Youssef M. Ibrahim Worries About What the Jihadis have Wrought

Yussef Ibrahim, writing in the Middle East Times, fears that the Jihadis have wakened a sleeping giant and that Islam as a whole shall suffer for it.

He writes:

The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers, not by US or British soldiers...., we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life. If this is jihad someone got his religious education completely upside down.

[We see] Palestinian armed groups fighting one another - Hamas against Fatah and all against the Palestinian Authority. All have rendered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas impotent and have diminished the world's respect and sympathy for Palestinian sufferings....

Pakistani and other Muslims with British citizenship blew up tube stations in the name of Islam;[and in Madrid] Muslim jihadis blew up train stations killing 160 people and wounding a few thousands.

The excuse in all the above cases was the war in Iraq, but let us not forget that in September 2001, long before Iraq, Osama Bin Laden proudly announced that he ordered the killing of some 3,000 in the United States, in the name of avenging Islam. Let us not forget that the killing began a long time before the invasion of Iraq.

Indeed, jihadis have been killing for a decade in the name of Islam. They killed innocent tourists and natives in Morocco and Egypt, in Africa, in Indonesia and in Yemen, all done in the name of Islam by Muslims who say that they are better than all other Muslims. They killed in India, in Thailand and are now talking of killing in Germany and Denmark and so on. There were attacks with bombs that killed scores inside Shia and Sunni mosques, inside churches and inside synagogues in Turkey and Tunisia, with Muslim preachers saying that it is okay to kill Jews and Christians - the so called infidels.
....

The Muslim fundamentalist who attacked the Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands, stabbed him more than 23 times then cut his throat. He recently proudly proclaimed at his trial: "I did it because my religion - Islam - dictated it and I would do it again if were free." Which preacher told this guy this is Islam? That preacher should be in jail with him.

Do the cowardly jihadis who recruit suicide bombers really think that they will force the US Army and British troops out of Iraq by killing hundreds of innocent Iraqis? US troops now have bases and operate in Iraq but also from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman.

The only accomplishment of jihadis is that now they have aroused the great "Western Tiger".

Read the whole thing here.

Ibrahim is right in that the West is now united as never before against the Muslim radicals. At first western powers ignored Islamic radicalism and after 9/11 they blamed Bush and the US, but attacks in Spain and especially Britain have wakened them to the real nature of the threat they face. I think he's wrong, though, to fear that all Muslims will face the wrath of the West.

I fear those naïve Muslims who think that they are beating the West have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.

He reminds me here of a Columbia scholar with whom I talked about a month after 9/11 who was outraged that there had been more than 300 instances reported in which Muslims in America had experienced fear or discomfort interacting with Americans. I noted at the time that in a population of 300 million people that was literally a one in a million occurance and that to date nobody had been killed. In fact, Americans since 9/11 have displayed almost superhuman restraint -- far more than Europeans. Americans at least [excepting some talk show morons] seem to have little trouble distinguishing between the Jihadi death cult and Muslims in general.

Whether or not their anxiety is real or just a rhetorical conceit, Muslims living in the West are at far less peril than those living in the Middle East or Asia.

On this, though, I agree with Ibrahim. When the West finally gets its act together, it will be unbeatable.

car bombs and suicide bombers here and there will be no match for the arsenal that those Westerners are putting together - an arsenal of laws, intelligence pooling, surveillance by satellites, armies of special forces and indeed, allies inside the Arab world who are tired of having their lives disrupted by demented so-called jihadis or those bearded preachers who, under the guise of preaching, do little to teach and much to ignite the fire, those who know little about Islam and nothing about humanity.

As I have often said, this is not a clash of civilizations -- it is a war on civilization. Slowly but surely the civilized world (Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu, and secularist) is coming together to crush this virulent infestation that seeks to undo a millenium of human progress.