The West and Radical Islam: The Debates We Have & the Enemies We Face
The United States of America is the greatest country on the face of the earth.
But we often fail to realize just how different our way of life and thinking is from the billions of people in other parts of the world. It’s why far too many of our leaders refuse to acknowledge the threat of radical Islamic jihad and call it out by name. It’s why far too many people wrongly think about radical Islamic terrorists as simply the heirs to the long line of freedom-hating enemies of the West. It’s why radical jihadists continue to win and advance, leaving America’s leaders without an effective strategy and wondering what to do.
Without realizing what truly makes America exceptional and why radical Islamists and many other Muslims hate us, we will continue to lose this war.
And let there be no doubt, we are at war. They are at war with us now and will continue to be long into the future, until we are destroyed. The only thing we accomplish by denying this reality is our own demise.
What makes America great is our liberty, our freedom, our rule of law, our diversity, and our Constitution. In other words, our values. Radical Islamists hate and seek to destroy these things because they have different values. Our cultural identities and philosophical views are diametrically opposed.
As the Western world continues to confront radical Islam, a debate is taking place in university lecture halls, on social media, in the halls of power, and on the news. This debate centers on one question: is Islam a peaceful religion? After 9/11, President
George W. Bush referred to Islam as “a religion of peace.” President Obama has reiterated time and time again that Islam teaches peace.
The debate about the definition of “true Islam” is interesting. But this debate undergirds the West’s understanding of terrorism, Islam superiority, the pursuit of Sharia, and the emergence of the unholy alliance. Some point to passages in the Quran about peace, while others point to passages that seem to encourage violence and have spurred terrorists to kill anyone who disagrees with them and destroy entire civilizations—churches, art museums, architecture, and more.
It is true that the Quran contains multiple verses that command peace—as well as violence. The majority of Muslims do not engage in violent, forcible imposition of Sharia on others, justifying their position based on verses in the Quran that teach peace and kindness.
However, significant parts of Islam’s history are characterized by wars of Islamic conquest and forcible imposition of Islam over nonbelievers on the basis of Quranic teaching of jihad to establish Sharia law.
Today, ISIS (the Islamic State) and other radical Islamic terrorists point to sections of the Quran and Islamic history not only to justify their jihad and terror but also to insist that Allah requires it of them.
It’s this history that we must reckon with in order to truly understand the enemy we face and how to defeat it.
The Middle East is an often complex weave of unlikely alliances, but their confluence today lead to new dangers – dangers we must look to history to understand and defeat. In my upcoming new book (due out September 20th), “Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World,” I uncover some of these dangerous trends and detail solutions that our nation’s leaders must take. This continues the in-depth analysis of radical Islam we began in #1 New York Times Bestseller “Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore.”
This is excerpted and adapted from #1 NY Times Bestselling author Jay Sekulow’s newest book, “Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World.”
You can pre-order your copy below:
