Perhaps The Most Important Question of Our Age

Although I am a conservative and I often get critical and derogatory comments from liberals when I post a particular column, the most abusive and obscene comments I get come from the extreme-right when I advise moderation in our views and policies towards Muslims. Even the most sanguine American must, by now, have woken up to the fact that some portion of the Muslim population is singularly devoted to taking over the rest of the world and subjecting it to Muslim rule, but does this mean we should hate all Muslims?

These jihadists are working through every Muslim organization that they can infiltrate, and they have demonstrated their barbaric brutality over and over in their slaughter of human beings who disagree with them. They care not of the human toll they take because they believe their faith commands their actions and that the people they kill and maim are unworthy dhimmis anyway. When they are not resorting to violence and killing, they are trying to impose their ways by making rules of their Sharia apply first to themselves (and not the rules of the country where they live) – and then, if successful, to everyone else there.

The policy of the United States under the Bush Administration has been to confront, capture and kill these militant jihadists in the areas of the world that breed and support them and to work with Muslim governments in a program that encourages movement towards democracy, repression of terrorists, and denial of their funding. Over and over again President Bush has stressed that the rights of Muslim-Americans must be respected and that we are not engaged in a ‘holy war’ against all Muslims – that our ‘war’ is solely against the violent jihadists who want to restore the caliphate by any means necessary.

This policy is based on the assumption that most Muslims want nothing to do with jihad, and that turning this into a ‘holy war’ against all Muslims is not only wrong, but potentially suicidal.

This last is the point with which my angry, right-wing commenters take issue. They believe that our fight is with all Muslims, that openly or secretly all Muslims are working toward establishing the caliphate everywhere they can, and that denying that premise guarantees our eventual defeat. Even though we have the most powerful military in the world and possess nuclear weapons, it is doubtful we would or could use them even as a last resort – especially if Muslim domination spreads to reach a certain point. These right-wingers have some evidence on their side because the so-called peaceful majority of Muslims are almost invisible in the war on terror.

This, then, is probably the most important question of our age, and it is not an entirely obvious one to answer given what we have seen happening recently in several countries in Europe, and the cartoon-fiasco violence that spread around the world. I obviously believe that the Muslim world would have exploded when we invaded Iraq if our fight is with all Muslims; also, Pew Research surveys show that a large majority of Muslims do not support Al-Queda, even though they feel dominated by western culture. Pew Research is known to be a liberal organization, and its research results may well be slanted.

I agree with the policy of the Bush Administration, but I am starting to worry. The problem is, I shudder to think where a different policy might take us. What would these right-wingers have us do?