Insidious, Non-violent Jihad–More Dangerous than Violence

I am enormously thankful that the Ground Zero Mosque (GZM) debate is still raging. It is the first “stealth Jihad” issue that promises to help bridge the gap between Right and Left. If we check our egos at the door, right and wrong will trump Right and Left every time. As I pointed out in “Black and White,” my first blog for BigPeace, this GZM issue is so black and white that even left-leaning independents and liberals cannot in good conscience support it. There are already one hundred mosques in Manhattan; the only reasons to place a giant mosque at Ground Zero are built on a foundation of inexcusable insensitivity or non-violent Islamic extremism.

The far left ideology that encourages a Muslim center, mosque, shrine, or triumphalist structure of any kind at this consecrated ground is simply wrong. There, I said it. It’s not really a partisan issue; it’s a lucid, rational, and logical one. It’s a sad commentary that even when we know right from wrong, we are pulled Right and Left. The New York Times Magazine Sunday and TIME (current cover story: “Is America Islamophobic?”), both media giants with “Time” in their name are embarrassingly anachronistic with this week’s articles accusing all of us critical of a Muslim shrine at Ground Zero as being xenophobic. They will fail to deflect the real issue with their blatantly false charges of bigotry as their magic pens of influence finally wane due to this lightening rod GZM issue awakening America.

I beseech conservatives to refrain from gloating now that a clear majority of Americans are on their side of this issue; it isn’t easy for liberals to embrace the right position when it is the Right position. In fairness, conservatives would struggle if the situation were reversed. With this in mind, a little humility can help narrow an ideological chasm that is truly our greatest threat to establishing a re-united America that can never be defeated. (Re-United States, CamHouse Press 2010)

However, and for our less conservative brethren who don’t quite get it yet, I’d like to present a little Poli-Sci lesson:

One of our greatest misconceptions in America is that Islamic extremism is defined by terror. In fact, it is not. Terrorism is just one tool in the Jihadist’s armament. Jihad has two faces: violent and nonviolent, but each shares the same goal or world vision–that ancient Shari’a law and culture must have dominion over all peoples. This is non-negotiable and America is the greatest impediment to this vision; this therefore places us squarely in the gun sights of all Islamists. The impatient Islamist uses terrorism, but the patient Islamist uses slow cultural transformation and “lawfare” to steadily erode the West’s mostly Christian culture and replace it with one that is progressively more Islamic in nature.

I believe that this slow Jihad poses the greater threat. Terrorism elicits some type of reaction from us; slow Jihad rarely does. Although terror is frightening, deadly to its ill-fated victims, and capable of causing serious economic havoc, it does not pose an existential threat to us. This is not say that we are not in danger of losing a city–or more likely, two or three, as Al Qaeda loves simultaneous strikes–to a radiological-dirty bomb or some other nefarious act, but they will never defeat us militarily. Slow Jihad flies under the radar and therefore fails to cause us to react–this is a perilous strategy that does threaten our freedom and our way of life.

The GZM is a great example of the slice-by-slice approach to defeating a much stronger enemy; slice-by-slice doesn’t elicit much reaction from us. Toss in a little politically-correct appeasement and accusations of anti-multiculturalism or bigotry, and we barely react at all. And when we do, the mainstream media just labels it “Islamophobia.” The way I see it, the Left can either continue to function as the unwitting mercenary army of our Islamist enemy, or they can do the right thing–in this case, join us in vigorous opposition to the GZM. Lesson over.