The first great jihad petered out with Islam’s expulsion from Spain in 1492, the second in 1683 with the decisive (and to Islamists, still freshly humiliating) defeat of the Ottoman Empire in Vienna.
We’re presently experiencing the terror-focused third great jihad, which seeks to recreate the triumphalist dynamics of Islam’s muscular 7th-century ascendancy. How or when this great jihad will end we cannot say, only that realism insists it will not be soon and that the mission to replace secular democracy with Islam proceeds apace inside our borders as well as abroad.
We must know the enemy within to fight him. Unfortunately, our reigning establishment prefers not to confront the awkward civic triage such awareness would entail and so affects ignorance of the problem. But we cannot challenge and disarm Islamists if their presence is not acknowledged.
Islam is a private faith, Islamism an ugly political ideology. Islamists’ hegemonic mission demands a choice between hard jihad — the 9/11, suicide-bomber way — and soft jihad, far more appealing to Westernized, educated Islamist ideologues.
Exploiting Westerners’ naïveté and obsessive race guilt, soft jihadists deliberately blur the line between the religion of Islam (which on no account must be “offended” in the West) and the demonstrably offensive political imperialism of Islamism.
Soft jihad cannot succeed without the complicity of naive elites, bedazzled by their own boundless compassion and humanity. Sadly, of these “useful idiots” in the corridors of wealth and power the West offers an embarras de richesses.
How does one recognize a soft jihadist? An infallible sign is her or his promotion of official shariah law.
A moderate Muslim seeks to live ……..
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