Look to radical Islamic intentions
Reader comment on item: [Michael Smerconish and I Debate:] What Kind of Airport Profiling?

Submitted by Paul Rhoads (France), Oct 5, 2004 at 18:32

This is exactly the right approach. I support it fully.

But just as it is important to get beyond Arab looks to radical Islamic intentions, eventually a further step must also be taken--if not at airports in the West generally.

There is no doubt that most Muslims are not islamist extremist, but all Islamic extremist are Muslims. To say nothing of the tacit or partial agreement between most Muslims and aspects of Islamic extremism, as soon as we start having the courage to examine Islam with objectivity, as well as looking at the what we call the 'post 9/11 world' in light of Arab politics in the 20th century, and also the 19th, and right on back, even to Mohammed himself, we will come to see matters as the Islamists see them, namely that this is an aggressive war of Islam against Christianity. The situation that the West is now, to a very large extent, de-Christianized , is an obstacle which prevents our understanding the world situation with clarity. The ‘political correctness' which generates the more obvious obstacles to our understanding is itself ultimately a consequence of de-Christianisation.

What would be the consequences to Western action with regard, say, to airport security, of such a consciousness? One would hope that all Muslim organizations and individuals in America today are already the object of a proper degree of special attention. Europe, having lost hold of its Christian identity to a very great extent, is in a process of implosion which would spell eventual Islamic triumph there (or ‘here', since I write this from France). But the front line is Israel.

The Islamists do not care if the Jews are religious or not. Like Hitler they define Jews as 'Jews' in spite of them. The Jews must defend themselves, as Jews, whether they care to defend themselves in such a way or not. It will eventually become clear that the European, and American, situation is the same; it is, ultimately, Christianity that is under attack--or, as the case may be, de-Christianized or radicalized personal freedom. The ‘human person' as beloved child of God is the Jewish-Christian, or Western, specificity. For militant Islam, in its ultimate logic, a ‘man' is a jehadi suicide bomb and a ‘woman' is his chattel.

Paul Rhoads

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