Islam and my stolen freedoms

Monday, August 14, 2006 12:33 PM
Over the weekend I tried to give the news a rest, not much luck since current events and history are my forte. But while lightly watching the news, I saw the stories cropping up about what else - Islam. Personally, I hate talking about Islam all the time, but inside, I know that Islam is becoming the greatest threat to my way of life. I don't know about you dear reader, but for me and what I like out of life, Islam has become a threat. There's no two ways about it. There's no utopian dream of religions living together in peace, especially ones so diverse in their day to day beliefs. Israel was the one place that the most extreme of religious beliefs had a chance of coexistence, but the growing fanaticism within Islam will not allow it. The Jewish State did everything within common sense possible reason to facilitate growth and cohesion between the two religions. Islam would not allow peace a chance. I wish Islam was truely as religion of peace, love, and tolerance, but as the sun rises everyday, we see bombings and killings and 'attempts' that are proving a growing threat to world wide safety and peace. Today the following article appeared on the WND website:
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria
Britain's struggle to contain Muslim extremism points up a chilling trend across Europe: the rise of radical Islam, and with it, a willingness among a small but dangerous minority of young people to answer the call to jihad. From the squalid suburbs north of Paris to the gritty streets of Sarajevo, young, disaffected Muslims are increasingly receptive to hard-liners looking to recruit foot soldiers for holy war, European counterterrorism officials and religious leaders warn.
The continent, they caution, remains vulnerable to attacks by homegrown militants despite the heightened security and attempts at inter-religious dialogue that followed the deadly 2004 train bombings in Madrid and last year's suicide attacks in London.
"Their numbers are still relatively small, but I fear they could become larger as more young Muslims embrace militancy," said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Islamic studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
Gerges calls it "the jihad generation": converts to extremism in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and elsewhere who are becoming radicalized _ partly in response to the conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East _ and are spawning "self-generating" networks and cells.
"They're not part of al-Qaida, but in their own eyes, they are foot soldiers" who share Osama bin Laden's ideology, he said.
Little is known of what may have motivated the 23 suspects in British police custody to allegedly plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners with liquid explosives. But many in their middle and working class neighborhoods said the communities have become alienated by U.S. and British policy in the Middle East.
"Governments in Europe insist this is a problem of ideology, but the real cause of this phenomenon is the political crisis that is sweeping the world with the war in Iraq and the situation in Palestine," said Azzam Tamimi, director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought. Like the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the London bombings on July 7, 2005, "should have been lessons for everybody _ that government policies endanger the security of everyone," Tamimi said. "The root cause has never been addressed. Unless they open a debate, the threat will never go away."
Recruiters for hard-line Islamist groups can turn some Muslim youths with little interest in religion into extremists in a matter of weeks, contends Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, head of France's counterterrorism agency. An estimated 5,000 French Muslims embrace extremist Islam, according to a 2005 police intelligence report. France is home to about 5 million Muslims, the largest Islamic community in western Europe, and French authorities claimed to dismantle several cells earlier this year. "Young people who are indifferent to religion fall in a matter of weeks into the toughest kind of Islam and, almost without any transition, into the most worrisome kind of activism," Bousquet de Florian told the newspaper Le Parisien last month. But the rise of homegrown extremists _ many of whom operate in small, close-knit circles difficult for law enforcement to penetrate _ has complicated counterterrorism efforts in many countries. The Netherlands has been on high alert since a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004. Spanish authorities have been monitoring some 250 suspected Islamic radicals, and in Bosnia five men are on trial for allegedly plotting an attack on an unidentified European country _ significantly, one with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. An open letter published this weekend by prominent British Islamic groups said the "debacle in Iraq" and the failure to quickly secure a cease-fire in southern Lebanon as Israel waged a military campaign against Hezbollah militants has made Britain a target. Britain's archbishop of York, the Most Rev. John Sentamu, said he thinks disenfranchised young Muslims turn to extremism not because of Islam but "because they are alienated, because they have been given a vision which is so imaginatively wicked."
Europe will soon become a battle ground again, possibly within the next ten years if Iran's march to Middle East domination is not stopped. Iran will build the next great Persian Empire since Darius III, with Amhadinejad believing he's the next Cyrus who holds the 'four rims of the earth'. Europe has historically been a battle ground and the next war will wipe civilization from the map and only a new dark age will exist. Europe is at a crossroads in it's history, and the E.U. had better make some sound, wise, and quick decisive decisions on it's future. Back to my thoughts on the weekend, my stolen freedoms. If I, a born, raised, retired U.S. military veteran American, board an American airliner in my town here, I can't take a plastic bottle of water that I would buy off the shelve. Why....Islam. Any elderly citizen with a hip replacement is automatically searched at airports, why....Islam. The couple in Britain with an infant were going to use that infant as a ruse to get explosive chemicals on board an airliner, not only killed everyone else on that flight, but their own infant child..why....Islam. All Americans have lost freedoms since September 11th, 2001. Why......Islam. I am unable to stick my head in the sand no more and try to rationalize that Islam is a coexistence religion of peace and that any muslim neighbor can be completely trustworthy anymore. The World's best chance and Islam's best chance, is for all muslims to move to the Middle East and over the next hundred years, see if Islam and the World can coexist. Until Islam can accept and let live all other religions, political beliefs, and ways of life, there will be no World Peace. Until the next terror strike in the U.S., this is my last posting about Islam. I'm sick of talking about the growing facts of what is so self evident. Dear reader, you know what needs to be done, have the courage to do it.