Five Years On

It's been five years since that horrible day when the towers fell and we learned that we were at war with a load of murdering barbarians straight out of the 7^th century who both envy and hate us, but in the year since the last anniversary things have taken a chilling turn. We have not only seen the cartoon wars, the Lebanon campaign, the burning of France, the nuclear stand-off with Iran and the abortive attempt to take down ten airliners simultaneously, but we have also encountered a streak of appeasement, apologetics, media deception, political opportunism and rank cowardice emerging among politicians, the media and academics in the West that makes me increasing fearful that 9/11 was not a replay of Pearl Harbour, but of the start of the road to Munich.

I still remain optimistic about our ability to defeat the Islamofascists, but the question is, how commited are we to the fight and how high a price are we going to have to pay for our hesitation. It is increasingly clear that unless Western governments recognise that this is literally war and that if we don't face the Jihadists squarely and without apology today, we will be forced into something very close to total war tomorrow that will be fought not only in foreign lands, but in the streets of Europe's capitals.

However, there are still many bright spots of optimism, such as a recent opinion piece in the Las Vegas Review-Journal where American Muslim Aslam Abdullah responds to Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who has called on Muslims to kill at least one American in the next two weeks.

There is nothing common between you and us.

We stand for life, you want to destroy it.

We accept the divine scheme of diversity in the world and you want to impose conformity.

We respect every human being simply because he or she is a creation of the divine, and you hate people based on their religion and ethnicity.

We support freedom and liberty and justice, and you promote bigotry, murder and strangulation.

You will never be able to find a sympathetic voice amidst us. Our differences with others will never lead us to do things that are fundamentally wrong in our faith, i. e. taking the lives of innocent people and killing others because they are different.

So on Sept. 11, when you will be hiding in your caves, we will be out in the streets paying tribute to those who you killed because you failed to see the beauty of life. We will condemn you once again the same way we have been doing ever since 9/11 because we are Muslim Americans.

That sort of unequivocal siding with civilisation is what gives me hope.