage war to conquer the world for Islam. It is a war on civilization and we ignore that reality at our peril. But this is precisely what the the U.S. is currently doing with its banishment of words such as "terror" and "war on terror" and the refusal to identify who the enemy is. The nation's safety depends on knowing who is waging the war against us and acting accordingly to defend ourselves at home and abroad..

Terror: A Global War

Investor's Business Daily

Posted 12/07/2009 07:30 PM ET

GWOT: The arrest of a Danish cartoon terror plotter for an even more lethal role in 2008's Mumbai terror attack reminds us the war on terror is global. So why is this being treated as a mere law-enforcement matter?

David Copeland Headley, 49, a Pakistani-American resident of the north side of Chicago, was arrested in October for plotting the terror-killings of the editors of Jyllands-Posten, a Copenhagen-based newspaper that ran unflattering cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

A month later, the public learned it wasn't his first time. Headley, 49, a failed businessman and convicted drug dealer who'd changed his name from Daood Gilani, was arrested again on Monday, as an agent in the attacks at India's Oberoi and Taj hotels in Mumbai.

Headley was the advance man for the Pakistani terrorists, casing and filming Mumbai along the terror route as well as the hotels for months before they launched their multiday killing spree. The massacre that followed left 166 dead, including six Americans.

What's stunning here is that these incidents have thus far been viewed through a local lens — India's problem, Denmark's affair, America's issue, Pakistan's woe. They shouldn't be.

The same faces with the same Islamofascist motives are turning up no matter where or what sort of attack happens. It points to a ruthless enemy at war with the world, not a string of local crimes.

Yet the Danish cartoon imbroglio was viewed as an issue of civil rights and freedom of speech. The India massacre was dismissed as a function of its Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. The Afghanistan-Pakistan war is viewed as a nation-building venture rather than ground zero in the war on terror — which is what it is.

Remember 2001's shoe bomber Richard Reid? He was seen as a lone misfit from London, until it was revealed that the mosque he attended was part of a Pakistan-based Islamofascist cult. Led by Mubarak Gilani, mosque supporters murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and had links to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind. (The Indian press reports that Gilani is a tribal name, meaning Headley could have links to this group, too.)

And just last October, a German passport belonging to Said Bahaji, a "Hamburg cell" associate of lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, was among documents found by Pakistani forces in a Waziristan town used by the Taliban as a command base.

So much for the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan supposedly being about "nation building," and not about the global war on terror and hate-filled Islamic fundamentalism.

These "coincidences" only make sense when seen in the context of a global war that's centered in the region. But that's been obscured by those politicians all too eager to put their heads in the sand.

Oh, the White House pays lip service to this: "This case serves as a reminder that the terrorist threat is global in nature and requires constant vigilance at home and abroad," said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, in an official statement.

But why doesn't this come from a national leader? Even Attorney General Eric Holder would be a better choice to reinforce the global nature of the threat we face.

The real voice that should be heard recognizing of the fact that we are in fact at war against an implacable enemy is President Obama.

Our president will, by happy coincidence, soon be in Copenhagen, the very city where the Danish newspaper is published. He'll miss an important opportunity if he doesn't explicitly highlight the arrest in Chicago as part of a war on civilization — not a police matter.

What was missing from Obama's Afghanistan speech tonight? How about "victory" and "win"?

Within the hour three accurate assesssments appeared online:

Sarah Palin responds to Obama's speech via Facebook:

Three months ago, I joined a number of Americans in urging President Obama to provide the resources necessary to achieve our goals in Afghanistan. Tonight, I am glad he mostly heeded that advice.

At long last, President Obama decided to give his military commanders much of what they need to accomplish their mission in Afghanistan. In the end, he decided to endorse a “surge” for Afghanistan, applying the counterinsurgency principles of “clear, hold and build” that worked so well in Iraq. Given that he opposed the surge in Iraq, it is even more welcome that he now supports a surge in Afghanistan.

This approach means, as Senator John McCain has noted, that “We now have an opportunity to build a bipartisan consensus in support of a vital national security priority: defeating Al-Qaeda and its violent extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and ensuring that these countries never again serve as bases for terrorist attacks against America and our allies.”

We should be clear, however, that fewer troops mean assuming more risk. Talk of an exit date also risks sending the wrong message. We should be in Afghanistan to win, not to set a timetable for withdrawal that signals a lack of resolve to our friends, and lets our enemies believe they can wait us out. As long as we’re in to win, and as long as troop level decisions are based on conditions on the ground and the advice of our military commanders, I support President Obama’s decision.

Professor Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution weighed in:

That was such a strange speech. Deploring partisanship while serially trashing Bush at each new talking point. Sending more troops, but talking more about when they will come home rather than what they will do to the enemy. There was nothing much new in the speech, yet apparently it took the president months to decide whether even to give it.

Ostensibly the talk was to be on Afghanistan; instead, the second half mostly consisted of the usual hope-and-change platitudes.

Peter Brookes stated the obvious:

Despite the rhetorical flourishes, it's pretty clear President Obama has one foot out the door on Afghanistan. His heart just isn't in it. Unfortunately, I won't be the only one to notice that, either here — or overseas.

He's basically given our troop plus-up as little as a year — by the time they get there in the summer of 2010 - before he starts to drawdown U.S. forces in mid-2011.

Not only will an artificial timetable for withdrawal encourage the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but does President Obama really expect the already-skittish allies and coalition partners to pony up more forces under those conditions? (He's at least 10,000 troops short for General McChrystal's baseline strategy.)

This is no way to win a war.

The emphasis should not be on Afghanistan taking up its own defense. The main purpose to be in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) is to protect this country and its citizens from those who Obama wrongly calls "extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world's great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents." On 9/11 and on many occasions in many centuries "extremists" were doing what the Koran and Mohammed command.

In the aftermath of the Nidal Hasan massacre at Fort Hood, the airwaves were full of denial about what Hasan did and why. As a true believer Muslim, he did what he was raised to do -- kill infidels. Every Muslim has the duty, as set forth in the Koran and preached by Islam's founder Mohammed, to advance the cause of Islam by all means available. Being killed in the process of kiling infidels is held to be a sure ticket to the bordello in the sky.

As in any group of humans, there are those who have learned their religion and ideology and practice it and many who don't bother to learn, don't know and don't care. The indifferent Muslim in most cases is not a problem for the West. One who knows and understands the ideology of Islam is the danger. He is not a radical. He is in the mainstream of Islam. Hasan was (is) in the mainstream of Islam. As the author says:

Today's Western elites who think that Islamic militants do not represent "true Islam" are dangerously wrong. From the very beginning of the Islamic faith, the good Muslim, following the example of Mohammed, has been called to do battle against unbelievers, reject secularism, and reject any notion of the equality of faiths. In his 1998 manifesto "Jihad against Jews and Crusaders," Osama bin Laden quoted the Qur'anic injunction to "fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them" and also cited Mohammed's belief that "I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshiped." Osama then concluded that "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

The following short essay by one who understands but rejects Islam is worth reading.

November 21, 2009
God and Government: Islam and West Are Incompatible
By Amil Imani

Western policymakers and elites in government, academia, and the media suffer from an extraordinary ignorance about the true nature of Islam. This ignorance was on display following the murder of thirteen American troops at Fort Hood, Texas by Nidal Hasan, a devout Muslim who held the rank of Major in the U.S. Army. Hasan is said to have shouted "God is Great" in Arabic as he gunned down his unarmed fellow troops.

Gen. George Casey opined that if Hasan's actions caused "diversity" in the Army to suffer, it would be a greater tragedy than the murders of his troops. President Obama stated that "no faith" justifies such actions. And Bob Schieffer of CBS News wondered if Hasan was merely a "nut," just like many of the "nuts" within Christianity.

These comments reflect a belief that Islam should be treated no differently from the various sects within Christianity. Some people go to Baptist churches, some attend Lutheran services, some attend Catholic mass, some play golf -- and some attend their local mosque. After all, we have "freedom of religion" guaranteed by the Constitution, don't we? Doesn't that extend to Islam as well?

The truth is that the Constitution's treatment of religion is premised upon concepts originating from within Christianity that are irreconcilable with the Islamic worldview. The Constitution prevents the "establishment" of a state religion. But the very idea that the state cannot or should not establish a religion is unique to Christianity. There is no parallel for this idea in Islam. The Constitution also prevents Congress from impeding the "free exercise" of religion. But the "free exercise" clause also assumes compatibility with Christian styles of worship -- for instance, one cannot engage in ritualistic human sacrifice to appease the gods and successfully claim immunity under the free-exercise clause.

Any honest evaluation of the history of Islam will indicate that it cannot be pigeonholed as if it were merely a different sect that utilizes a crescent rather than a cross as a symbol. Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western attitudes toward religion and society.

Jesus, the founder of Christianity, explicitly rejected political and military methods to spread his religion. Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was not only a prophet, but a warrior and political leader as well. Christianity was formulated as a condition of conscience outside the realm of the state and of politics, while Islam is inherently political and spiritual.

Jesus was born a Jew in Roman-occupied Judea. The Jews understood Israel to be the Promised Land, according to the terms of the Mosaic Covenant in Exodus. They interpreted Jewish history as follows: when in violation of the Covenant, God punished the nation of Israel by sending its enemies to conquer it; conversely, when Israel complied with the terms of the Covenant, God allowed Israel to defeat its enemies and reclaim political control of the Promised Land. During the life of Jesus, the Jews were waiting for God to send a leader to militarily defeat the Roman conquerors.

Jesus rejected this interpretation. He promoted the idea of a New Covenant that included the possibility of salvation for the Roman occupiers. This was a blasphemy of the Jewish religion, so Jesus was executed as a heretic.

Jesus rejected political and military methods because he knew they would be ineffective against the Romans. His tactic was to preach and proselytize, not to seek political power. Rather than choose either religion or politics, Jesus instructed the Jews to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto to God what is God's." When the Romans came to arrest him, he instructed his disciples to put away their swords.

From a tactical perspective, history proved Jesus correct. The Jews revolted against the Romans twice, and were crushed both times. After the second revolt, the Jews were exiled by the Romans, and many remained in exile until the founding of modern Israel in 1948.

Meanwhile, Christianity, utilizing Jesus's tactic of proselytizing, developed as a social system parallel to but independent of political authority. In the fourth century, Augustine theorized that politics was the "City of Man" and religion was the "City of God" -- two entirely independent realms with different goals and purposes. Augustine argued that Rome was merely a "great robbery." Christians should reject the goals of the "earthly city" -- power, money, and political overlordship. In Augustine's view, the only permissible reason for Christians to go to war or to kill was self-defense against an aggressive enemy.

It is from Augustine's distinction between the City of God and the City of Man that the West came to uphold "freedom of religion" apart from the control of the state.

The origins of Islam could not be more different. Its history is filled with political bloodletting and violence. Islam was founded in the seventh century when Mohammed believed that he was instructed by the angel Gabriel to convert the pagan Arabs and remedy the "errors" of Christianity and Judaism. Mohammed's preaching failed to make converts, and he was exiled from Mecca. He fled to Medina, raised an army, and returned to Mecca to convert the Meccans by force. Quite unlike Jesus, Mohammed then established himself as a political ruler. Indeed, the term "Islam" is Arabic for "submission."

Upon Mohammed's death, fitna, or civil war for control of Islam, erupted between his son-in-law Ali and Ali's rival Uthman. Both factions formed armies and engaged in open warfare and political assassination. Both Uthman and Ali were assassinated, Ali's son Hasan was poisoned, and Hasan's brother Hussein died in battle. The feud created the split between the Sunni and the Shiite factions that exists to this day.

From its origins until the early twentieth century, Islam was an imperial political force, spreading its faith by military conquest. The Abbasid Empire lasted from the eighth to the thirteenth century, spreading Islam from Spain to India. The Ottoman Empire, lasting from the thirteenth century until World War I, conquered parts of southern Europe including Greece and the Balkans; and as late as 1683, only a hundred years before the founding of the United States, the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna, Austria.

The Islamic worldview divides the world into two spheres: the non-Islamic world is the dar al-harb, or the "house of war," and the Islamic world is the dar al-Islam, the "house of peace." From the Muslim perspective, "peace" is achieved only once the enemy has been conquered and subordinated to Islam.

Throughout Islam's imperial reign, no difference has existed between civil law and religious law, or sharia. The distinction between civil and religious law is a Christian, not an Islamic, idea. "Secular society" simply does not exist with Islam properly understood. Apostasy is punishable by death within the Islamic code. Secular rulers in Muslim countries during the twentieth century were a historic aberration, a result of British colonialism. Many, like the Shah of Iran and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, met unhappy ends at the hands of the devout.

A special condition called dhimmitude exists within the Islamic legal code for groups of non-Muslims conquered by Islamic forces who refuse to convert. Some contemporary observers view dhimmitude as an example of Muslim "tolerance," but the truth is quite the opposite; dhimmitude is a subordinate condition. The dhimmi was not allowed to attempt to convert Muslims to his religion, his house of worship was not allowed to be more conspicuous than a mosque, he was not allowed to hold political office, and he was required to pay a special tax.

(It is for these reasons that the existence of Israel is particularly grating to Muslims. Israel exists within what has historically been the dar al-Islam, but modern Israel is not in a condition of dhimmitude subservient to Muslim political authority).

Today's Western elites who think that Islamic militants do not represent "true Islam" are dangerously wrong. From the very beginning of the Islamic faith, the good Muslim, following the example of Mohammed, has been called to do battle against unbelievers, reject secularism, and reject any notion of the equality of faiths. In his 1998 manifesto "Jihad against Jews and Crusaders," Osama bin Laden quoted the Qur'anic injunction to "fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them" and also cited Mohammed's belief that "I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshiped." Osama then concluded that "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." (Even if only 10% of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims heed this call, enemy strength still amounts to 140 million).

The idea that individuals like Maj. Hasan can serve the United States and Islam simultaneously is analogous to believing that one could have been a good communist and still loyally serve the United States during the Cold War -- or patently untrue. In fact, Hasan's business card did not reveal his rank in the U.S. Army, but did bear the inscription SoA -- "Soldier of Allah."

Like Maj. Hasan, an uncomfortably large number of Islamic terrorist suspects in the West are citizens of the very Western nations they seek to subvert. Examples include "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, and Hasan's radical imam, Anwar al-Awlaki. This fact betrays the radicalizing influence of Islam itself. It is time to subject Muslims residing in the West to the same level of scrutiny that was applied to communists fifty years ago.

As these individuals have ably demonstrated, Westerners who make the mistake of treating orthodox Muslims no differently from Lutherans or Quakers do so at the West's peril. Western policymakers need to start thinking very, very seriously about what will happen when devout Muslims who are inspired by Islam's heritage of conquest have nuclear weapons at their disposal.

Which country do Islamic leaders think is the "best country" for Muslims?

"Sweden" is the answer. Sweden opened its doors wide to Muslim immigration. Malmo,Sweden's third largest city, is already 25% Muslim.

What has it done for Malmo?

Find out.

Is Mark Steyn the only sane person writing about jihadism who will bluntly describe the insanity he sees and hears in this diversity and multiculturally plagued society?

Who else has the spine to call Army Chief of Staff General Casey "brain-addled" for his incredibly appalling, morally bankrupt statement that if Fort Hood turns out to be a setback for diversity it would a worse outcome that the massacre itrself?.

Mark quotes his fellow warrior in the fight for freedom of speech in Canada Ezra Levant who made this chilling observation:

Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of Western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core Western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this past week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a "tragedy" but a national scandal, already fading from view.

Mark in full.

Mark Steyn: A jihadist hiding in plain sight
By MARK STEYN in the Orange County Register
2009-11-13 11:55:01
Shortly after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how no one would ever hijack an American airliner ever again - not because of new security arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were hip to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later on a U.S.-bound Air France flight. The "Shoebomber" attempted to light his footwear, and the flight attendants and passengers pounced. As the more boorish commentators could not resist pointing out, even the French guys walloped him.

But the years go by, and the mood shifts. You didn't have to be "alert" to spot Maj. Nidal Hasan. He'd spent most of the past half-decade walking around with a big neon sign on his head saying "JIHADIST. STAND WELL BACK." But we (that's to say, almost all of us; and certainly almost anyone who matters in national security and the broader political culture) are now reflexively conditioned to ignore the flashing neon sign. Like those apocryphal Victorian ladies discreetly draping the lasciviously curved legs of their pianos, if a glimpse of hard unpleasant reality peeps through we simply veil it in another layer of fluffy illusions.

Continue reading . . .

We used to wonder what Obama was up to. Now we must wonder why.

Once again he is taking action that endangers all American citiziens.

He is putting on trial in an American courtroom the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11, who, with his collaborators in prison at Guantanamo, asked to be executed. Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted those behind the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, outlines the damage that Obama is doing:

This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss [Barack Obama] — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution.

The continuing of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department's obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the "reckoning" that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign.

It would be too politically explosive for Obama/Holder to do the dirty work of charging Bush administration officials; but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring "torture" and "war crimes" indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama's base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.

Today's announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets.

Let's take stock of where we are at this point. KSM and his confederates wanted to plead guilty and have their martyrs' execution last December, when they were being handled by military commission. As I said at the time, we could and should have accommodated them. The Obama administration could still accommodate them. After all, the president has not pulled the plug on all military commissions: Holder is going to announce at least one commission trial (for Nashiri, the Cole bomber) today.

Moreover, KSM has no defense. He was under American indictment for terrorism for years before there ever was a 9/11, and he can't help himself but brag about the atrocities he and his fellow barbarians have carried out.

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence.

That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it.

The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts.

And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

Note the initials "SOA" on Hasan's calling card, which mean "Soldier of Allah." "SWT" means "Glory to Allah Who Created the World." (Thanks to Michelle Malkin and Pamela Geller.)

It's not as if Major Hasan didn't flaunt his Islamic devotion aggressively. When he lectured fellow Army doctors that infidels should be beheaded and boiling oil poured down their throats, the Army must have thought that was okay because it did nothing.

Mark Steyn wonders just who's nuttier, Hasan or the paralyzed politically correct American left.

Parsing what the Koran says makes it more than clear how dangerous Western blindness to the threat the ideology of Islam poses really is.

Islamist Perfidy and Western Naivety: Which Is More Lethal?

By Raymond Ibrahim On November 9, 2009

In a blog entry for Islamist Watch [1], David J. Rusin shows how the word “jihad” continues to be euphemized in the West. Despite Islamic law’s unequivocal portrayal of it as a military endeavor to empower Islam, jihad is still being peddled as “nothing more than a student laboring to pass algebra, a mom driving her kids to soccer practice, or, in the words of the Cambridge study, a civic-minded person engaged in ‘lobbying, activism, and writing’ — a community organizer of sorts.” Rusin concludes by observing: “Why Islamists peddle such specious definitions should be clear. More baffling and disturbing is why they gain traction among so many Westerners.”

Indeed, therein lies the irony: Islamist perfidy is only to be expected; Western naivety, on the other hand, which, if anything, should have begun to dissipate in our post-9/11 world, has burgeoned to the point of nearly making the former unnecessary. For while there is no doubt that Islamists (and their misguided Western cronies) distort the meaning of jihad, increasingly, even when the true meaning is in plain sight, America’s leaders and media still fail to discern it. In other words, apathy — or willful blindness — regarding jihad has become so deep-seated in the West that Islamists need no longer actively dissemble.

Consider: When President Barack Hussein Obama addressed the Islamic world [2] from Cairo on June 4, 2009, he said: “As the Holy Koran tells us, ‘Be conscious of God and speak always the truth’ [Sura 9:119]. That is what I will try to do — to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us.” Let us for the moment put aside the fact that Sura 9, from whence Obama quotes, contains the most violent and intolerant exhortations in all the Koran (which is saying something). The problem here is that the original Arabic text of Sura 9:119 says absolutely nothing about “speaking the truth.” The word “speaking” is nowhere in the text, and “truth,” as an abstract, is a wrong translation for sadiqin, which refers to people. The verse most literally translates as “fear Allah and be with the truthful.” In other words, Muslims should stand firm with fellow Muslims (“truthful” serving as a Koranic epithet for “Muslims” the same way “believers” often does). It is, as ever, a call for divisiveness — of Muslims (the “truthful”) versus infidels (the “false”).

Had Obama or his Mideast advisors and speechwriters simply bothered to read this verse in context — verse 9:111, a jihadi all-time favorite, looms just above, promising believers paradise in exchange for their killing and being killed — or if they had bothered consulting mainstream Muslim exegeses, they might have known that this verse is part of a Koranic segment that deals exclusively with fighting infidels: Muhammad and several Muslims were preparing to invade Byzantine territory. Some Muslims wanted to stay behind. It was then that Allah/Muhammad threatened them with this verse to “fear Allah and be with the truthful” (i.e., join ranks with your fellow Muslims on the warpath). Sentences later, this exhortation culminates in one of the most famous calls to violence in all the Koran, regularly evoked by modern-day jihadis: “O you who believe, fight those infidels who dwell around you, and let them find harshness in you!” [9:123].

Incidentally, the infidels mentioned here are the Christians of Byzantium (or in Arabic, al-Rum, “the Romans”). That modern-day jihadis, such as Osama bin Laden [3], often liken the United States to Byzantium, which for long thwarted the caliphate’s expansionist designs into Christendom, makes Obama’s choice of verse — “be[ing] with the truthful” — further ironic.

Speaking of infidels and irony, here is a more recent, a more comical, anecdote: On September 11, 2009, NPR ran a story called “For NYC Muslims, a New Kind of Police Attention [4],” which tells of how “the NYPD hosts an annual Ramadan program, during which the police get to know members of the Muslim community and Muslims are free to speak their minds.” Lest the theme of this story eludes you, words such as “outreach,” “diversity,” and “building bridges” predominate.

Here’s the problem (first brought to my attention by the Washington Times’ Diana West [5]): In the audio [6] version of this report (around 0:25-0:50), the NPR narrator says that “there was not an empty seat to be had at the NYPD’s auditorium at One Police Plaza. NYPD brass, Muslim clerics, and community members all stood and listened to the cadences of the call to prayer from the NYPD’s imam,” Khalid Latif. While this is being said, you can hear part of the imam’s Arabic recitation from the Koran in the background.

The narrator’s enthusiastic talk of NYPD brass standing in awe of the “cadences of the call” makes it difficult to discern exactly which verse is being recited. Only the last few words — qawm al-kaffirin, “nation of infidels” — are crystal clear, raising red flags. Thanks to my trusty Arabic Koranic concordance, I have placed this phrase as part of Koran 2:286, which supplicates Allah “to make us [Muslims] victorious over the nation of infidels.” Bear in mind that, from an Islamist point of view, the United States is the “nation of infidels” par excellence.

And there it is: From an American president who publicly defines his mission by quoting a jihadi-related verse, to American-Muslim leaders who publicly pray for the subjugation of non-Muslims (in the middle of an NYPD auditorium, no less), it is clear that the ultimate threat comes more from Western carelessness and indifference — in a word, naivety — than it does from active Islamist machinations. In short, Islamists peddling misleading interpretations for the word “jihad” is but the very tip of the iceberg.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
URLs in this post:

[1] Islamist Watch: http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2009/10/smiley-face-definitions-of-jihad-grow-ever-more

[2] addressed the Islamic world: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/obama-speech-in-cairo-vid_n_211215.html

[3] Osama bin Laden: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jan/06/terrorism.comment

[4] For NYC Muslims, a New Kind of Police Attention: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112760427

[5] Diana West: http://www.dianawest.net/

[6] the audio: http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=112760427&m=112761123

At least some people are calling the Fort Hood massacre what it is -- Islamic terrorism.

President Obama urges citizens not to rush to judgment. Whether we run or walk, the answer is the same: Islamic terror has once again struck America. Just as after 9/11, Obama first thought of the mindset of the terrorists, not of the murders they committed.

We know more every day. That he attended the same mosque that two of the 9/11 terrorists attended. That he tried to make contact with al Qaeda. That in a medical lecturee for veterans returning from Iraq, he proclaimed that infidels should be beheaded and boiling oil poured down their throats. And all of what Ralph Peters points out.

Call this horror by its name: Islamist terror
By RALPH PETERS in the New York Post

November 7, 2009

On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting, "Allahu akbar!" ("God is great!") committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.

What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Fort Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of nondenominational shoplifting.

This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it's an act of terror. Period.

When the terrorist posts anti-American hate speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as "Palestinian" in a Muslim spouse-matching program and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit -- well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an "Islamist terrorist."

But the president won't. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there's no such thing as "Islamist terrorism" in ObamaWorld.

And the Army won't. Because its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America haters is safer than calling terrorism "terrorism."

And the media won't. Because they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops -- despite their crocodile tears.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan planned this terrorist attack and executed it in cold blood. The resulting massacre was the first tragedy. The second was that he wasn't killed on the spot.

Hasan survived. Now the rest of us will have to foot his massive medical bills. Activist lawyers will get involved, claiming "harassment" drove him temporarily insane. There'll be no end of trial delays. At best, taxpayer dollars will fund his prison lifestyle for decades to come, since our politically correct Army leadership wouldn't dare pursue or carry out the death penalty.

Maj. Hasan will be a hero to Islamist terrorists abroad and their sympathizers here. While US Muslim organizations decry his acts publicly, Hasan will be praised privately. And he'll have the last laugh.

But Hasan isn't the sole guilty party. The US Army's unforgivable political correctness is also to blame for the casualties at Fort Hood.

Given the myriad warning signs, it's appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command, either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Fort Hood, had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor.

Had Hasan been a Lutheran or a Methodist, he would've been gone with the simoom. But officers fear charges of discrimination when faced with misconduct among protected minorities.

Now 12 soldiers and a security guard lie dead. At least 38 people were wounded, 28 of them seriously. If heads don't roll in this maggot's chain of command, the Army will have shamed itself beyond moral redemption.

There's another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist wacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who've been assigned to his care? And he's not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?

For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I'm ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him.

Get ready for the apologias. We've already heard from the terrorist's family that "he's a good American." In their world, maybe he is.

But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?

A disgruntled Muslim soldier murdered his officers way back in 2003, in Kuwait, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Recently? An American mullah shoots it out with the feds in Detroit. A Muslim fanatic attacks an Arkansas recruiting station. A Muslim media owner, after playing the peace card, beheads his wife. A Muslim father runs over his daughter because she's becoming too Westernized.

Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again and again. And we're assured that "Islam's a religion of peace."

I guarantee you that the Obama administration's nonresponse to the Fort Hood attack will mock the memory of our dead.

Ralph Peters' latest novel is "The War After Armageddon."

This from an interview on Monday, November 9, 2009:

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is the author of nine books on Islam and Jihad, a weekly columnist for Human Events and Frontpagemag.com, and has led numerous seminars for the U.S. military and intelligence communities. He is the author of the new book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran.

FP: Robert Spencer, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

What do we now know about the Fort Hood shooting and what conclusions can we make?

Spencer: Jamie, we now know from the testimony of various eyewitnesses that this act was carefully planned. Nidal Malik Hasan some time ago told his landlord he would not be renewing the lease on his apartment. He gave away his furniture along with copies of the Qur’an on the morning of the day he committed mass murder. This indicates that he thought he was going to die – in other words, that he was planning a suicide attack. As he began firing, he shouted “Allahu Akbar.”

We also know that he was disciplined for proselytizing for Islam during his stint at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences. Law enforcement officials flagged Internet postings written by a man named “Nidal Hasan” and he was praising suicide attacks, but they couldn’t be sure that he was the man who had written them. Still, it was in character: one of his colleagues recalled that he had said that Muslims must rise up against the U.S. military, and had spoken approvingly of Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a Muslim soldier in the U.S. military who lobbed a grenade at American troops, killing two, several years ago.

And we know that during a lecture he was supposed to be giving on a medical topic, he instead preached Islam, warning the assembled unbelievers of hellfire in such lurid Koranic terms that some left the hall wondering if he might end up shooting someone someday.

FP: Why does the media and liberal-Left so reflexively deny and ignore these conclusions?

Spencer: They reflexively deny and ignore these conclusions because they are completely sold out to the idea that Muslims, as non-white, non-Christian, non-Westerners, cannot possibly be anything but victims. (The facts that there are white Muslims, and that the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism are not racial issues, but constitute an ideological and societal challenge, are completely lost on them. Likewise the non-white victims of the jihad matter nothing to them.) We can see from the avalanche of “backlash” stories in the mainstream media – even in the absence of any actual backlash – that it is simply impossible for these people to conceive of a paradigm in which Muslims can perpetrate any kind of evil at all. In the lenses through which they view the world, only white Judeo-Christian Westerners can do anything wrong.

FP: What does this massacre, and the media response, indicate about what is coming down the line for our country?

Spencer: The more we remain in denial about how these things happen, and from what wellsprings they come, the more we will see of attacks like this. Why? Because nothing is being done to prevent them. Instead of the endless stories about backlash that we are seeing, we should be seeing stories about authorities calling the American Muslim community to account. We should be seeing stories about authorities demanding transparent, inspectable programs in American mosques and Islamic schools, teaching against the Islamic doctrines that inspired Nidal Hasan. This is not a religious freedom issue – these are political doctrines with a lethal edge, as Nidal Hasan illustrated. It is an entirely Constitutional matter of self-protection to move to restrict it.

But that won’t happen. Political correctness has the media and government in a stranglehold. That will only ensure that nothing will be done to address this problem at its root, and we will see many more Nidal Hasans.

To listen to the media wonder why an Army major would do such a thing as gun down 40 of his fellow soldiers is to wonder what reality they all are living in.

This was the biggest Islamic terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

The perpetrator was a committted follower of Islam who separates the world into Muslims and infidels. The Koran teaches Muslims to shun infidels and kill them when the opportunity presents itself. When loyalty to America and to Islam reached a point of conflict (in his eyes, going off to Iraq was such), Islam prevailed and he did his duty and expected to reap his eternal reward of orgiastic bliss.

Such is the view of David Warran, an unblinking conservative who writes for the Ottawa Citizen.

Fort Hood: Let's Drop the Political Correctness
By David Warren

For a person with old-fashioned values, and an old-fashioned sense of English word meanings, the reports of the Fort Hood massacre were almost as provoking as what happened there. In the larger view of things, they may be more consequential.

Let me make that latter point plain. I am saying the words and attitudes conveyed in the reporting of a massacre can be, and in this case are, more consequential than the massacre itself.

Having said that, I must not leave the impression I think little of the loss of a dozen human beings, the perhaps permanent maiming of many more, and all the consequences of this horror in the lives of their families and friends. But we must not shed crocodile tears. My heart goes out to the victims, but from a great distance: I know none of them personally, I know no one who knows them.

This is my first objection to the "funeral of Diana" rhetoric we keep getting today, promptly from all affected politicians, whenever something bad happens and people get killed. The knowledge that their "touching remarks" are drafted by hard-bitten speechwriting staff, skilled in the professional emulation of human feeling, is something the public should bear constantly in mind.

But let us not only blame bureaucrats for the people who commission their work. President Barack Obama's display on Thursday made my point more clearly than it usually can be made, for he turned on a dime. He assumed the "presidential grieving tone" over the Fort Hood massacre, the moment after he'd just done an equally scripted segment of light joking banter for the benefit of the Tribal Nations Conference he was addressing. Millions in the television audience must have watched this incredibly cynical "quick flip." I wonder how many noticed it?

We should not allow ourselves to be moved by the cold hearts of professional tear-jerkers because when we reward that kind of thing we help perpetuate an emotional order that is dangerously false. We should instead be annoyed by attempts to manipulate us.

Falsehood has more consequences than the revelation of personal insincerity. What happened at Fort Hood was no kind of "tragedy." It was a criminal act, of the terrorist sort, performed by a man acting upon known Islamist motives. To present the perpetrator himself as a kind of "victim" -- a man emotionally distressed by his impending assignment to Afghanistan or Iraq -- is to misrepresent the reality.

This man was a professional psychiatrist, assigned to help soldiers cope with traumas. Is this the profile of a man with no control over his own emotions? It appears he had hired a lawyer to get him out of the military before his deployment overseas. Is this consistent with spontaneity?

He reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before opening fire on American soldiers. Would that perhaps offer a little hint of the actual motive? He shot about 40 people, over 10 minutes, with two pistols, neither of them military issue. Might that perhaps suggest premeditation?

There were reports from within the base (Fox News as usual seized on what other networks didn't), that accused Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had not merely been making anti-war remarks about Iraq and Afghanistan, but adding things like, "Muslims should stand up against the aggressor." Do we still have a category for treason? He has been quoted from Internet postings comparing Islamist suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade. Another clue?

And all this is quite apart from less checkable information that was quickly available through the Internet, painting a much grimmer figure of a man with openly Islamist views, able to rise through the U.S. military, because of the syndrome of political correctness. Time is certainly required to sort through such reports, and separate wheat from chaff, but the initial information alone was inconsistent with the media's clichéd presentation of the "tragedy of a man in despair."

This deadly enemy of the West -- the Islamist ideology which holds all Jews, Christians, other non-Muslims, and a considerable number of Muslims, too, to be human filth in need of extermination -- is well infiltrated. Events like that at Fort Hood prove this, and from what I can see, the problem can only grow with the passage of time.

Getting at Islamist cells, to say nothing of lone, self-appointed jihadis within our society, means getting over the false sentimentality that turns a terrorist incident into an "incomprehensible tragedy" when it is not incomprehensible, and not a theatrical event.