If Barack Obama had any illusions that the death of Bin Laden meant the death of Jihadi Islamo-fascism, I am sure the events of April 2013 will make him understand that the worst is yet to come.
In the fight against the "malaria" of this jihadism, Obama and the West have been successful in killing many of the top "mosquitoes" including OBL, but their reluctance to drain the swamps for fear of offending the swamp keepers -- Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- has ensured every jihadi terrorist killed leaves behind enough larvae to harvest millions more.
From the attack in Algeria involving Canadians to the Boston and Bangalore bombings and now the Canadian alleged Via Rail terror plot, there is no sign that the worldwide jihad launched against the "kufaar" (non-Muslims) is going to abate in the near future.
The effort against jihadi terror is further handicapped by the conventional wisdom prevalent in most of the West that suggests some sort of appeasement will let us off the hook.
Just look at the way the RCMP handled the latest terror plot. They invited most of Canada's Islamist leadership, mosque leaders and clerics to a private briefing on the impending announcement of arrests, but shut the doors to Muslim organizations like the Muslim Canadian Congress and the Somali Canadian Congress that are actively fighting the jihadi ideology inside Canada.
Not only were liberal and secular Muslims shunned by the RCMP, one witness at the briefing tells me that the Islamic clerics at the meeting loudly protested any time the RCMP press release referred to the suspects as Muslim.
One of the participants who wishes to remain unnamed said, "the imams stood up and started protesting in an aggressive manner, demanding the RCMP change the text of their press release and not distribute it until they had approved it."
The leadership of the Islamic communities continues to believe that by simply bullying, and playing the race and victim card, they will be able to stem the anger against Islamic terror. But you can only fool so many for so long.
I was in India when I learned of the Boston bombing. What shocked me was how the terror attack was celebrated on the Facebook fan page of one of India's leading Islamist politicians, Akbaruddin Owaisi.
The first comment about the Boston deaths was "Very Good." Another exclaimed, "Allah hu akbar." The response from the administrator of the "Akbaruddin Owaisi -- Youth Icon" page was at first glance, quite reassuring... until the Jews were slammed:
"Innocent people killed in this, so sad...US is rule by jews (sic)".
And in Inspire, the English-language online magazine of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), some jihadis expressed jubilation. One wrote on the Shumoukh Al-Islam forum that even if it turns out that Al-Qaeda (i.e., AQAP) was not behind the attack, the mere possibility that someone out there might have used information from Inspire to carry out the attack is itself an achievement for Al-Qaeda. He went on to consider what would happen if similar IEDs were to be placed in stadiums and movie theatres.
Another jihadi on Shumoukh, "Turkestan1," posted graphic images of the aftermath of the Boston bombing, including one of a young man with both legs blown off being rushed from the scene; on this image, he commented, "Best image from Boston explosions."
On the Ansar Al-Mujahideen English Forum (AMEF), jihadis welcomed the attack, calling it "great news," and prayed that it was "the result of planning from our Mujahideen and Ansaar [i.e. supporters]."
While the online jihadis celebrated, others were busy creating a smokescreen. In a panel discussion on India's NDTV a professor of Islamic Studies at India's Jamia Milli Islamia University told me I was wrong in my assessment of the attack:
"It is not certain that these people are Jihadis."
Prof Akhtarul Wasey, who is a prominent Indian Muslims scholar and who was instrumental in shutting down my talk at his university, then went on to repeat the now familiar mantra of every Islamic leader:
"This [bombing in Boston] is not jihad... jihad is waged against oneself."
Prof. Wasey is not alone. Across the globe, apologists of Islamism have repeated this line ad nauseum -- Jihad is not holy Islamic war, but rather a struggle of a Muslim against his own self.
The trouble is this explanation is not true, yet is repeatedly emphasized to journalists as means of deflecting the real challenge while leaving the non-Muslim either confused or bitter.
To understand the conventional and political meaning of the word "jihad," we need to go to the sources of political Islam or Islamism. In his book Towards Understanding Islam, the late Syed Maudoodi, the Benito Mussolini of the world Islamofascist movement, exhorts ordinary Muslims to wage war and launch jihad, as in armed struggle, against non-Muslims.
Maududi clarifies:
"Jihad is part of this overall defence of Islam," he writes. In case the reader is left with any doubt about the meaning of the word 'jihad.' In the language of the Divine Law, this word (jihad) is used specifically for the war that is waged solely in the name of God against those who perpetrate oppression as enemies of Islam. This supreme sacrifice is the responsibility of all Muslims."
Maududi goes on to label Muslims who refuse the call to armed jihad as apostates:
"Jihad is as much a primary duty as are daily prayers or fasting. One who avoids it is a sinner. His every claim to being a Muslim is doubtful. He is plainly a hypocrite who fails in the test of sincerity and all his acts of worship are a sham, a worthless, hollow show of deception."
If Maududi's exhortations are not enough to motivate Muslims to conduct acts of terror, we have the words of the late Hassan al-Banna being distributed in our schools and universities. Al-Banna makes it quite clear that the word "jihad" means armed conflict. He mocks those who claim jihad is merely an internal struggle. Al-Banna says this redefinition of the term "jihad" is a conspiracy so that "Muslims should become negligent."
And here is what Syed Qutb, another Egyptian stalwart of the Islamist movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, writes in his seminal work on Islam and its relationship with the West, Milestones:
"A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it [a non-Muslim country], whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interests are located."
If the Indian professor was playing word games with me to throw a smokescreen over hard facts, a cleric in Egypt was more forthcoming.
In an interview on Tahrir TV on April 16, 2013, Egyptian cleric Sheikh Murgan Salem told the host:
"Obviously, I do not know who carried out that operation, but if it was done by the mujahedeen [jihadis], it serves as a message to America and the West: We are still alive. Contrary to what you say, we have not died. The [Americans] wanted to send a message to the entire world that they had finished off the mujahedeen -- not just the mujahedeen of Al-Qaeda, but the mujahedeen all over the world. I do not know who carried out this attack, but if it was indeed the mujahedeen, it was meant as a clear message to America and to the West."
While the jihadi terrorists plan our murder, it seems the West is paralyzed and unable to muster the courage to stand up to the ideology of jihad and confront it with vigour.
Liberal leader Justin Trudeau may be searching for "root causes," but some of us Muslims who are not blinded by a hate of the West know the root cause is Islamism -- political Islam -- that seeks to destroy the West and establish an Islamic supremacist caliphate.
Far fetched, you may say, but who would have believed in the days after 9/11 that 12 years later the enemy would still be able to strike inside our country, a feat even the Nazis could not accomplish?
Its time to pay attention to the likes of Andrew McCarthy, the man who headed the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others.
Last week McCarthy wrote:
"We are in a war driven by ideology. 'Violent extremism,' which is the label the government and the commentariat prefer to put on our enemies, is not an ideology -- it is the brutality that radical ideologies yield. Our enemies' ideology is Islamic supremacism. To challenge and defeat an ideological movement, you have to understand and confront their vision of the world. Imposing your own assumptions and biases will not do. Islamic supremacists do not see a world of Westphalian nation-states. They do not distinguish between Russia and America the way they distinguish between Muslims and non-Muslims. Their ideology frames matters as Dar al-Islam versus Dar al-Harb: the realm of Islam in a fight to the death against the realm of war -- which is everyone and everyplace else."
