We Think Bullets Will Defeat Radical Islam’s Ideas – Wrong

The civilized world naturally believes that the bombing and slaughter of innocent civilians by Islamic terrorists is atrocious. In an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali published in the Wall Street Journal April 27, 2017, by Tunku Varadarajan of Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, we are now told terrorism is only a tactic in a much larger ideological war; Islam can take America from the inside, and if we don’t act, Shariah Law will govern the country.
Ms. Ali is an outspoken messenger of the danger posed to Western society by Islamic extremism, and because of her message, she can go nowhere without a bodyguard, right here in America. In her recently published book, “The Challenge of Dawa,” she informs her readers of the never-ending, “worldwide ideological campaign waged by Islamists as a complement to jihad.” Her aim is to convince our government to awaken to the dangers and to call on Muslims to reform Islam into the gentler version which she says was Muhammad’s original idea, and to do so while there is time.
Are we playing a Whack-A-Mole game,
and ignoring the ideological enemy in plain sight?
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Militant Islam’s long-range goal, she writes, is “to destroy the political institutions of a free society and replace them with Shariah.” It is a “never-ending process…It ends when an Islamic utopia is achieved. Shariah everywhere!”
Ali sees the West as being misguided, by focusing on the terror, as opposed to the underlying ideology, the dawa. As such, we are playing a Whack-A-Mole game, and ignoring the enemy which is in plain sight, the activists in the families, in the schools, universities, prisons and the military. Their program is contrary to the U.S. Constitution, to our religious pluralism, core rights, equality of men and women, etc. They are a Trojan horse representing themselves as a religion and enjoying religious protections while concealing their political movement.
They are an existential threat “working overtime to prevent the assimilation of Muslims into Western societies. It is assimilation versus dawa. There is a notion of ‘cocooning,’ by which Islamists tell Muslim families to cocoon their children from Western society. This can’t be allowed to happen.”
Regarding the Muslim youth, she says, “We want these children to be exposed to critical thinking, freedom, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the rights of women.”
In 2013, when Ali applied for U.S. citizenship, she was asked,
“Are you or have you ever been a communist?” Potential immigrants from Pakistan or Bangladesh, for instance, should have to answer such questions as, “Are you a member of the Jamat?” If they’re from the Middle East you ask them about the Muslim Brotherhood, “or any other similar group,” so there’s no loophole.”
Ali says that we have to wake up to the problem; military force doesn’t work against such a threat. “We’re dealing here with a lethal ideological movement, and all we are using is surveillance and military means.”
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Fortunately for us all, there are people like Ali who are willing to risk their lives to get messages out against things which they profoundly believe to be harmful to us all; people unwilling to integrate into American society, to learn the English language and support our Constitution should be excluded. It behooves our nation to know the facts, and to take appropriate action.
Art Hall
From the Bible: A new command I give you: Love one another. As I (Christ) have loved you, so you must love one another. John 13:34