The Hydra of Jihad

There are some good-hearted, non-Muslim tolerant people who tend to overlook all the terrible things that Islam perpetrates and point to some of its good teachings. These folks contend that the world should direct its effort not to combat Islam, but at those individuals and groups that commit heinous acts in the name of Islam.

There are others who disagree with this benign approach. This latter group sees all the so-called aberrations as inherent and part and parcel of Islam. They believe that it is Islam that actively promotes and is terribly out of sync with the best interests of the 21^st century world.

They contend that Islam may have served the primitive Arab people of fourteen centuries ago. But by breaking out of its cradle and morphing into a world dominant crusade that has inflicted incalculable harm to its victims as well as those who ended up in its fold.

For now, Islam can be thought of as a stagnant body of water. Over the years, the body of water has become greatly polluted to a point that it has become a breeding medium for all kinds of death-bearing insects such as the ‘West Nile Disease’ mosquitoes.

Humanity has suffered horrific wars in the past. Yet, the present multi-form and multi-front war waged by Islamists has the potential to inflict more suffering and destruction of more lives than ever before. Ruthless Islamic forces advance rapidly in their conquests while those of freedom acquiesce and retreat. Before long, Islam is poised to achieve its Allah-mandated goal to cleanse the earth of all non-Muslims through ‘grand Jihad’ and establish the Islamic Ummah.

The counter-jihadists struggle with jihadist is like Hercules’ epic combat with the multi-headed Hydra-monster. You slay one jihadi, two more appear in no time. It makes you wonder if we are ever able to eradicate jihadists for good!

“Bin Laden is Killed,” headlines blanketed the world, a few days ago. Many rejoiced and felt justice was served while a few mourned the mass murderer’s demise. Celebration and mourning aside, the fact is that the death of one demon does not mark the end of the evil of Islamism. In the same way that it is the nature of swamps to breed mosquitoes, Islam is the incubator of jihadist mass murderers. It never ends.

Jihadists have searched the scripture and selectively choose those statements and precedents that they do use to legitimize their violent and primitive agenda. Jihadists, for instance, claim that the Quran itself urges them to make jihad, “jahedoo fee sabeil-u-llah,” (make jihad for the cause of Allah.) The word “jihad” has at least two vastly different meanings. It means exertion. It also stands for making war, and it is the latter that jihadists invoke as their mandate.

“Jihad in the path of Allah is greater than any individual or organization. It is a struggle between Truth and Falsehood, until Allah Almighty inherits the earth and those who live in it. Mullah Muhammad Omar and Sheikh Osama bin Laden—may Allah protect them from all evil—are merely two soldiers of Islam in the journey of jihad, while the struggle between Truth [Islam] and Falsehood [non-Islam] transcends time “(The Al Qaeda Reader, p.182, emphasis added).

While so-called silent Muslims generally ignore jihadists, either out of fear, lack of organization, or apathy, Islamists work around the clock and around the world to further their agenda. Hardly a week passes without a Grand Mufti or an Ayatollah who issues pronouncements in support of extremist Islam. The rank-and-file Islamist clergy, for their part, transmit these fatwas and edicts to their flock at mosques and hammer them into the minds of impressionable children in madrassahs. Through this grassroots process, Islam is recruiting greater and greater numbers of adherents. On the one hand, Islamists engage in acts of violence to disrupt the function of societies, while on the other they cleverly exploit the freedom they enjoy in non-Islamic lands to subvert them from within.

After 1400 years, Islam is still on a campaign of conquest throughout the known world. Hordes of life-in-hand foot-soldier fanatical Muslims strive to kill and get killed. All they want is the opportunity to discharge their homicidal-suicidal impulse, on their way to Allah’s promised glorious afterlife. And in the background, granting the foot-soldiers’ wishes, are their handlers, the puppeteers, who pull the strings and detonate these human bombs.

Those who cherish life must recognize these emissaries of death, what makes them, what motivates them, and how best to defend against them. The campaign of death waged by these Islamic jihadists, be he a puppet or a puppeteer, is energized by the belief of delectable rewards that await the faithful implementer of Allah’s dictates.

Through a highly effective indoctrination, the jihadist has come to believe firmly in Islam’s absolute delusion. He believes that Allah is the one and only supreme creator of the heavens and the Earth; that it is his duty and privilege, to abide by Allah’s will and carry out his plans at all costs. He believes firmly in a gloriously wonderful immortal afterlife in paradise, for which a martyr’s death is the surest quickest admission. Although the dominant theme of the delusion is quasi-spiritual, the promised rewards of the afterlife awaiting the martyr are sensual and material. Civilized people must come to terms and accept the reality that orthodox Islam requires endless jihad!

One Osama is dead. More Osama are in the wings. The enemy is relentless. The free people must wage an unceasing battle against this menace of Islamism through massive education and by any other means to preserve humanity’s most prized possession—liberty.

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