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The current crisis in the Middle East (The war between Israel and Hizb’allah) affords us an opportunity to reassess some of the assumptions that have framed the “War on Terror.”
History proves that a war cannot be successfully prosecuted unless there’s an understanding of the enemy’s objectives and to what extent the enemy is willing to go in order to win or drag the conflict to a stalemate...
During World War II, most Americans found the Japanese leadership’s “Spirit Warrior” commitment to complete annihilation perplexing. As the US island hopped its way north, the Japanese mainland began to prepare for the inevitable invasion, telling the populace they would fight to the last man, woman, and child. The preparations the Japanese made on Iwo Jima, along with the subsequent fighting for control of the island, caused the American war-planners to reassess a mainland invasion. Fire-bombing and the use of nuclear bombs were deemed preferable to the far greater holocaust of an invasion, for BOTH the US and Japanese. Relentless Kamikaze attacks drove home the reality that the Japanese mentality of war was very different from that of the West.
It seems our current national leaders have forgotten the lesson of the Pacific theater in World War II. They label the current conflict a “War on Terror.” It’s not. Terror is only a strategy of the ideology of Radical Islam. But then, when I say, “Radical Islam” I’m really only falling into the same euphemistic trap. Let me just shoot straight and call it was it really is – “Quranicly-faithful” Islam. It’s the Islam one sees spelled out in the Quran. It’s the Islam its Prophet Mohammed promulgated. It’s the religion carried by his immediate successors to the entire Middle East at the point of a sword.
So let’s be honest and say it as it ought to be said—it’s the “The War with Islam.”
Oh no! We could never call it that! That’s the ultimate PC faux pas. We could never dare to say this was an armed contest with a major world religion. Why, that would just be—so—wrong!
No. It isn’t wrong; it’s accurate. It’s also politically inconvenient.
For instance, have you noticed how the current conflict is said as being between Israel and Hezbollah? What’s “Hezbollah?” It’s Hizb’allah – the Party of Allah. The Western press renders it differently so as to “PC” it up and remove the connection to the Muslim Allah. Heaven forbid we’d remind people that Islam is the real issue here.
Whenever someone moves to deal with the Muslim connection in all this, there’s always a quick assertion of the fact that Isalm is a multifaceted religion with many different streams of faith. We hear a lot about “moderate” Muslims who disagree with the beliefs and tactics of “radical” Muslims. There are even “liberal” Muslims who hold positions little different from secularists. What we need to understand is that the so-called “radical” Islamists are in fact, the ones who are seeking to live out their founding Prophet’s vision of global domination. They shun the compromise with the modern world embraced by their more moderate brethren. They are simply seeking to be true to the tenets of their faith.
In a similar way, Bible-believing and living Christians are often labeled “intolerant” simply because they’re being faithful to the teachings of he One they claim to believe in – Jesus Christ. It was HE Who said, “I am THE way, The truth, and THE life. NO ONE comes to the Father EXCEPT through Me.” Christians are in the hard place of being called either “hypocrites” (because they don’t follow through on that claim) or “intolerant” (because they do follow through on it.)
One of the primary differences between Biblically-faithful Christians and Quranicly-faithful Muslims is that the Christian follows his/her Master’s example and lays down his/her life for another, while the Muslim follows his/her Prophet’s example and takes the life of another.
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