We’re constantly told by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in government, in media, in law enforcement, everywhere, that Osama bin Laden represented no one but himself and his Tiny Minority of Extremistsâ„¢, and that he represented a newly-minted and eccentric form of Islam that the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims abhorred and rejected. And yet the evidence of our eyes for years now has told us that he was widely popular in the Islamic world, respected, and even revered.
There is no explanation for this cognitive dissonance other than the one I have offered here for seven and a half years now, and in ten books, and in thousands of articles: that the conventional wisdom is wrong, and that Islam is not a Religion of Peace, and that therefore the claims of Islamic authenticity from Osama and other jihadists found a receptive audience among Muslims, and therefore our policies regarding Islamic states, terrorism, Muslim immigration, stealth jihad Islamization initiatives in this country and in Europe, and myriad other matters are drastically wrongheaded.
From Getty Images, July 2 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):
A Palestinian woman walks towards a coffee shop hanging a picture of al-Qaeda’s slain chief Osaman bin Laden on its window with the Arabic slogan below it: ‘Osama bin Laden, the worrior [sic], the martyr’ in the West Bank city of Jenin on July 1, 2011.
