|
Islamic extremism alive right here in the U.S
By Tommy Felts
Contributor
Published November 17, 2009
America is at war.
So why are we afraid to admit who or what we’re fighting?
The shootings earlier this month at Fort Hood, in which a Muslim Army psychiatrist’s killing spree left at least 13 dead and 29 wounded, should serve as a reminder that the United States has a violent and deadly enemy: Islamic extremism.
To hear some tell it, however, the real victims of the Fort Hood attack are U.S. Muslims who now face a potential backlash because of the shooter’s Islamic religion. (For the record, Muslims who want to kill the rest of us are our enemies; those who don’t should be treated with the same respect we give our Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and atheist neighbors.)
They say the culprit in the Fort Hood shootings was mental illness, not Islam nor even some virulent strain of the religion that tells followers it’s perfectly OK to massacre anyone who doesn’t believe in their particular brand of Allah.
“This is in no way a reflection of Islam any more than Timothy McVeigh’s actions are a reflection of Christianity,” U.S. Rep. Andre Carson, D-Indiana, said, comparing the Fort Hood attacker to the Oklahoma City bomber who killed 168 people in 1995. Carson is one of two Muslims serving in Congress.
But an investigation into the radical ties of the shooter — Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — seems to be revealing a very clear picture of his motivations, exposing that Islamic extremism was indeed the driving force behind his rampage.
Is this danger a surprise?
It shouldn’t be.
Who attempted to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993?
Who succeeded in 2001?
Who killed 19 U.S. service members in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and hundreds of civilians in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania?
Who cost thousands of U.S. military members their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Who has terrified the world for the past 20 years with attacks at resorts, restaurants, motels, nightclubs, temples, train stations and government buildings in such far-flung places as Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Morocco, Russia, Israel and India?
The answer to all of the above: Islamic extremists.
So why is it so difficult for us to accept the reality that Islamic extremism poses a very real threat to the United States and, indeed, the world?
Is it political correctness run amok?
People like to say, “Islam is a religion of peace” — because they rightly don’t want to implicate all Muslims in the heinous crimes of a few — but then they tip-toe around every Muslim they meet because they secretly think each one could be a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off.
Look to Hollywood for this kind of PC hypocrisy laced with fear.
Film director Roland Emmerich admitted early this month (before the shootings at Fort Hood) that the “one place not destroyed” in his new end-of-the-world disaster flick, “2012,” was the Kaaba — a cube-shaped structure at the center of Mecca that is a key holy site for Islam.
So why not destroy the Kaaba when the movie’s trailers reveal that the film depicts the towering, 130-foot-tall Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro disintegrating, the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican crushing churchgoers and (stop reading if you’re a worshipper of Obama) the White House getting smashed by an aircraft carrier?
Perhaps we should let Emmerich explain.
“You can actually let Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have ... a fatwa,” the filmmaker told scifiwire.com.
By “fatwa,” Emmerich is using a layman’s term for a religious death sentence issued for offending the Islamic faith. (The term is not entirely accurate but gets the point across.)
Emmerich fears winding up like Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was ritualistically murdered in 2004 after making a movie that examined the treatment of Muslim women and was seen as being critical of Islam.
Emmerich fears the violent backlash Dutch and other European cartoonists faced in 2005 after they printed depictions of the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
Emmerich fears Islamic extremism.
And he’s right to do so ... but he shouldn’t let that fear subdue him.
Religious fanatics of any sort are a dangerous lot. But give them power and you get countries where people get stoned for adultery, beheaded for being gay or assaulted with acid for daring to attend school (females only, of course).
Give them a holy war juiced by radical religious leaders who want to wipe non-believers off the face of the earth and you get barbaric attacks that threaten the civilized world.
Islamic extremism isn’t something we can afford to simply ignore.
We’re at war. And they clearly haven’t forgotten.
Have we?
Tommy Felts is an award-winning freelance columnist based in the Kansas City area. He can be reached by e-mail at tommyfelts(at)hotmail.com.
Share |
Save |
Mail |
Print |
Letter
|
|
 |
|
|
