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"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

November 2014

The Elephant in the Room: The War Without a Name

As I watched the unfolding drama of an attack on the Canadian Parliament, I immediately suspected that the killer (or killers) were Muslims, probably converts. It took the rest of the day to confirm something that seems to make many in the press uncomfortable. The press, government officials (our own and other democratic leaders), academics, and the "spokesmen" for Islam (a religion that has no official leadership) tap-dance around trying to avoid the word "Muslim." "These violent people are not real Muslims," they claim, "and religion is not motivating their actions." How long will this elephant stand there before somebody notices?

The attackers themselves identify themselves not only as Muslims, but as the only "correct" Muslims. They claim that they do their killing in the name of Allah. A week before the Ottawa attack, another Muslim convert (Martin Couture-Rouleau) was shot and killed after he rammed his car into two Canadian soldiers. He had told a 911 operator before the attack that he was acting in the name of Allah. Of course, lone wolf actions are not up to the chaos of 9/11 or the siege of Mumbai a few years ago, but they raise an even more serious issue: public mistrust of their Muslim populations. We cannot tip-toe around this. This mistrust sweeps up both good and bad Muslims.

The US has also seen a spate of lone wolf killings by Muslim converts. Alton Nolen beheaded a co-worker and attacked another after being fired. His own Facebook included a picture of a beheading, yet the crime was called "workplace violence." A Seattle man, Ali Muhammad Brown, murdered four people in a killing spree, claiming that he was "living in the cause of Allah." Yet neither of these monsters had been accused of terrorism.

It is estimated by experts that only five percent of Muslims around the world are jihadists or in sympathy with violent Islam. This does not sound like much until you realize that five percent of one billion Muslims (again, a guess) is 50 million people! And what about the other 95 percent? How can we tell the good from the bad? Few of the followers of the "peace" part of the "Religion of Peace" dare to speak up, are not organized, and cannot dismiss the legitimacy of following the model of the Prophet's final ten years as a warlord.

Muslims migrate to the Western world because their lives in their native lands are impossible. They do not migrate to other Muslim countries, nor do their native countries welcome immigrants who are not Muslim. Many do not adhere to Human Rights values on any level. Yet some children of these economic refugees either reject Western culture or insist on replacing it with Islamic rules and customs or, in some cases actually reverse the immigration by going back to Muslim lands to fight jihad, or with girls, to bear jihadi babies.

One more touchy issue is that of refugees. Secretary of State Kerry actually believes that the "Palestinian refugees" are the grievance that motivates ISIS and all the jihadis. Somebody here does not know how to count. Refugees and internally displaced persons in the Muslim world dwarf the number and conditions of Palestinian refugees, the one group still supported by the UN with money and goods. How about Afghanistan, with 648,147; Iraq with 1,800,000; Libya with 79,135; Pakistan with 2,363,993; Somalia with 1,135,416; ;Syria with 11,000,000; Yemen with 547,890; and a grand total of 17,574,581? [Middle East Forum, October 20, 2014.]

The Muslim world is coming apart, and we cannot ignore that Militant Islam has declared war on us and on their less militant co-religionists.

Western governments recognize that some living among us mean us harm. They are now trying to watch the poisonous chat rooms, watch who is traveling to Yemen, Syria, or Turkey to join the jihad and either stop them or jail them upon their return, and keep an eye on the not-so-innocent radicalization of mosques and prisons. Yes, we are sacrificing some of our civil liberties, but it is either that or more decapitations at home or abroad.

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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

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