“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”
Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)
Islam means “submission to the will of God”; its fundamental tenet, “There is only one God, and Muhammad is his prophet.”
Since the September 11th attacks, a debate has raged over whether Islam is a “religion of peace” as “moderate” Muslim and many politicians, including Presidents Bush and Obama, assert … or whether it condones violence or is even a blueprint for a political theocracy.
Reading the Qur’an, there are passages which advocate peace and tolerance while others justify the use of violence, especially toward non-believers.
In efforts to differentiate between Islamic terrorists and non-violent Muslims, wishful thinking has often trumped the reality that the fundamentalists believe their radical interpretations the Qur’an are the literal word of God and their Prophet and demand the complete “submission” to the religious and political Islamization of the world under Sharia law!
Numerous multi-national intelligence studies and results from polls conducted by Pew Research, Zogby, the British Federation of Student Islamic Societies and other credible organizations indicate 6% – 40% of Muslims are sympathetic toward, if not supportive of, the goals and tactics of radical Islamists and/or state they would not report fellow Muslims they suspected of plotting terrorist attacks.
The vast majorities of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims, particularly in Western countries, are peaceful; democratic; tolerant of other cultures, legal systems and religions; and reject violence. However, even the most conservative poll results suggest 100 million Muslims pose a clear and present danger to both Western civilization and other Muslims.
History has demonstrated small numbers of dedicated radical extremists can rewrite history and precipitate the mass slaughter of millions when the silence, inaction or apathy of the majority provides fertile grounds and uncontested opportunities for them to commit such atrocities.
• Only 8 (of 80) million Germans joined the NAZI Party. Yet they systematically exterminated 13 million people and were directly and indirectly responsible for another 45-50 million World War II deaths.
• The majority of Japanese in the 1930s were not war-mongers. Still Japan managed to slaughter 12 million people in their march across Southeast Asia.
• Under Stalin 20-40 million people were murdered or starved despite the vast majority of Russians simply wanting to survive and a better life.
• Mao’s Cultural Revolution caused the deaths of 30 million individuals; although even today only 5% of the country’s 1.7 billion people belong to the Communist Party.
• Cambodia’s minority Khmer Rouge murdered 3 million people.
• Rwanda’s Tutsis, 14% of its population, massacred 800,000 in just 100 days.
• In Nigeria, population 173 million, fewer than 10,000 Boko Haram Islamic extremists have slaughtered 5,000-10,000 people and kidnapped perhaps 1,000 more.
• Islamic sympathizer Major Hasan murdered 13 soldiers at Ft, Hood (population 53,000) while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”; tragically classified by the Administration and Army as a “work place incident”.
• Just 19 Islamic terrorists, out of more than 3 million Muslims in the United States changed the world on 9/11.; after which millions of Muslims danced in the streets in parts of the Middle East and Asia.
• Less than 30,000 ISIL/ISIS fanatics have butchered their way through large portions of Iraq and Syria (combined populations of 50 million) shooting, beheading and immolating perhaps 20,000, mostly Muslims, and destroying the irreplaceable antiquity of these countries’ ancient civilizations.
Despite their overwhelming numbers, the majorities in these countries were historically irrelevant as they ignored or neglected halting such madness.
Peaceful Muslim communities too often fail to aggressively identify, stop and root out the extremists in their midst.
During the 1930s, of the few in England read “Mein Kampf”, one man believed Hitler meant exactly what he wrote. Winston Churchill was subsequently proven right!
It is an inconvenient truth that, as with most Britons prior to World War II, too many politically-correct politicians, citizen apologists and high-profile Muslim spokespersons put their faith in pledges of “peace in our time” while failing to comprehend that Islamic extremists mean exactly what they say with respect to their vision of creating a political theocracy under a world caliphate and that time is on their side!
