This past week I have, more or less back to back, spoken at two conferences: the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference in The Hague, and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture’s Restoration Weekend in Phoenix, Arizona. I hope to be writing a bit here about both as soon as time permits, but briefly: in my addresses at both conferences I emphasized the importance of realizing that the global jihad is not being advanced only by military means, and that the official refusal to acknowledge that many share the goals of the mujahedin but are pursuing them by peaceful means is hindering our defense against that particular line of attack.
To wit: in the course of these travels, which for various reasons involved stops in some other places as well, I took a cab in an American city. The driver was a Muslim who, after peering at me for awhile in the rearview mirror, advanced the theory that I was a Pakistani Muslim. I let him talk, and didn’t hasten to reveal to him my true identity; I did tell him I was not a Muslim, but he then simply assumed that I had lapsed and began exhorting me to read the Qur’an and return to full observance of the faith. I took the opportunity to ask him about some matters that I told him I found troubling, such as the unreasonable violence of the global cartoon rage. He explained that it was true: innocent people should not have been killed. Only the cartoonists, he said, should be killed.
If he holds to Islamic blasphemy law, and the necessity of enforcing it on non-Muslims in a non-Muslim state, it is very likely that this man also holds to the same vision of Islamic law, Islamic supremacy, and the ultimate subjugation of the infidels, that motivates Osama bin Laden. Is anyone paying attention to the prevalence of this ideology among Muslims in America?