Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has set the bar for U.S. politicians to speak with clarity and accuracy about the threat posed by the Islamic supremacist code its adherents call shariah. In a speech at the Henry Jackson Society in London, Gov. Jindal told the truth about this totalitarian ideology in a manner reminiscent of the Society’s namesake’s robust stance against communism during the Cold War.
The Louisiana Republican is widely believed to be considering a presidential bid in 2016. That makes all the more extraordinary the forthrightness and courageousness of his remarks at a time when the British government, our own, and virtually all others in the West persist in dissembling about the nature and wellspring of the “terrorism” or, worse yet, “violent extremism” we predominantly face today. It is actually global jihad, and it is animated by shariah.
The governor hit these realities directly – and the danger of ignoring them:
We have to stop pretending that right and wrong do not exist. For example – Shariah law is not just different than our law, it’s not just a cultural difference, it is oppression and it is wrong. It subjugates women and treats them as property, and it is antithetical to valuing all of human life equally. It is the very definition of oppression. We must stop pretending otherwise.
Gov. Jindal then called out those – Muslim and non-Muslim, alike – who tolerate, or obscure, shariah’s agenda of Islamic supremacism and jihad conducted to achieve it:
A so-called religion that allows for and endorses killing those who oppose it is not a religion at all, it is a terrorist movement. I do continue to believe and hope that most Muslims oppose these bloodthirsty acts of terror.
But that is not the point. Whether they do or not, the point is that radical Islamists do advocate the slaughter of those who reject their views. Free peoples everywhere must not pretend otherwise and must not coddle those who hold these views. And they must have courage.
Particularly impressive was the governor’s calling out of the authorities and leaders of Islam if they condone, implicitly or explicitly, jihadist behavior:
Let’s be honest here, Islam has a problem. If Islam does not support what is happening in the name of Islam, then they need to stand up and stop it. Many Islamic leaders argue that these are the acts of a radical few.
Ok, it is their problem, and they need to deal with it. Muslim leaders must make clear that anyone who commits acts of terror in the name of Islam is in fact not practicing Islam at all. If they refuse to say this, then they are condoning these acts of barbarism. There is no middle ground.
Specifically, Muslim leaders need to condemn anyone who commits these acts of violence and clearly state that these people are evil and are enemies of Islam.
It’s not enough to simply condemn violence, they must stand up and loudly proclaim that these people are not martyrs who will receive a reward in the afterlife, and rather they are murderers who are going to hell.
If they refuse to do that, then they are part of the problem. There is no middle ground here.
With his speech in London, Governor Jindal has thrust himself into the forefront of the national political debate about the central security threat of our time. He has done so with characteristic intellect, eloquence and common sense. It will resonate powerfully with the American people and could alter permanently the dynamics of a political environment in which actual and aspiring leaders of both parties have largely chosen the easy course when it comes to Islam of intellectual sloth (“political correctness”), vapid, misleading, or downright dishonest rhetoric (generally conforming, whether acknowledged or not, to shariah blasphemy codes) and elitist theories completely unmoored from reality.
The next order of business is to operationalize Gov. Jindal’s insights and effect a national course-correction so as to assure the survival of our constitutional Republic in the face of the global jihad movement and its shariah doctrine. A place to start would be by adopting the new “Secure Freedom Strategy” unveiled on Friday by a “Tiger Team” sponsored by the Center for Security Policy. For reasons the governor articulated so well, there isn’t a moment to lose.