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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

March 2011

How Goes Terrorism Around the World?


Every year, I revisit such issues as “How Goes Democracy Around the World,” “Status of Women,” and “Terrorism Inc.” This column surveys the condition of Militant Islam (Islamism) for the past year.

The term “Islamist” does not refer to ordinary Muslims. It has a specific definition. Islamism is a political ideology that uses a particular interpretation of Islam as its theology—with lessons from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia as its political methodology. This is “Islamo-fascism.”

Islamists aspire to world rule in which the constitution will be the Koran and the ruler will be the Caliph—a revival of what they imagine the earliest years of Islam. I see no reason not to believe what they say they want.

Among their frequent intentions is to convert everyone in the world to Islam—or make them dhimmi (subject class). Another is to exterminate Jews and Hindus (pigs and idolators) wherever they can. A third is to maintain women as property. These values are at serious odds with the modern world in which religion and state are separated, women equal under the law, and freedom of speech and expression protected by law. The Islamists condemn these modern values and put their views into action.

• Pakistan. The governor of the Punjab province was assassinated by one of his bodyguards who said the governor “insulted Islam.” His insult: the governor criticized the “blasphemy law” that mandates death by stoning for anyone who “insults” Islam. A second murder followed: that of the only Christian member of parliament who also condemned the blasphemy law. Pakistan’s cowardly government is afraid of changing this law because of violent street mobs.

• Sweden and Denmark. This same blasphemy nonsense has motivated Islamists to try to murder two cartoonists who “insulted Islam” by depicting Mohammad in less than admiring terms. The Islamists want to murder them for calling Islam “murderous.” Imaging that!

• Egypt. Egypt, once a Christian country, now has only 10 percent (maybe) of the population left as Christian. It used to have a Jewish population too—but not since 1954. Before the recent demonstrations, Christians were under attack, churches burned, people murdered, and the Christian community started to fight back. The Mubarak government that was supposed to protect them was sometimes complicit in the attacks. In a new democratic Egypt, what will be the position of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a minority party, on how minorities, women, and the treaty with Israel are treated? How will Egyptians vote?

• Turkey. The Economist, which I otherwise admire, insists that Turkey is “mildly Islamist.” A Turkish reformer in this “mildly Islamist” country has suggested that Islam can be modernized by eliminating the outdated materials in the Koran, Hadith, and Shariah—such as the subjection of women, cutting off hands of thieves, and other such practices. He has been threatened with death by mobs of Islamists who think that any changes are “insulting” to Islam.

• Jordan. There was once a TV women’s program that brought up the rampant wife abuse and the horror of honor killings—only to be met by furious attacks by Islamists who found these issues “insulting to Islam.” Her program was taken off the air.

• Europe and the United States. Militants continue to try for another big attack somewhere (and everywhere) in the western world to show that they can. Since 9/11 there have been 43 homegrown violent jihadist plots or attacks in the United States. Between May, 2009 and November 2010, arrests were made for 22 homegrown jihadists inspired terrorist plots by American citizens or legal permanent residents. (Jerome Bjelopera and Mark Randol, "American Jihadist Terrorism" Combatting a Complex Threat." Congressional Research Service, 12/7/2010)

So far, intelligence authorities have stopped most of them from carrying out their plans—and, fortunately for us, some of these wanabe killers have been turned in by other Muslims who are embarrassed by these attempts. That is the good news! Secular Muslims do not want these thugs to prevail because they know that they themselves would be at the receiving end of Islamo-fascism.

670 words
Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of How Do You Know That? You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

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