The Muslim new year has come in with a bang. On the eve of the high holiday of Eid al-Adha, explosions abound. Outside Beirut a car bomb kills four. A double-blast in Quetta, Pakistan, destroys eight lives. Twin suicide bombings in Iraq’s Diyala Province murder 26, including six women and children. Two bombers in Algiers, one a grandfather, claim over 35 victims.
This year-end killing spree – whose victims were nearly all Muslim – has again revealed a profound failure to stop violent extremism across the Muslim world. The international community, increasingly numb to a steady tide of slaughter in Muslim lands, has little to say. Muslim leaders offer a ritual disclaimer that the radicals don’t represent Islam – a “religion of peace” – and then retreat into silence.
We have failed to offer a robust response to the brutal wave of human sacrifice. This failure has allowed extremists to garner headlines and define the agenda without meeting an equally passionate response from the moderate center. It is long past time to mount a vigorous campaign against the cult of death and reaffirm a culture of life.
Those muslims sure know how to party down.
This is a good essay, and it is heartening to hear a voice for sanity speak out and call for a jihad against the extremists in the Muslim world. The extremists have perverted the meaning of “jihad”: it is up to the Muslim mainstream leadership to reclaim it.
Actually, the extremists haven’t perverted “jihad.” The battle is for the soul of Islam, whether it will follow its medieval system or whether it will attempt to follow the earlier Mecca period revelations and become a modern adaptation. We should pray for the latter, while still praying for the conversion of Muslims to Christianity.
# 2. AD 711, on the shore of the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain:
‘Ay caramba! The Moors have arrived! They have perverted the meaning of jihad!’
(see also: Jerusalem, Egypt, North Africa, Byzantine Empire, India, Rome AD 832 etc etc)