Why Muslims “Become Radicalized” is No Mystery;

The simple Reason is Jihad

Dr. Norman Berdichevsky

Our media and government have essentially promoted an ignorance of what motivates Muslims to undertake violent acts preferring to focus on their individual problems of being marginalized in Western societies and subject to discrimination, estrangement due to their inability to integrate or be successful. Abroad, the picture is unequivocal with scenes of beheadings and (censored for tv), whippings, death by stoning and the 8th century formula of convert or die actually enacted before our eyes in. This is Jihad in action – witness  Hamas, Hizbollah, Islamic State (ISIS), Islamic Jihad, Boko Haram, al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood – by whatever designation it is Jihad in action –whatever the arcane rivalries between Shia and Sunni – you shall know the tree by its fruit. Jihad has always been a call to arms, invoked, by sultans, caliphs, and local inspired demagogues at every level of the Muslim religious hierarchy.

No, for The New York Times and for a large majority of those who pretend to be journalists including paradoxically, those like Spain and the U.K. which have already suffered atrocious acts of wanton terrorism, the guilty are those are wither mentally ill or “troubled youths” who act from “a variety of motives.” Practically all the terrorist acts committed by Jihad-directed Muslims perpetrated against innocent civilians from dozens of countries as well as against fellow Muslims since the kamikaze-like attacks in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. do not identify the attackers as follower of Jihad as much as the last Ottoman Sultan in October 1914 when he called on all the world’s Muslims to join in his crusade directed against the Allied Power of Great Britain, Franca and Russia but accompanied by a special dispensation for Turkey’s Christian Allies in the West, Germany and Austria-Hungary.

No matter how long the call remains unheard, lies passive, it is always there as part of one thousand four hundred years of violent expansion, it may be LATENT, but it is always LETHAL. This is not “radical” but the standard, mainstream Islam that is inherently political and subject to the manipulation of demagogues, both “secular” and religious throughout history. In addition, since the successful restoration of a Jewish state in a small part of Palestine by the successful Zionist movement, a special form of Jihad continues to be invoked by much of the Musli world, humiliated but the success of what had been regarded by most Muslims as the weakest, most pitiful group known in traditional Middle Eastern society, the Jews.

Just as the many millions of Muslims who participated in the anti-Danish demonstrations following the publication of a few innocuous cartoons, there is only one factor that they all hold in common – the trigger pushing them “over the line” is the ever-present allegiance to Islam which means the blind obedience to those in power able to manipulate them by resorting to the appeal of JIHAD.

Who can remember them all? The wholly reprehensible malicious attacks against Denmark, the death threats (Salman Rushdie) as well as actual assassination attempts (against the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard by an axe-wielding Somali now in prison in Denmark); and murders carried out against writers, intellectuals, film producers and politicians (Pym Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands)? Or the attempted assassination of Lars Hedegaard, noted Danish historian who has had to live in anonymity since?

Those few brave and lonely individuals who are indeed moderates hoping to reform Islam such as Irshad Manji and M. Zuhdi Jasser of the Center for Islamic Pluralism and former Muslims like Ibn Warraq and Walid Shoebat, and notably women in exile such as Nonie Darwish, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, and Taslima Nasrin are all straws in the wind with no support for help or outreach of any kind from the U.S. government because it knows that these individuals are a tiny fraction against of all those who support Al-Qaeda, Hamas, or the Taliban worldwide. Yet, the self appointed Liberal, Tolerant Intellectuals always on guard against “Islamophobia“ have convinced themselves they are defenders of tolerance.

The existing partially-free press in Lebanon, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Pakistan and Egypt and the Arabic press in Great Britain admitted in numerous editorials that the conflict in Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has not been a civil war but that jihadi terrorists convinced that theirs is the pure form of Islam have flocked there from as far away as Indonesia and Chechnia to sow death, destruction and mayhem to intimidate all those who oppose the extremist Islamist view of the world.

The editorial in the April 15th, 2007 issue of the London based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, the leading Arabic language  International Daily Newspaper, repeated essentially the same message and had this to say:

“To make the picture clearer… This religious war has nothing to do even with the major issues, slogans related to which are raised in the terrorists’ literature itself, like Palestine, Iraq, the U.S., etc. These are people who want martyrdom, that is, they want to fight war, anywhere in the world, and for any cause that has a religious angle. They are not fighting for money, public reform, or for… the environment, and they are not nationalists, pan-Arabists, or communists… They are not jokers, hippies, or oppositionists. They are seekers of martyrdom, meaning that they are in a hurry to go to Paradise. They are not interested in the life of this world, and they want to take with them to the grave the greatest number of people possible. I know that this is an issue that is difficult for the Westerner to understand. It is also difficult for many of the Muslims themselves to accept this, and they always try to justify it with issues that they consider legitimate and comprehensible. But the truth is that these terrorists want death for the sake of Allah… That is, even if the Americans left Iraq tonight, and the Jews fled Palestine, and extremist religious governments were established in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt – this would not satisfy them… They want Paradise, and for this they will travel to the ends of the earth, to the North Pole and the South Pole, ‘to fight the infidels.’”

The emergence of militant Islamism among both Sunnis and Shi’ites and the call for all legislation to be based on the Koran as well as world-wide Jihad became as much a threat to “moderate” rulers throughout the Muslim world. The assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was a harbinger of the growing Jihadi threat and the desire to implement an Islamist solution wiping away the vestiges of Western and secular institutions everywhere in Muslim and Arab countries. Attempts to placate the Islamists in Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Malaysia, Lebanon and elsewhere have only led to their increased strength.

Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brothers and Hizbollah is an Iranian puppet committed to a Shi’ite variety of the same world-wide jihadist call. Western politicians and so called Leftwing or “progressive” political forces urging or pressuring Israel to “negotiate” with these Jihadist terror organizations display a wilful ignorance and simply refuse to acknowledge the reality of their violent heritage, fascist character and long-term goals to destroy the West.