Posted by
Bert Chapman on Tuesday, March 08, 2011 6:30:43 PM
This coming Thursday, the House Homeland Security Committee will begin a series of hearings on Islamic extremism within the United States and the extent that American Muslims are or are not cooperating with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence efforts to combat such extremism. While many Muslims are honorable and law-abiding citizens, we cannot escape the reality that the primary threat to national security comes from terrorists who explicitly acknowledge the preeminent role the Islamic religion plays in motivating their political ideology. This ideology includes the desire to restore the caliphate and impose Sharia law on the entire world and is an ideology that cannot be reconciled with religious pluralism and constitutional democracy.
Terrorist apologist organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the usual leftist suspects and purveyors of multicultural mush are already trotting out the tired cliches of leftist rhetorical criticism. The usual canards such as racist, profiling, and McCarthyism have already oozed out of the mouths of diversity cult adherents. A Sunday rally at Times Square in New York featured assorted leftist dimwits spouting "Today, I'm a Muslim" when their actual knowledge of that religion's practices is miniscule and Islamic tenets are diametrically opposed to the lifestyles most of them live when they're not participating in the latest leftist cause du jour. In fact, these demonstrators knowledge of the threat Islamic extremism poses to the country and the global performance of Islamic extremists equals Charlie Sheen's knowledge of sobriety.
Besides the 9/11 attacks, we have witnessed the actual and attempted aims of Islamic extremism at Fort Hood, Texas, the arrest of the Lackawanna Six in New York State, arrests of perpetrators aspiring to blow up Times Square and Portland, Oregon, the efforts of Muslim extremists to go to Pakistan to train with Al Qaida, the attempted 2009 Christmas day bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit, the incitements to terrorism by American-Yemeni "cleric" Anwar al Awlaki who has made particularly effective use of the Internet to spew his dogma. There are also, undoubtedly, examples of Islamist terrorist plots that I'm not aware of due to my lack of access to classified information.
European countries have struggled with Islamist terrorism with the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, and Spain being examples. British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have all announced that multiculturalism must be abandoned as a failure. Undoubtedly, the problems these countries have had with Islamist extremists in their midst has motivated this policy shift. Sadly, there is no signs that this wisdom has reached the cranium of President Obama and his inept Attorney General Eric Holder who are more concerned with conjuring up historically dead racial hatred than honestly confronting the growing threat of Islamist terrorism within our country and against our interests internationally. Hopefully, the upcoming hearings by the House Homeland Security Committee will present a series of teachable moments for dimwitted Americans who think radical Islam does not pose an existential threat to our country.